Northern Irish police call for witnesses to attack which left 15-year-old in critical condition
Police are calling for witnesses after a 15-year-old girl was stabbed in the neck in Lurgan, leaving her in a critical condition.
The incident happened around 9pm on Friday in the Deans Walk area of the County Armagh town, police said.
Continue reading...Algorithm that predicts who will reoffend may give rise to ethical concerns such as bias
A computer tool used by police to predict which people are likely to reoffend has come under scrutiny from one force’s ethics committee, who said there were a lot of “unanswered questions” and concerns about potential bias.
Amid mounting financial pressure, at least a dozen police forces are using or considering predictive analytics, despite warnings from campaigners that use of algorithms and “predictive policing” models risks locking discrimination into the criminal justice system.
Continue reading...Officers urge dissidents to step away from violence after Lyra McKee shot in Derry riots
Police in Northern Ireland have issued a call for peace in memory of the journalist Lyra McKee, who died after being shot during rioting in Derry on Thursday night.
Evoking the 29-year-old’s own words about the power of conversation, police encouraged relatives of dissident republicans, who have been blamed for shooting McKee, to urge their family members to step away from violence and pursue peace.
Continue reading...Petrol bombs thrown and shots fired in Creggan area of city
A 29-year-old woman has died after shots were fired in Derry, with police in Northern Ireland treating the death as a “terrorist incident”. The victim was reported locally to have been a journalist and author who was covering the unrest taking place in the Creggan area of the city.
Assistant chief constable Mark Hamilton, from the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said a murder inquiry had been launched after the death on Thursday evening. Petrol bombs were thrown and images from the scene show vehicles alight and others burnt out.
Continue reading...Edinburgh police say man was found in city’s West End with gunshot wound and died at the scene
Trainspotting 2 actor Bradley Welsh has been shot dead in Scotland, according to reports.
Welsh was reportedly killed in Edinburgh on Wednesday. Police said they were called to Chester Street in the West End of the city at around 8pm and found a man with serious injuries who died at the scene.
Continue reading...She was the respected allotment committee secretary, he was an ambitious fellow plot holder: why did he kill her?
In a corner of London, close to the busy Edgware Road, there is a secret garden. Tucked away on a residential street, the gate has the words “Colindale Gardens and Allotments Association” messily painted on a white plank tied to the chain-link fencing. Beyond the gate is a broad expanse of grass and earth, of greenhouses, sheds, canes and polytunnels. You can hear the occasional rumble of a train, and in the distance you can see cranes constructing blocks of flats to house the next generation of gardenless Londoners. But the space here is so peaceful, so lush and full of birdsong, that you almost forget where you are.
The Colindale allotments are home to 90 long plots, mostly 20 metres by eight, arranged along two parallel grass avenues. The rules say sheds can be put up only on the end farthest from the path, giving the space the look of a miniature suburban neighbourhood, with plots in front of sheds instead of lawns in front of houses. A plot costs £85 a year. There are currently 60 people on the waiting list.
Continue reading...Masked men stole the ATM from a garage in Dungiven, Northern Ireland, in the early hours of the morning on 7 April, tearing the machine out of the wall using a digger stolen from a nearby construction site before vanishing into the night. The audacious heist took less than four and a half minutes. It's the eleventh time the gang have struck in recent months
Thieves have raided 11 times, using stolen diggers to rip cash machines out of the wall
The thieves have honed their modus operandi in audacious raids across Northern Ireland and just across the border with Ireland.
Under cover of night they steal a digger, trundle into town and smash open a wall containing an ATM. The digger scoops out the cash machine and lowers it into a waiting vehicle. The thieves abandon the digger and vanish into the darkness.
Continue reading...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.
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