Crime in london versus Crime in Poland.

I'm going to go and check the statistics after posting this, but to my mind the Uk has many more criminal elements and generally alot more crime than Poland. People are always moaning about crime in Poland but in London it is really bad.

My missus bless her has been mugged three times and burgled once all in the space of one year in London. When she was burgled, she was sharing a room with two other Polish girls and she woke up to see an IC3 crouched over her friend with a knife to her throat, whispering demands for her cash. My little monster screamed and this crackhead fled back out through the window.

True at the time she was living in the Brixton area, but recently our neighbours were burgled and one was mugged at their doorstep and we are living in a really nice area now. I've seen soooo many fights in London, knives being pulled, guns fired but as of yet no problems in Poland. I've even been to the football in Polska and noithing!!

Whats everyone elses experience.
Actually I put my neck out and say London is probably the most dangerous city in Europe (certainly Western Europe).

WHAT ABOUT THE RIOTS IN PARIS THIS YEAR?!

OMG Casper, they held a knife to her throat!!! what is going on there?

Three times in one year? The average person would only get their purse stolen
or mugged outside establishments once in their lifetime here, least where I live.

(knock on wood) !

I never have had either though I live in the states and it is bad here too in some
cities, but London is a tourists attraction, what about the tourists who come there?
besides the ones who live there?

If that is the case, I would be getting me some type of protection, it is sad to
know that you can work as hard as you do and someone else can come along and
rip it right out from under you, and harm you over money!

my suggestion is if that area is that bad, or getting that bad, I would be taking
self defense, and also carrying protection! <~if you dont have a choice that is to
move.

What part of the London is the most dangerous? East, North, West, South?

Don't get me wrong. I have had the pleasure of working with and getting to know some fantastic people of ethnic backgrounds.
But, there is a huge peer pressure on young (black in particular, but not confined to) kids who aspire to the (Afro) Americanized street culture and all it's activities.

Asian and white kids fear the reputation of black (hip-hop /gang) culture and feel obliged to match or better its reputation in the pursuit of respect.

Inevitably, this leads to violence and rape that often goes unreported as guns and knifes proliferate through out the world generally.
This is prevalent in all high density urban areas globally. Just look at Brazil or even Mexico for instance (USA we know already:-) ).

Leading to my point, some violent people who follow street culture see women (particularly nice weak white girls) as rape fodder and "nice white/asian" educated males as good mugging victims.

This is the hard (but not exclusive) truth of the matter.

Welcome to multi-cultural globalization. Enjoy your stay.....

I see you have a good time here Habbitualku.

Leading to my point, some violent people who follow street culture see women (particularly nice weak white girls) as rape fodder and "nice white/asian" educated males as good mugging victims.

True, don't disagree.

Pat thanks for the concern for the missus.

This is not a racist statement but everyone who mugged my girl was black. But South London has a large black community and it does tend to live in the poorer areas. So I think its a question of socio-economic placing.

Lol, diplomacy eh? don't you just love it? :)

Deep down, I know you don't let them off the hook that easily, but I commend your reply all the same. :)

I tend to agree but its not the black kids that were born here, lots of algerians and africans living in the UK these days, dont get me wrong (l lived near Moss Side for a year and know all too well about gang culture) the black kids who have been in this country for generations are in to the gang thing, but thats usually fighting each other - Algerians however are a nasty bunch -

Yes. That is the aggressive greater spotted camel humper variety. :)

Mind you, other grateful muslim immigrants like the Albanians and Kosovons (whos asses NATO saved from Serbia) also contribute 'nicely' to this fermentation of conniving and sometimes vicious underworld activity....

I wouldn't say that such things are unusual in Poland, but here in most cases these are punks fighting each other. Unless you walk alone at night in few really bad areas, show around a wallet full of cash, visit crappy night clubs etc. the risk of being attacked is indeed really small.

Yeah, but same person getting mugged 3 times in a year? more like targeting.

Usa, we have crime, and killings, mugging, but, its not the same person
1 every 5 months or so. yes its global, but what astounded me was the mugged
3 times, then burgled in her own home?
Yes they prey on Women, and unsuspecting men, but that seems to me like
someone is following. you said there was alot of them? or more then one, well if they
see the same person, they could change the person doing the muggin but target
the same girl. this way during stress of the incident she wont remember what he
looked like, but if it was same guy, she could pick him out (does that make sense?)

oh I am just babbleing, but, I am so sorry your fiance is going thru so much. that
has to have you ready to get out , how can one feel safe?

Let me tell you, I live in suburbs, I dont live that close, but close enough to a pretty
rough city, which is getting better. but still the crime rate is up, more then it should
be. I lock my doors, we have a DOG, so when a fly passes by the house, he knows
and lets us know.
any form of protection is good protection.
I know that someone could violate my home, and that scares me too, but, I do feel
safe in my home, no one should not feel safe, your home is your castle, and that
dont matter if its a real castle, or a small apt way up on the 9th floor. no one has
the right to do that.

no matter what part of the world.

And car crime is much higher in the UK too.

A report has just come out on the declared motivations of muggers. The answers are alarming - status and fun were geater motivators than money. A recurring theme was pleasure in inflicting emotional and physical pain. Many wanted to provoke the victim to a fight, for which obviously they were at a disadvantage.

And, being perfectly frank, this is what comes from the typical Afro-Carribbean family set-up where there is no father in sight plus the massive chip on the shoulder of being looked down on because they're black. Vicious circle of racism plus hatred towards authority and self-improvement.

So why is it that black Africans don't react in this way?
While we're at it, Somalis have a brilliant reputation of being easily the worst young thugs in London - at my wife's school in Wembley they would take their knife out and use it with a moment's hesitation. Civil war mentality, you see.

Oh, successive British Governments have been so dumb ...

You are comparing one vast city(London) with Poland.Parts of London are crime ridden and dangerous but vast areas of the UK are perfectly safe,prosperous,friendly etc.It depends on where you live.

Varsovian. I read the article you mentioned today and it set me to thinking.
I'd like to have a go at explaining how the street mentality and violence we see amongst juviniles prevails, through both external forces such as music and film. As well as historical features within certain ethnic minorites cultures, that set a precedent for violent behaviour.

The following is written as observations and not written as a racist rant.

If we look at specific issues separately, we have to investigate firstly youth violence, immigration, world history and the pschology of youth media.

Youth Violence.

Young people have always been the warriors, specifically males. Men have to be young and fit to survive as history shows, in Darwinian terms it is survival of the fittest.

If we look back to the origins of football, now a sanitised game, in medieval times it was a bloody battle between local villages with a piece of dead pig. No rules, just get this "football" from one poll to another. The main tatic was violence.

Violence within UK society

As UK society matured violence was a way of life all the way through to modern times, it just moved into different realms. From burning witches, to burning catholics, to brutally killing Scotish and Irish rebellions. From beating children in the workhouses, to shipping convicts (economically deprived people) to Australia.

Violence and subjegation abroad.

Abroad, the British equiped with a mature and knowledgable navy, exported its concept of civilisation and imperialism across the world. The same violent temperament within the indigenous population was honed and targeted at various poor unfortunate, underdeveloped nations across the world. So successfully that England owned and governed approximately 1/3 of the world. Until the beginning of the decline in Empire.

From Hooligan to hoodie.

The word "hooligan", was they say coined after a man name Patrick Hooligan, who during the mid 19century terrorized his local neighbourhood in the East end of London. He and his followers would beat people up and rob them (sounding familiar), and his nationality?

Catholic Irish, who in Victorian London held the same status as many non-caucasian ethnic groups today. Again he was found in the ghettos, which with poor socio-economic factors are a breeding ground for violence.

So stepping forward into the 20 century and 21 century.

The Two world wars experienced throught Europe, effectively decimated the young throughout Europe. This joining with disease and economic collapse and imperial decline, changed the status quo amongst young and old, the respect elders which had previously been given erode, because a). There were less of them and b). The previous elders of state had made such serious blunders that they were viewed with mistrust. Faith in the state and state infalibilty was questioned.

1950's Teddy Boys.
1960's Mods and Rocker
1970's Skins, rudeboyz, football firms
etc etc.
All the way to todays Hoodies.

The immigrant question.

To begin to answer this sticky wicket, we have to look outside the UK to its Colonial past.
Specifically The West Indies, India and Africa.

The major differentials between these three areas are many, but the essense of todays irritations is found not in India or in Africa, but in West Indies, and specifically Jamaica.

Jamaica suffered terribly from legacy of slavery, perhpas more so than the other Islands the denigration of the inviduals and base levels to which humanity sunken are ledgendary.

If you beat and torture a child if it survives through to adulthood he/she will be one mean son of a gun. This effectively is what happened to jamaica as a nation, it was an abused identity free country. Peopled by differing tribes that had been severed from there roots.

So these poor down trodden souls some sort an escape to the UK, for them a suregate mother/fatherland. This Windrush did not bring with it violent Yardie gunman, it brought forward hard working Jamaican trying to escape poverty and to make a better life. Their identity came from being BRITISH CITIZENS, something then people identified with strongly.

Generally they were accepted by British mainstream culture, the no blacks no Irish sentiment decreased, although never totally.

These first genration immigrants mixed with some of the young white working class and this is ironically enough where the original tenants of the Skinhead culture developed. Northern Soul and reggae, weed and beer and blue bombers. Toxteth, Brixton, these were the hubs of this new youth culture.

However towards the end of the 1970's after the oil crisis, the accendance of Thatcher and captialist economic practise, disenfranchised the working class even more. Britian was no longer "pulling together" as we had in the post war years, the explosion of youth awareness in the pretty Pop world of the 1960's had passed through the 1970's summers of love and the 1980's comedown was upon them.

Youth culture divided more and more into subcultures each vying for ascendance so as to dominate youth identity. The punks, goths, metallers, ravers, rockers, bikers, skins, hippies, mods etc

Football terrace violence was massively prominent in the 1970's and 1980's so much so that our reputation as a country for "football violence", is as famous as Lady Diana.

Football was then still affordable and again it help working class youth define themselves.
I support Chelsea, I live in Chelsea. I support Everton, I'm a catholic Liverpuddlian.
Basic, simplistic, perhaps but better than nothing. These basic tribal instincts were exorcized.
So football gangs, like youth fashions provided identity. The older generations identified themselves through class and employment. Whilst the immigrant class prided themselves on the fact they were immigrants, they were proud because they were different and trying to make a difference.

Political independance, emancipation, civil war and the struggle for identity.

The struggle for Political independance for many ex-colonies truely began as late as the 1950's. A bankrupt Britian could no longer justify these colonys and the indigenous population had after years of occuption decided to change the status quo.

The political turmoil of the 1970's in Jamaica, a by product of the cold war and increased independance led to several mass exoduses of hundreds of undesirables, political gunmen and enforcers. Who fled are several bloody election battles. This exodus hit the US and the UK.

Meanwhile, Bob Marely was wooing the West with his songs and popular culture rightly knighted him as a modern day hero poet. So we have one side of Jamaica, the let your hair down smoke grass and right on emancipation, liberation side. And the I'm going to ******* shoot you side, because I'm a lion and your are a lamb. Full circle to the survival of the fittest senario.

If we look over to the US, whose youth culture with some differences essentially matured side by side with the Uk was subjected to the political turmoil and civil liberty issues which were dealt with differently in the UK, during the 1960's and 1970's.

The black underclasses in the USA, still dealing with their own horrific legacy of slavery championed heros within the civil rights movement and with JFK leading the pact everything looked positive. We all know what happened next.

The two fold results were similar to the disenchantment of the UK youth in the late 1970's and 1980's, the establishment had lied horrendously and everyone knew it. Secondly drugs, specifically heroin began to arrive onto the streets and gain popularity.

Heroin destroys individuals and individuals are society.

The drugs of course entered the deprived areas firstly providing another underground economy and breaking the working class down into subsectors. Obviously gambling, prostitution, alcoholism were already well entrenched; their particular evils having been promenantly battledover in the previous centuries. Particularly through relgious lobbies. But God died in Europe in World War 2, having been badly wounded in World War 1.

Back in the good ole USA thousands of vets came back with opiate addictions so the gateway to drug expansion had it seeds sown here.

[b]So are we going off course here? NO[/b].

Concepts of the Western cowboy in Jamaican popular culture and the transfer of celluloid fantasy into active bloody reality.

In brief the majority of cinemas in JA showed cowboy films. Which were very popular, the poor embattled JA could identify with the cowboy. And the true cowboy is one hard son of a gun. The gun, being the essence of his power. The fleeing gunmen/political enforcers took their violence to the UK and especially the US during this time.

The whole Boyz n the Hood, this gang culture which is so recognisable today, can date its true emergence with the arrival of the posses or yardies. They took over by force from indigenous gangs the street level black economics.

I'm sure by this point people are wondering where I'm heading towards.

Stay with me.

We will come back to violence in a momment, we have to look briefly at music. From the early days of Jazz, black music has effectively overtaken the classical and folk forms which used to influence the masses. The ascendance of black music began really with rap and then end of the 1970's and 1980's. Disappointment and anger was now being vocalized for all to hear. It was and is a democratic art form you need nothing but a brain and a tongue to rap. (and seemingly not even that sometimes).

Popular culture had changed. The East coast gangsters and the West coast began their verbal battles, the films Boyz in the hood, Juice etc visualised the events and this spread throughout the states and into the UK.

So the Jamaican cowboy gunman, had morphed into the American gangbanger. Whilst the kids in the UK looked on.
In the UK the Jamaican community had been resident now for over 30/40 yea

I know Toronto is similar but according to the United Nations it is London which has the most diverse and multicultural population in the world.

Thank you. I wonder what UN takes into consideration when making such decisions. Would you happen to know teh direct source or should I just check the UN website?

Its best to check the UN website but I think its something to do with the total population divided by the number and size of different communities and nationalities.It takes into account foreign born citizens but I don't know if it includes British born citizens whose parents were both born overseas.

Thank you

Not being funny I know all areas of London, I spent most of my life growing up there, the city is rife with crime, even the most richest areas. The rich areas are the targets for armed robberies.

Exactly! I felt quite safe while living in London. Never lived in Brixton, though. :)

Not being funny I know all areas of London, I spent most of my life growing up there, the city is rife with crime, even the most richest areas. The rich areas are the targets for armed robberies

It is scarry. I think that few days ago there was woman killed by stranger following her home. No robbery , completely random. She was living in quite good area.

London is a dump though and im patriotic about my country , that is UK. Although house of parliament and big ben alwasy takes my breathe away with its presence on the bank. Its beautiful.

you guys made me realise how much London sucks, I live just out of London but from the age of 16-18 I think me and my best friend were probably mugged or beaten up about 6 seperate times at least, I'm 23 now and it hasn't happened for a while, maybe because I don't go out so often :s

but now I wanna move to Poland :)