Good Read: England Crime Capital of the West

[Fred]

Wolfpac has been doing a lot of new threads so I help him out a little. It is a good read.



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Targeting a myth
The evidence suggests that gun control has not made England a safer, fairer
society

By Joyce Lee Malcolm Column: Crime, 5/26/2002

Americans who believe that more guns mean more crime awakened earlier this month to find, to their dismay, that the Justice Department and the federal courts had affirmed their constitutional right to be armed. Presumably, they would have preferred restrictions based on the English model, where the toughest firearms regulations of any democracy have been credited by gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime.

But there are two problems with that model. When guns were freely available, England had an astonishingly low level of violent crime. A government study for the years 1890-1892, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. One century and many gun laws later, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports that England's firearms restrictions and 1997 ban on handguns ''have had little impact in the criminal underworld.'' Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. And what is worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.

Five centuries of growing civility in England ended in 1954. Violent crime there has been climbing ever since, and armed crime - with banned handguns the weapon of choice - is described as rocketing. Between April and November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose by 53 percent. Last summer, in the course of a few days, gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of North London.

Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of robbery and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of burglaries in England occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the United States, where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police.

This sea change in English crime is indicative of government policies that have gone badly wrong. Gun regulations have been only part of a more general disarmament based on the premise that people shouldn't need to protect themselves because society will protect them. It will also protect their neighbors. Citizens who witness a crime are advised to ''walk on by'' and let the professionals handle it. First, government clamped down on private possession of guns; then it forbade people carrying any article that might be used for self-defense; lastly the vigor of that self-defense was to be judged by what, in hindsight, seemed ''reasonable in the circumstances.''

The 1920 Firearms Act, the first serious British restriction on guns, required a local chief of police to certify that the potential gun owner had a good reason for owning a weapon and was a fit person to have it. All very sensible. Yet over the years a series of secret Home Office instructions to police - classified until 1989 - narrowed both criteria until, in 1969, police were instructed that ''it should never be necessary for anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person.'' Since 1997, handguns have been banned. Proposed exemptions for handicapped shooters and the British Olympic team were rejected.

Far more sweeping was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act that made it illegal to carry any article in a public place ''made, adapted, or intended'' for an offensive purpose ''without lawful authority or excuse.'' Carrying something to protect yourself was branded antisocial. Any item carried for possible defense automatically became an offensive weapon. Individuals stopped by the police and found with such items were guilty until proven innocent. As a concerned member of the House of Commons pointed out, while ''society ought to undertake the defense of its members, nevertheless one has to remember that there are many places where society cannot get, or cannot get there in time. On those occasions a man has to defend himself and those whom he is escorting. It is not very much consolation that society will come forward a great deal later, pick up the bits, and punish the violent offender.''

In the House of Lords, Lord Saltoun argued that the object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength and this bill was ''framed to destroy.'' He added that he did not think governments ''have the right ... though they may very well have the power ... to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend themselves ... [u]nless there is not only a right but also a fundamental willingness amongst the people to defend themselves, no police force, however large, can do it.''

But at government insistence the law passed and became permanent. A broad 1967 revision of criminal law altered the common law standard for self-defense so that everything turns on what appears ''reasonable'' force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As the author of a leading British legal textbook pointed out, that requirement is ''now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law.''

Three cases illustrate the results of these measures:

In 1987, two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive, in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, ''My air supply was being cut off, my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life.'' In desperation he unsheathed an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers, stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.

In August 1999, Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two professional burglars burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before but, like 70 percent of rural English villages, his had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and 12 months for having an illegal shotgun.

In 1994, an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house, while he called the police. When the officers arrived they arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to put someone in fear. Parliament is now considering making imitation guns illegal.

This is a cautionary tale. America's founders, like their English forebears, regarded personal security as one of the three great and primary rights of mankind. That was their main reason for including a right for individuals to be armed. Everyone doesn't need to avail himself of that right. It is a dangerous right. But leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous.

The English government has come perilously close to depriving its people of the ability to protect themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society. ''It is implicit in a genuine right,'' an English judge pointed out, ''that its exercise may work against (some facet of) the public interest: a right to speak only where its exercise advanced the public welfare or public policy ... would be a hollow guarantee against repression.''

Public safety is not enhanced by depriving individuals of their right to personal safety.
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Joyce Lee Malcolm is a history professor at Bentley College and author of "Guns and Violence: The English Experience."

This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 5/26/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.

[EVA fiend]

True.., gun control has not made the UK a safer society..., but the problem isn't whether we are allowed to have access to guns or not..., the problem is due to the fact that we have a justice system that currently favours the criminal, more than the victim..., & the criminals & their laywers exploit this...., i.e., in the US.., if a burgler enters your property, I believe that you have the right to shoot them (correct me if I'm wrong here)..., in the UK, if a burgler breaks into your house.., & you push them down the stairs, & they break a leg.., you can be sued by the intruder..., because you have to prove that you used 'reasonable force'..., we don't have a 'right' to protect ourselves.., be it with our fists, or with whatever comes to hand..., THAT is the problem in the UK..., not the lack of access to guns...,

Your article omits the reasons why the law on gun ownership was tighten up in the late 1980's, & again in the 1990's..., in 1987, a lone mad man went on a killing spree killing 16 people.., in 1996.., another mad man went on a killing spree in a school murdering 16 children, & their teacher..., both of these men were members of gun clubs, & had all the relevent licenses for the guns..., but one day.., they just snapped.., & took over 30 people with them in their madness...,

I live in the UK..., & I am not in favour of widespread gun ownership..., the US has had the right to bear arms since the country was founded.., people there are used to growing up around them, & being trained in their safety in use..., the UK is not a nation that is accustomed to firearms.., there would be far too many idiots getting killed through mis-use, either in anger, or by accident...,

Oh.., & why is this in the Gunsmith Cats forum...? It's got nothing to do with Sonoda's work..., this would be better served in Members Only I feel...,

[Black_Knight]

I agree with arming the people… Because sure, people will mis-use it, but should that hamper the ablities just because of the stupidity of the few?

Guns are tools to be used carefully…

[Fred]

Only in the UK where murders can get out of jail in three years or less. The best place to live for a criminal is the UK.

There were a study that was done a couple of years ago back where 1+ million illegal firearms imported to the UK each. Where does all these illegal firearms go to? Not to the police station I can assure you.

UK crimials are not affraid of the police. It is the police that are affraid of the crimials. If you're a crimial with a firearm are you going to run away from a cop armed with only a stick? I don't think so.

Crime is low in pro gun cities around the USA . This is because every crimials will think twice before robbing a home or person in the street because that individual might be armed. It is the fear of instant justice that stop crimials from commiting crimes.

This is untrue for the UK where crimials rob citizens in day light while the cops looks on. There is no fear for crimials in the UK. They do not fear the police. In fact police officers get beat up routinely by crimials.

So a few person gone crazy and the whole society pay for their mistakes. So if a person using a car as a weapon to kill 30 people, should we ban cars?

Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York.

I been in NYC before and boy I don't want to see what London is like.

It is related to guns and thus Gunsmithcats. I know it is lame excuse.

[EVA fiend]

Originally posted by Fred
This is untrue for the UK where crimials rob citizens in day light while the cops looks on. There is no fear for crimials in the UK. They do not fear the police. In fact police officers get beat up routinely by crimials.


That is not true..., I don't know where you got your info from..., but I've never heard of that happening..., I showed my RL mate this post.., & he just laughed his ass off..., he is a police officer., & he said that the police are duty bound to intervene if there is trouble in their vicinity.., he has never heard of police officiers just looking on when a crime is taking place right under their noses..., :dodgy:

Originally posted by Fred
I been in NYC before and boy I don't want to see what London is like.

I had that exact same opinion about the US too..., most of the US news stories that make it to the UK generally give an image of the US being a society dominated by guns.., if you look at someone funny, they'll shoot you..., in road rage incidents, people pull out guns & have pitched battles on the highways.., if you walk into the wrong neighbourhood, you get shot at...., blah, blah, blah..,
I know that this 'view' of the US is a crock of sh*t.., I spent two weeks in Atlanta earlier on this year..., & none of those pre-conceptions where apparent anywhere.., true, there were a lot of guns for sale in stores.., but I saw no evidence of gun crime anywhere.., I doubt the US is as violent as the media portrays it to be, but that's how the media decides to portray it..,
Oh, & your comment on London.., that made me laugh too.., I go to London shopping all the time..., I lived in London for over 6 months before I broke up with my ex-boyfriend..., & not once have I ever experienced any crime.., I was never mugged there, did not get my pocket picked..., was not held up & gunpoint & robbed..., the only thing I experienced in London that I would consider a 'crime' was the cost of living there..., :rolleyes:

[Black_Knight]

Originally posted by EVA fiend

I had that exact same opinion about the US too..., most of the US news stories that make it to the UK generally give an image of the US being a society dominated by guns.., if you look at someone funny, they'll shoot you..., in road rage incidents, people pull out guns & have pitched battles on the highways.., if you walk into the wrong neighbourhood, you get shot at...., blah, blah, blah..,
I know that this 'view' of the US is a crock of sh*t.., I spent two weeks in Atlanta earlier on this year..., & none of those pre-conceptions where apparent anywhere.., true, there were a lot of guns for sale in stores.., but I saw no evidence of gun crime anywhere.., I doubt the US is as violent as the media portrays it to be, but that's how the media decides to portray it..,
Oh, & your comment on London.., that made me laugh too.., I go to London shopping all the time..., I lived in London for over 6 months before I broke up with my ex-boyfriend..., & not once have I ever experienced any crime.., I was never mugged there, did not get my pocket picked..., was not held up & gunpoint & robbed..., the only thing I experienced in London that I would consider a 'crime' was the cost of living there..., :rolleyes:

On the contray… Even though it is a double edged sword… Our media will jump on everything, from a single gunfight because of roadrage, they'd report it. As for London Eva, it seems extermly distant if it doesn't happen to you…

[EVA fiend]

I was talking about the media here in the UK..., not the US media in the US...,
And as for crime in London being distant if it doesn't happen to you.., I'm not totally sure what you mean by that..., :confused:
Though I have been mugged twice where I live now..., & I've been burgled 4 times..., & that wasn't when I was in London..., so what I'm trying to say is that London isn't the hell hole of crime that Fred's post seems to make it out to be..., just as where I live now isn't as 'dangerous' as London is IMO.., though I wouldn't walk out late at night by myself in London.., I'd do so in the city where I live now..., it's a matter of perception...,

[Black_Knight]

Well I was making a reference to the amount of exposure that the US media has, it makes every news story seem like it's right down the road.

As for my crime comment, even though it doesn't aplly to you it seems, that most people don't care about crime unless it happens to them or a significant other. It was a vauge comment, sorry about that…

[Fred]

Originally posted by EVA fiend

That is not true..., I don't know where you got your info from..., but I've never heard of that happening..., I showed my RL mate this post.., & he just laughed his ass off..., he is a police officer., & he said that the police are duty bound to intervene if there is trouble in their vicinity.., he has never heard of police officiers just looking on when a crime is taking place right under their noses..., :dodgy:



But it is true. In fact their are some Brits that posted their horror stories in thefiringline.com. One of the Brits told us that every time he visted London he fear for his life. He get mugged ever other time he goes to London. That is horrible. Go to thefiringline.com, there are a lot of Englishman and non-American posting on the forum. We would like to hear about your country. Go to the General Discussion Forum (http://thefiringline.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=13) and Legal and Political (http://thefiringline.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=10)



I had that exact same opinion about the US too..., most of the US news stories that make it to the UK generally give an image of the US being a society dominated by guns.., if you look at someone funny, they'll shoot you..., in road rage incidents, people pull out guns & have pitched battles on the highways.., if you walk into the wrong neighbourhood, you get shot at...., blah, blah, blah..,


I agree that the media do a bad job reporting facts.


I know that this 'view' of the US is a crock of sh*t.., I spent two weeks in Atlanta earlier on this year..., & none of those pre-conceptions where apparent anywhere.., true, there were a lot of guns for sale in stores.., but I saw no evidence of gun crime anywhere.., I doubt the US is as violent as the media portrays it to be, but that's how the media decides to portray it..,
Oh, & your comment on London.., that made me laugh too.., I go to London shopping all the time..., I lived in London for over 6 months before I broke up with my ex-boyfriend..., & not once have I ever experienced any crime.., I was never mugged there, did not get my pocket picked..., was not held up & gunpoint & robbed..., the only thing I experienced in London that I would consider a 'crime' was the cost of living there..., :rolleyes: [/B]

Atlanta is a pro gun city. I won't be surprise that to hear that one third of the population are carrying conceal weapons at any one time. That is why crime is low there. Crimials don't know who is armed and who is not. The South has always supported Instant Justice (Sorry I just love the phase).

[Wolfpac]

Now I don't think that Guns ever had any major relation to Crime. It's just that it can be used as a weapon. Mugging and Breaking and Entering are something that you don't need a gun for. Hell, people rob places with used needles now. Every country has their bad places. Like in Sydney. The bad places are Cabramatta and Kings Cross. If you look at those two places I bet you would think that Australia is the most violent country on earth. So if London is Bad, it doesn't mean the whole of Great Britain is.

[Fred]

Good read.


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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59866,00.html


Lessons From History

The trouble with lessons from history is that they often involve little actual history.

Sometimes, the history was never there to begin with. Other times, lessons from history are wrong because nobody has bothered to look at the facts.

Where guns are involved, people are beginning to look. Bentley College historian Joyce Malcolm looked deeply at the roots of America's right to arms in a 1994 book published by Harvard University Press, entitled To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right. That book explained that the right to arms enshrined in the Constitution's Second Amendment was not merely the product of a "frontier mentality," as some gun-control proponents have suggested, but the outgrowth of a long and well-established English tradition favoring an armed citizenry as a defense against tyranny.

Now professor Malcolm, and Harvard University Press, are back with a book entitled Guns and Violence: The English Experience, which addresses another English connection to American gun rights.

It is a standard observation in American and English debates over gun control that England has strict gun controls and low crime rates, while America has (comparatively) liberal gun laws and higher crime rates. It is usually assumed that there is a cause and effect relationship, with the low crime stemming from the strict gun controls in England, and vice versa in the United States.

This turns out not to be the case. As Malcolm observes, violent crime rates in England, very high in the 14th century, fell more or less steadily for five hundred years, even as ownership of firearms became more common. By the late 19th century, England had gun laws that were far more liberal than are found anywhere in the United States today, yet almost no gun crime, and little violent crime of other sorts. (An 1870 act, which was seldom enforced, required the payment of a small tax for the privilege of carrying, not simply owning, a gun.)

Despite a well-armed populace, Malcolm reports, "statistics record an astonishingly low rate of gun-related violence in the late nineteenth century." How low?

In the course of three years, according to hospital reports, there were only 59 fatalities from handguns in a population of nearly 30 million people. Of these, 19 were accidents, 35 were suicides, and only 3 were homicides 3 an average of one a year.

Despite these rates, which Malcolm is right to call astonishingly low, the British government decided at the turn of the 20th century to begin a program of gun control that would ensure "that nobody except a soldier, sailor, or policeman, should have a pistol at all." The claimed justification was the "enormous" number of handgun injuries.

This effort was initially frustrated by popular resistance, but the first regulatory law in this campaign was passed in 1903, requiring a license for the purchase of a pistol. Such licenses were freely available, though, and citizens remained well enough armed that when (unarmed) London bobbies were chasing a group of armed robbers in 1909, they had no trouble borrowing pistols from passersby, while other armed citizens joined in the chase. Rates of gun violence remained low.

After World War I, the English government got serious. Though fear of crime was (again) claimed as a justification for much more intrusive gun controls despite no increases of any significance, the real motivation -- as historical records make very clear -- was the fear of armed labor unionists, and perhaps even Bolshevik revolution. Though Parliament in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries had seen an armed citizenry as a valuable check on tyranny, by the 20th century the government was determined to disarm the citizenry so as to eliminate any threats to its power.

Because the 1903 act requiring firearm licensing had not resulted in strict limits on gun ownership, the populace was not much threatened by the 1920 Firearms Act. The act met with much less resistance than the early popular resistance to the 1903 law. But the 1920 Firearms Act began the trend toward the near-complete disarmament of the formerly well-armed English citizenry. This disarmament continued by gradual sub silentio changes in administrative policy. For example, in 1938 the government made the unannounced decision that pistol licenses would no longer be issued to individuals who wanted a gun to defend their homes. Additional legislation followed. As Malcolm puts it:

Parliament passed a comprehensive firearms statute that eliminated the right of individuals to be armed. It was the culmination of fifty years of effort by British governments of every political stripe. The announced rationale by the ruling coalition government was, as usual, an increase in armed crime, yet statistics in London show no such increase. . . . Private Cabinet papers make clear that the government was afraid not of crime but of disorder and even revolution, the same fears that had fuelled government control measures in the past.

By 1953, the English were effectively disarmed — and compounding the insult, courts began prosecuting people for previously legal (and even encouraged) acts of violence in defense of persons and property. In the future, only the police were to use violence, and even they tended to be quite lenient toward violent criminals.

In a "coincidence" that will surprise few readers who are familiar with the work of criminologists like John Lott and Gary Kleck, English crime rates almost immediately began a steady rise, for the first time in 500 years. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is now 60 percent higher than in the United States. And it wasn't just crime in general: Gun crimes became far more common as well. As Malcolm notes:

The peacefulness England used to enjoy was not the result of strict gun laws. When it had no firearms restrictions England had little violent crime, while the present extraordinarily stringent gun controls have not stopped the increase in violence or even the increase in armed violence. By opting to deprive law-abiding citizens of the right to keep guns or to carry any article for defence, English government policy may actually be contributing to the lawlessness and violence afflicting its people.

Malcolm is commendably cautious when discussing the connection between stricter English gun laws and higher rates of crime. But at the very least, she has demonstrated that the history of English gun control does not support the commonly made claim that English crime rates were (formerly) lower in England because of stricter gun controls. The rise in English crime has coincided with the growth of governmental intrusiveness where firearms are concerned. The history is entirely consistent with the findings of Lott and Kleck: that disarming honest citizens produces more crime, not less.

What's more, the English experience provides a concrete example of American gun owners' worst fear: A patient political establishment steadily whittling firearms rights away over a period of decades through means both open and covert as circumstances permitted, in order to bring the citizenry under more complete political control. These are lessons worth bearing in mind whenever the English experience is brought up as part of the American gun-control debate.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee and publishes InstaPundit.Com. He is co-author, with Peter W. Morgan, of The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society (The Free Press, 1997).

[Black_Knight]

I think the point has been made, okay a little joke I heard on another Fourm...


Guns don't kill people. People kill people, therefore the sales of people should be banned

[Fred]

Sad. Can't believe that this guy might be going to jail for defending his little kids from a burglar (the burglar might be a pedophile).

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=128232



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http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/30/nburg30.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/08/30/ixhome.html

'I killed burglar because he was coming at me with a machete'
By Sue Clough, Courts Correspondent
(Filed: 30/08/2002)


A man stabbed to death a burglar he found in his family's home because he believed he was going to be killed with a machete, an Old Bailey jury heard yesterday.

Barry Hastings, 25, discovered the man after deciding to visit his two children, aged two and four, and his wife, Nicola, from whom he was separated but on friendly terms.

Peter Kyte, QC, prosecuting, said Hastings told police that he noticed all the lights were off in the ground floor flat in Tottenham, north London.

"A bedroom light came on and he saw a black man, an intruder, prowling in two separate bedrooms," said Mr Kyte.

Hastings entered the flat through a door which he found had been broken open and claimed to have heard voices, including that of his two-year-old daughter. "Thus it was he entered the kitchen and grabbed a large bread knife," said Mr Kyte.

Hastings told police: "The next thing this guy has come running down the hall. He has gone, 'Right you bastard, this is it', and he has got a big thing in the air.

"It was all dark and the curtains were shut and I couldn't see. The light caught it and I thought it was a machete. He just attacked me and we started fighting.

"The next thing I knew we were outside. He said, 'Let me go'. I was frightened for my life. He ran at me. I was just trying to fight for my life, I was just hitting him and hitting him, probably as hard as I could. I don't know which part of his body I hit."

Roger Williams, 35, suffered 12 stab wounds to his head and back, including one which penetrated his heart. He staggered along the road, leaving a trail of blood until he collapsed. He died in an ambulance en route to hospital.

After the incident, Hastings went to his mother-in-law's home where he found his family. Mr Kyte added: "It was plain he was scared, almost hysterical. He was crying and explained someone was trying to break into the house. He said he thought he had killed him." Hastings, a trainee gas engineer, denies murder and claims he acted in self defence.

Mr Kyte told the jury that Mr Williams, from Tottenham, was "a man with many criminal convictions. His record shows him to have been a career burglar since, at the very least, 1983, and he had used violence in the past". He was also wanted by the police.

He was "bent on burgling" when he took a jemmy from a friend's house and decided to break into the flat.

However, Mr Kyte said: "The law recognises a man is entitled to defend himself, his family and his property, but only if his actions do not go beyond the reasonable and the necessary.

"There is no doubt that Mr Hastings had stumbled across a burglary. There is no doubt that Mr Williams was a thoroughly bad hat in the eyes of the law, but nonetheless he was just as entitled to the freedom to live as anyone else."

Although a householder had a right to defend himself, "we argue in this case, alas, this man overstepped the mark and went quite a distance beyond what in law he was entitled to do".

Mr Kyte claimed Hastings had initially said the stabbing took place inside the flat, but blood stains revealed it was outside. Although Hastings said Mr Williams had repeatedly brought down what he thought was a machete, he suffered only "trivial injuries".

The trial continues.

[NeneMaxwell195]

I thought one of the reasons for the crime rise in the UK was due to the fact that 90% of kids who are like 6+ have mobile phones, and because of this the older kids threaten the younger ones and take there phones and sell them. Thats why violent crimes had rised so much. And well its kids mugging kids, even if we did have guns kids still wouldn't have them, thus having guns wouldn't make a difference. So you see the real problem is MOBILE PHONES!!! They should be banned!!!! :lol:

I just wanna know one thing who the heck is buying all these stolen phones?

[Fred]

In their own words.



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Burglars raid Bjork's home

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/showbiz/2231291.stm


Burglars have raided the London home of pregnant Icelandic singer Bjork, the same weekend as Liz Hurley and Joan Collins criticised crime levels in the capital.

Thieves broke into Bjork's luxury flat in Maida Vale, west London, on Friday night and are thought to have stolen valuable recording equipment.

The 36-year-old singer and actress is believed to have been asleep in the flat at the time.

A spokeswoman for the singer refused to comment on the burglary, saying: "It's a private matter."

Other celebrities whose London homes have been burgled recently include models Jerry Hall and Elle Macpherson, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and singer Geri Halliwell.

Actress Joan Collins, 69, has denied reports a decision to base herself in New York was because of her fear of crime in London. [Fred: Sure you did]

Police plea

Insisting she was moving for work reasons, she did tell the Mail on Sunday: "Groups of muggers are frequently attacking people in the area where I live in London.

"And the police don't appear to be able to do anything about it."
[Fred: Can't believe that the police aren't doing a thing]

And Liz Hurley, who was mugged at knifepoint in London eight years ago, has pleaded publicly for more police on the capital's streets, saying the US was less dangerous.

Helping to launching a drive by magazine Woman's Own for women to feel safer, Hurley said: "We definitely need a stronger police presence on the streets.

"It's rare to see them at all now. In America, uniformed cops eat in coffee shops, diners and restaurants, and I always feel safer having them around."

Brought up in a commune in Iceland, Bjork first rose to prominence with indie group The Sugarcubes.

Wider fame followed with her 1993 solo album Debut, and she has won acclaim as an actor, notably on Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark.

[Fred]

In his own own words.


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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=524&u=/ap/20020903/ap_wo_en_po/britain_london_mayor_1&printer=1

LONDON - In a surprising vote of no-confidence in his own city, Mayor Ken Livingstone said Tuesday that he feels safer in New York than in London.

"I do feel safe in London, but I don't feel as safe as I did when I went to New York," Livingstone told reporters, adding that crime seemed much worse now than when he was a child. "I want to be back to something more like I grew up with. We have lost the visible (police) presence on the streets."

Crime has been increasing in London over the past several years, with muggings and other street crimes rising and robberies doubling in the autumn of 2001 compared with the previous year.

The rise has had intense news coverage and become a major political issue, but despite perceptions, serious, violent crime remains far lower than it is across the Atlantic.

The 641 murders New York recorded in 2001 — police do not include the nearly 3,000 dead in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center — were an impressive drop from the all-time high of 2,262 in 1990.

But they still dwarfed London's 171 homicides in fiscal 2001, and guns and gun crime remain relatively rare here, unlike in New York.

Nonetheless, model Elizabeth Hurley made headlines this week by saying New York had a far more visible police presence than London.

"Liz Hurley ( news - web sites) has laid down a clear agenda for us all," the mayor said, adding that he hoped to "catch up" with New York.

"The most disturbing fact, I think, is that in over half of the cases the Met (London police) would like to bring to court, witnesses whom they wish to rely on are too frightened to give evidence," he added.

Livingstone said the number of police in London was increasing and would exceed 28,000 by the end of the fiscal year. He added that the fear of crime was much higher in London than crime itself.