Violent crime in London is surging. Police cuts are partly to blame, but the real problem is inequality
Last Friday I was walking home from the train station when someone came up from behind and pushed me as he cut me off on his bike and snatched my phone from my hand. My first reaction was to shout at him, but as I looked at him I decided against it. He was a big man but I couldn’t see his face under a balaclava. I suddenly panicked. What if he stabbed me or threw acid in my face? I felt exposed. Cars had stopped to watch and there were groups of people outside the pub celebrating Halloween, dressed as zombies. Yet not a single person approached to see if I was OK. I was in shock, shaking and scared. Alone.
These sorts of street muggings have been steadily on the rise – while moped crime has gone up 30-fold over the past five years – and at times it’s easy to feel desensitised. But days after this attack I still feel shaken. I was held up at gunpoint in the Dominican Republic when I was 18, but this feels worse. That time a man pulled his car up alongside the pavement and tried to catch my attention. “Hey mami,” he shouted in Spanish, “come and talk to me for a minute.” I confidently held my head up and ignored him so he decided to teach me a lesson by mounting the kerb, getting out of the car and holding a gun to my face. That was traumatic, but last Friday, metres from my home, in London, where there is about one CCTV camera to every 14 people, I felt vulnerable in an entirely different way.
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