Rapper cancels headline slot at Snowbombing hours before he was due to go on stage
Stormzy has pulled out of his headline slot at Snowbombing festival just hours before he was due to perform, after accusing its staff of racially profiling his manager.
The Brit award-winning rapper, 25, said his friends had been targeted by security at the event in Mayrhofen, Austria, on Thursday looking for someone carrying a weapon, “despite no one [in their party] fitting the description”.
Continue reading...Experts say Alesha’s killer, Aaron Campbell, is ‘not a one-off’ – and more can be done to prevent similar crimes
Since Aaron Campbell received a life sentence last month for the brutal rape and murder of six-year-old Alesha MacPhail, the reverberations from his crimes have continued as the public and professionals struggle to come to terms with what the trial judge, Lord Matthews, described as “some of the wickedest, most evil crimes this court has ever heard”.
Related: Why was Alesha MacPhail killed? Perhaps we should stop asking | Libby Brooks
Continue reading...George Stephenson, 60, was initially deemed unfit to stand trial after ‘Oscar-winning’ act
A child rapist who almost escaped punishment after he tricked a judge and two psychiatrists into thinking he was severely disabled has been jailed for more than 26 years.
George Stephenson, 60, pretended he could not speak, made unintelligible noises during consultations, needed to be pushed in a wheelchair by his wife, was incontinent and appeared not to be able to follow proceedings.
Continue reading...Relaxing of rules means police in England and Wales no longer need grounds for suspicion
Police in England and Wales are being given more power to stop and search people without “reasonable suspicion” in an attempt to tackle knife crime.
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced he is making it easier for officers to impose a section 60 order, which allows them to search anyone in an area if serious violence is anticipated.
Continue reading...Sara Thornton says police are ‘really struggling’ with routine responses to crime
Government cuts left police retreating from the streets, solving just one in 10 offences and “really struggling” to deal with routine crime, the leader of Britain’s police chiefs has said.
Sara Thornton steps down this weekend as chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, after a four-year tenure during which her and her colleagues battled to get the government to recognise cuts were leading to fewer officers and resources to fight crime.
Continue reading...Paramedics unable to save Abdirashid Mohamoud, who police say was chased by a group of men
Residents in a block of flats in west London have spoken of their horror at seeing a teenager stabbed to death on Friday night.
The boy, named as 17-year-old Abdirashid Mohamoud, was discovered with stab injuries outside a block of flats in Isleworth at about 10.35pm.
Continue reading...Police yet to make arrests after man, 29, dies on Fulham street
A man has has been stabbed to death in Fulham in south-west London.
Scotland Yard said officers were called to reports of a fight on Gowan Avenue close to Fulham Palace Road at 12.27am on Saturday.
Continue reading...19-year-old victim remains in critical condition after attack in Muswell Hill, north London
A 17-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, following the stabbing of a 19-year-old man on a north London bus at the weekend.
The victim was stabbed in the chest on board the 134 bus in Muswell Hill at 4.41pm on Saturday. He was flown by air ambulance to an east London hospital where he is in a critical, but stable, condition. The suspect remains in custody pending further inquiries.
Continue reading...‘Fragmented’ system inadequate to prevent influx of dirty money, says Treasury committee
Hundreds of billions of pounds could be being laundered through the UK every year, but the government is unable to give a precise figure of the scale of the problem, MPs have found.
In a report on economic crime, the Treasury committee said the scale of the problem in the UK was very uncertain, with estimates ranging from tens of billions of pounds upwards.
Continue reading...‘Extremely frustrating and disheartening’: investigation held up by public inquiry
Survivors and the bereaved from the Grenfell Tower fire have expressed their “extreme frustration” at the pace of justice after Scotland Yard admitted no charges were likely for at least two years.
Detectives investigating the possibility of manslaughter and corporate manslaughter offences said their investigation must take into account the public inquiry into the disaster, the second phase of which will not start until the end of this year. Inquiry lawyers have been swamped with 476,000 separate documents.
Continue reading...Home secretary insists he will back chiefs despite cabinet clash with May
Sajid Javid has said the government must listen to police chiefs’ demand for more resources after they asked the home secretary for emergency cash to fund an immediate rise in the number of officers in England to tackle knife crime.
Javid met chief constables from seven of the areas worst affected by knife crime on Wednesday to discuss solutions to the problem, which has been described as a national emergency.
Continue reading...Five victims have died in London, three in Birmingham, one in Manchester and one in Sunderland
Ten teenagers have been killed in knife attacks in the first two months of 2019, according to a list compiled by the Guardian from media coverage and police press alerts.
Half the victims were in London, three died in Birmingham in just 12 days, and the other casualties were in Manchester and Sunderland.
Continue reading...Jodie Chesney was killed on Friday evening after stabbing in Harold Hill
A 17-year-old girl has been stabbed in east London, taking the death toll from homicides in the capital to 18 so far this year.
She was named by the Metropolitan police on Saturday night as Jodie Chesney.
Continue reading...Ceon Broughton imprisoned for eight and a half years for manslaughter of Louella Fletcher-Michie
A musician who supplied his girlfriend with a lethal dose of drugs and filmed her as she lay dying at a music festival has been jailed for eight and a half years.
Ceon Broughton, 30, gave Louella Fletcher-Michie, 24, the party drug 2C-P at Bestival in Dorset in September 2017. Jurors at Winchester crown court were shown footage in which Fletcher-Michie repeatedly shouts at Broughton to phone her mother but he dismisses her, telling her to “put your phone away”.
Continue reading...A coalition of human rights groups is pressing the home secretary to scrap his new measures to tackle knife crime, branding them “deeply counterproductive”.
Sajid Javid’s knife crime prevention orders place a range of curbs and curfews on suspects, but groups working with young people including Liberty, the Runnymede Trust and the Children’s Society, say they have “profound human rights concerns”.
Continue reading...Tracking devices will be given to 100 people deemed likely to reoffend in four boroughs
Knife crime offenders in London will be tagged with tracking devices upon their release from prison in an attempt to reduce violence in the capital, the mayor has announced.
Those who have served custodial sentences for knife-related crimes such as possession, robbery, wounding, GBH and aggravated burglary will be subject to GPS tagging under a year-long pilot.
Continue reading...Warnings on coercion and blackmailing over smartphones went unheeded, say experts, as child exploitation spirals
A failure to grasp how technology and social media is being used to coerce, control, blackmail and track the movements of children as young as 11 by “county lines” drug gangs has seen an epidemic of child criminal exploitation spiral out of control in the UK.
“For the past seven or eight years we have been warning the government, the authorities, teachers, anyone who would listen, that technology is the central organising feature of the county lines business model,” said Sheldon Thomas, a consultant on gang behaviour through his organisation Gangsline.
Continue reading...Britain snorts more of the drug than almost anywhere in Europe, more young people are taking it and deaths are rising. Why?
The moment Dan (not his real name) realised he had a problem with cocaine, he had been off work for a week, sick with flu. His phone buzzed. It was his cocaine dealer, calling to check he was OK. When Dan, one of his favoured customers, hadn’t been in touch to buy the cocaine he usually took several times a week, the dealer knew something was wrong.
“I don’t like thinking about that,” Dan says, shaking his head as we sit in a London pub. Now 36, Dan estimates he has spent £25,000 on cocaine. Lines in the pub on a Friday night after work. Lines on a Wednesday evening at a friend’s house while earnestly discussing 90s hip-hop. Lines at house parties, weddings, birthday parties and for no reason at all, other than that cocaine – the white powder that makes no one a better version of themselves, but that many of us continue to do anyway – is everywhere and freely available.
Continue reading...Scotland and north of England dominate top five as measured by housing, crime and schools
Orkney is the best place to live in the UK, with cheap houses, low crime, good schools and a population who are among the happiest and healthiest in the country, according to the annual Halifax quality of life survey.
The survey found that all the top five best places to live in the UK were in Scotland or the north of England. Richmondshire in the north of the Yorkshire Dales came second, while the appropriately named Eden district in Cumbria was third.
Continue reading...Mark Fellows and an associate also convicted of killing John Kinsella during gangland feud
A gangland hitman has been convicted of the murder of the Salford criminal Paul Massey, known as “Mr Big”, and his associate John Kinsella.
Mark Fellows, 38, shot Massey in the chest with an Uzi machine gun in July 2015 as part of a deadly feud between rival gangs in Salford. The attack sparked a series of tit-for-tat repercussions.
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