Latest news with #violentcrime
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- General
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Where ARE you safe on Britain's trains? Maps reveal crime rail hotspots as sex offences and violence soared to all-time highs
Britain's railways are becoming increasingly unsafe as new data reveals serious offences such as sexual and violent crimes have soared to all-time highs. The country's rail network saw record levels of crime, with a total of 80,000 incidents recorded by British Transport Police in 2023-2024. Violent crimes and sex offences both soared to all-time highs and have more than doubled in the last ten years, with overall crime up 55 percent compared to 2014. And while the majority of crimes occurred at large, busy stations with high footfall, some criminals are taking advantage of a lack of police at tiny stations around the country to get away with committing offences. Johnston, an unstaffed stop in the Pembrokeshire village of the same name, saw 10 crimes in 2024, according to British Transport Police (BTP) figures. Four of these were violent crimes, which can involve anything from a minor assault to stabbing. Although barely any crimes were committed at Johnston, it logged the UK's highest rate – 1,440 per million passengers – because of its low footfall. Just 7,000 passengers used the station in 2024, the equivalent of 19 a day. It comes as footage showing a man threatening two women on a train earlier this month went viral this week, after he repeatedly said he would kill them and their boyfriends. Footage filmed by the victims shows a man named 'Elijah' becoming increasingly agitated and shouting the threats while his friends urge him to stop and say he is 'embarrassing' them as they travelled between Cardiff Central and Swindon. Elijah is heard saying: 'I'll kill you. I'll kill your boyfriend. I'll follow you. I'll follow you to your house. I'll follow you to your boyfriend's house, I'll kill your boyfriend. Whatever bro.' Eye witnesses said the passenger had demanded a group of women tell him who was the most attractive out of him and his friends. The crazed commuter later adds: 'If those two girls want to move, you can go. I'm not going to f***ing stop you from going.' At one point the female passengers explain they 'shouldn't be the ones to move' to which the uncouth man puts his hand to his mouth and gasps in exaggeration. 'Elijah' allegedly threw dried chewing gum at a third woman during the journey and 'made one cry'. The British Police (BTP) are investigating the confrontation believed to have taken place on the evening of May 18. A force spokesman said: 'We're aware of a video circulating on social media showing a woman being repeatedly threatened by a man on a train. 'There is absolutely no place for violent or intimidating behaviour on the railway network, and we encourage the victim or anyone who witnessed the incident to contact British Transport Police by texting 61016 or by calling 0800 40 50 40, quoting reference 271 of May 18. 'You can also contact the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.' Meanwhile at London St Pancras, former F1 world champion Jenson Button's wife was recently targeted in a robbery that saw the thief make off with more than £250,000 worth of jewellery and designer handbags. She and her husband were outside the station and getting into a car when the man nabbed her Goyard carry-on suitcase in a matter of seconds, stealing sentimental items that Brittny Button had hoped to pass on to her daughter. Mourad Aid, 41, pleaded guilty to theft at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 19 February 2025, five days after the incident. He is due to be sentenced in court today. London St Pancras had the highest number of crimes recorded of any station last year, at 1,616. At neighbouring King's Cross, Made in Chelsea's Yasmine Zweegers fell victim to a terrifying new theft scam. The 25-year-old influencer was outside the major railway hub in King's Cross - having just returned from Yorkshire - when thieves cruelly stole her jewellery, laptop, camera and clothes, totalling to around £8,000, on February 10. Yasmine believed a man, who had offered the reality TV star a tissue to clean brown paint from her coat, was simply being a kind stranger, however seconds later her bag was snatched as she was distracted. The 41-year-old has since pleaded guilty to theft at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 19 February 2025, five days after the incident and is to be sentenced today And in March, a group of youngsters were seen t rying to stab one another at Queensbury Tube station in north London. In footage which was later uploaded onto social media, a youngster wearing a black jacket and grey hat lashes out with a machete and narrowly misses a boy dressed all in black, who wields a smaller knife. An accomplice of the machete yob appears to be carrying a bottle which he then hurls at his rival from less than two feet away. The fight - which took place in broad daylight - involved at least five youths but only two were armed with blades. British Transport Police confirmed that they were aware of the 34-second long footage, posted onto X and Facebook, and said that one teenager had been arrested. A force spokesman told MailOnline: 'Officers were called to Queensbury underground station at around 5.30pm yesterday (24 March) to reports of a fight involving knives on the platform. 'Officers attended and one boy aged 16 was arrested on suspicion of possession of a bladed article and possession of a drug (Class B). 'Enquiries into the incident are ongoing and anyone with information is asked to get in touch by texting 61016 or calling 0800 405040 quoting reference 490 of 24/03/25.' In another incident which shocked the nation a gang of teenage girls were filmed attacking train staff, passengers and police in a booze-fuelled rampage at Barnham Station, West Sussex last year. The five girls, the youngest of which was 13, were spared prison, despite throwing punches, headbutts and ripping out the hair of victims. One girl held up a clump of hair from the head of a rail passenger like a trophy during the hour-long melee, a court heard. All five admitted affray and assaults on train staff, police and members of the public. The judge said they would have been jailed if they had been old enough. The five girls, who cannot be named for legal reasons, threw punches, headbutts and ripped out hair during the violent outburst While London St Pancras topped the charts based on raw crime figures alone, a huge 35.8 million people use the station every year. In contrast Redbridge, on the outskirts of Southampton had 1,180 crimes per million passengers. Redbridge, operated by South Western Railway, saw 38 crimes last year, against its passenger count of more than 32,000. The most common crimes were vehicle related, likely break-ins of cars and vans at its four-space car park. Tiverton Parkway – on the busy Bristol to Exeter line in mid-Devon – is the top large station where passengers may be targeted by criminals. In 2024, 484 crimes were reported there against its 581,000 footfall, giving a rate of 830 per million passengers. Nearly half of these reports (219) were theft, while another 84 were shoplifting. Technically, Ince and Elton Station in Cheshire saw the highest rate of 11,600 crimes per million passengers — but it only saw one offence committed. It served 86 passengers on an extremely limited 'parliamentary service', meaning just one crime highly inflates the rate. MailOnline excluded crime rates for stations which had fewer than five crimes and fewer than 10,000 passengers. Stations with more than five crimes and fewer than 10,000 footfall, or vice versa, are included in the rankings. It comes after 19-year-old mother Stephanie Marie was stabbed to death in front of commuters by her boyfriend Jason Flore, 26, after an angry confrontation at Crawley Station, West Sussex, last August. Chilling CCTV caught the moment the murderer, who plunged a 20cm knife into the heart of the mother of his child, casually walked his dog just moments later. Within the 45 minutes between the murder and the arrest, Flore disposed of crucial evidence which included his blooded tracksuit bottoms. And last November, a 'lively and outgoing' grandmother was 'senselessly' attacked at Birmingham New Street Station, one of the country's busiest transport hubs. Dorothy Chiles, 87, died at home six weeks later, just two days after Christmas, after being suffering a broken hip and being discharged from hospital. Police said that a woman in her 20s was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. A BTP spokesperson said: 'Every offence is one too many, and while we understand the concern that we recorded more total crimes last year, it's important to understand these figures within their context. The chance of becoming a victim of crime on the railway remains extremely low, and reports of high harm crime such as robbery and violence remain low at 2.2 incidents per million passenger journeys. 'Crucially, we know that these figures are influenced in part by more and more people having the confidence to report things like sexual harassment to us, and through the abundance of daily intelligence-led proactive operations taking place right across the railway network in England, Scotland and Wales. For example, in just one week alone in November our County Lines Taskforce arrested 65 people and seized 42 weapons through proactive deployments, and stop and search is at its highest use in BTP since 2010, with a 50% positive find rate in the last nine months. 'It is also important not to sensationalise crime rate data. Stations like Johnston appear to have a high crime rate because they have a low number of crimes recorded combined with a low footfall of passengers, but with less than one crime recorded per month it's simply incorrect to say that passengers are at greater risk of crime at these stations.'
Fox News
17 hours ago
- Business
- Fox News
South Africa's high violence and land debates clash with Western media views
President Donald Trump's recent interventions on South Africa have been met with outrage in the liberal media, and its 'fact-checking' machinery has been put into overdrive scrutinizing every misstatement or exaggeration of the president. Yet, on the essential issues it is Western audiences who are being misled by progressive journalists whose views are, in turn, dramatically out of step with ordinary South African Africa is a violent society. Since it became a democracy in 1994, over 650,000 South Africans have been murdered. That is more than the number of intentional homicides across the Western world over the same period even though the population of the West approaches 1 billion people while that of South Africa is closer to 60 million. On a per-capita basis, that amounts to a murder rate of around 40 per 100,000 for South Africa, while the global rate is closer to six per 100,000. TRUMP'S CRITICISM OF SOUTH AFRICA'S VIOLENT CRIME CRISIS RECEIVES UNEXPECTED LOCAL SUPPORTIn that already violent climate, armed raids on commercial farmsteads have, over the past three decades, occurred at a multiple of the rate of similar attacks (essentially armed home invasion robberies) across the broader population. In addition, we calculate that roughly 20% of armed raids on farmsteads have resulted in murder as opposed to under 2% for similar attacks elsewhere. We also judge that the rate of attack on Black commercial producers is similar to that faced by their white Black and White South Africans alike live amidst such violence, murderous chant, 'Kill the Boer, Kill the farmer,' that Trump played at length during an Oval Office meeting with his South African counterpart last week, meets with strong popular disapproval locally. An April 2025 poll found that 80% of South Africans either disapprove of the chant, regard it as hate speech or believe that it should be banned. Western audiences may have been told that the chant is purely a metaphorical 'anti-apartheid' song, but it was, in fact, first taught to guerrillas during the armed struggle against White rule in both Rhodesia and South Africa, where farmers were regarded as legitimate military targets. Western audiences are commonly informed that white South Africans, who make up just 7% of South Africa's population, own "three-quarters" of agricultural land whereas black South Africans own just "4%". These figures are misdirection. The bulk of White land holdings are in the arid western half of the country. These are areas where the terrain, climate, and population density is similar to that of Arizona, Nevada, or New Mexico. Across the high rainfall and densely populated east of the country approximately half of land by productive value is in black possession, although not ownership. The reason for this is that the South African government continues to deny individual title across many Black communities preferring instead that land be held by the state or its proxies as a means of social and political control. Granting individual title would significantly shift land ownership patterns. The belief that land ownership patterns, as they are, represent a national crisis might be popular in Western media but is not a view held by South Africans themselves. A recent poll found that top of the list of local concerns was job creation, mentioned by over 20% of respondents as South Africa's single most important challenge. 'Promoting access to land' came far down the list, being mentioned by less than 5% of respondents. CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONFinally, a recently enacted piece of expropriation legislation, which has drawn the particular attention of the Trump administration, is not a benign 'eminent domain' measure, as it is presented. It allows any organ of state to seize any kind of property - not just land – for below its market value. A recent poll found that this idea is opposed by just under 70% of South Africans and it is seen as a measure that will be abused by the notoriously corrupt political class. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPAt odds with elite opinion in the West the American administration's concerns around violence, property rights, and economic progress in South Africa resonate closely with the concerns of South Africans themselves who are in the main a pragmatic and conservative people sharing in many of the democratic values held dear by Americans.
BreakingNews.ie
3 days ago
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Jason Hennessy Jnr jailed after confronting armed gardaí and string of aggressive interactions
The son of fatal shooting victim Jason "Jay" Hennessy Snr has been jailed for a string of violent crimes, including an aggressive confrontation with armed gardaí during a tense search of his Dublin home. Jason Hennessy Jnr, 28, pleaded guilty before Judge Catherine Hayden, who imposed sentences totalling six months and a two-year road ban. Advertisement His father was murdered in a gun attack at a steakhouse on Christmas Eve, 2023, in Blanchardstown. Hennessy, of Sheephill Avenue, Blanchardstown, faced 15 charges: violent disorder, dangerous driving, obstructing drug search, and having a passenger with no seatbelt from 2019 to 2022 in the Blanchardstown area. At Blanchardstown District Court, Garda Sergeant Ian Abbey outlined the facts on behalf of nine prosecuting gardaí who had had various interactions with the father of four, resulting in criminal charges. The court heard that on May 18th, 2019, gardaí conducted a search operation at his home and brought the armed support unit (ASU). Advertisement Jason Jnr had to be restrained by members of the ASU, resisted the search of the property, and when one officer entered, he stood up in an extremely aggressive stance. He shouted abuse and told an officer to "Fuck off". The accused told the officer, "You won't be searching this house," but he stood and "squared up" to the garda, entering his personal space and placing his head close to him. Detective Garda Megan Furey had dealings with him twice on June 23rd, 2019. The first occurred at Blanchardstown Courthouse, where Hennessy called her a "fucking tramp" and was arrested under the Public Order Act. At 8.19pm that night, as she and colleagues engaged in a "covert operation", she observed him driving after another car on the Blakestown road, where he sped "straight through a red light". Advertisement There were male occupants in his car, and armed colleagues were alerted due to the nature of the operation, targeting criminal activity in the area. The vehicle turned back in her direction, travelled towards her at speed, and went back through the junction of Blakestown Road and Blakestown Way "at high speed on the wrong side of the road". On April 3rd, 2020, he drove a car with a young child in the back with no seatbelt. The court heard that on June 22nd, 2020, at 1am in the cell area of Blanchardstown Garda station, the gaoler did a routine check in cell number 3 to check on the prisoner. Advertisement Hennessy told the garda, "You are a blond muppet, turn off the light." He threw water from the toilet, saying, "Do you want water? You will have to drag me out". He then began throwing litter from his meal that day. He had to be removed, as he became very aggressive, acting violently to gardaí, and the cell had to be cleaned. Gardaí spotted him on May 8th, 2020, with a group where one of them was "acting suspiciously" outside the Laurel Lodge shopping centre. The garda retrieved a mobile phone from Hennessy and held it when it received a notification. Hennessy then "became aggressive and threw the mobile phone on the ground, causing it to break. He became violent and had to be restrained and was arrested for obstruction." Advertisement The court heard on February 15th, 2020, he was caught parking on a footpath and, on January 23rd, 2020, driving at 93 km/h in a 60 km/h zone. He became aggressive and verbally abused a garda on routine patrol on February 5th, 2022, at Corduff Shops, taunting, "You will do well in prison, you little faggot', and making hand gestures where there were young children present at the time. The court heard he was arrested on July 19th, 2019, at Aldi Mulhuddart Village, Dublin 15, where the defendant engaged in threatening and abusive language toward gardaí. Pleading for leniency, defence solicitor Tertius Van Eeden told the court his client had young children and was in a long-term relationship, was doing well, "working out and keeping his head down." The solicitor added that his client was "in a good place mentally now given the fact his father was brutally murdered in a shooting in a Christmas Eve shooting in 2023". He had 15 prior convictions for public order offences, hit and run, and also an assault causing harm and violent disorder incident, which resulted in a suspended three- year sentence. Ireland Senior Kinahan gang member Sean McGovern charged w... Read More He spoke briefly only to confirm a procedural aspect the case and was not required to give evidence. Judge Hayden noted the offences went back several years and took into account his guilty pleas, which saved the court from having to run several hearings. Earlier this week at Dublin District Court, Judge Anthony Halpin ordered the destruction of four XL Bully pit bulls owned by Hennessy's mother, Veronica Maher, 54, after one escaped the family home and terrorised gardaí who feared for their lives. There has been a two-week stay on the order to destroy Oddie, Reggie, their mother, Medusa, and the fourth dog, Joe, pending a possible appeal.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
Early prisoner release ‘will make UK less safe' without extra cash, police chiefs warn
Plans to release violent criminals, including sex offenders, from prison early will make Britain less safe without more funding, police chiefs have warned. Six senior police officers have publicly called on ministers to provide 'serious investment' at this month's spending review - piling pressure on Rachel Reeves to rethink her fiscal rules. Writing in The Times, they argue that, without the 'necessary resources' from the government 's June spending review, the decision to release more people early could be 'of net detriment to public safety'. The officers, including the chiefs of Merseyside, West Midlands, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire police and the head of the National Police Chiefs Council, argued forces needed more money and more officers to deal with 'increasing public demand'. As well as increasing demand and new online threats from organised crime, they said the emergency release of prisoners to alleviate overcrowding and recommendations in the sentencing review would put more pressure on policing. Speaking to the BBC's Today programme on Wednesday morning, Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Mark Rowley, said that while the government's pledges on law and order were 'balanced and sensible', they were also 'very, very ambitious'. He said: 'We're carrying the scar tissue of years of austerity cuts, and the effects of that. Forces are much smaller when you compare the population they're policing than they were a decade or 15 years ago.' However, he insisted that police forces were 'not just asking for more money', but wanted 'radical reform' as well.
CBS News
6 days ago
- CBS News
Chicago summer safety program passes test with violent crime lower this Memorial Day weekend
Violent crime down this Memorial Day weekend in Chicago compared with last year Violent crime down this Memorial Day weekend in Chicago compared with last year Violent crime down this Memorial Day weekend in Chicago compared with last year The City of Chicago's safety plan was put to the test this Memorial Day, and it appeared to be passing late in the day — as the Police Department prepared for large crowds. Fewer than two dozen people were shot this weekend, about half the number from last year. Violent crimes are down as a whole compared to last year's Memorial Day weekend. The cooler weather could have something to do with it, but one organization made sure young men stayed occupied and out of trouble. "It's shown that if you give someone something to do that they're genuinely interested in, they're going to go do that," said Operation Basketball co-founder Tim Brennan. Brennan and professional basketball player Lucas Williamson, along with other organizations, hosted a late-night basketball tournament at Malcolm X College on the city's West Side over the weekend. A total of 62 young men between the ages of 18 and 24 participated in the game. "It was a good environment," Williamson said. "You know, like, people that show up to these types of events, those are the types of people that you want to be around, you want to have community, you want to build with." This is all part of Mayor Brandon Johnson's summer safety program. As we've seen in past years, Memorial Day weekend can turn violent. But this year was a little different. CBS News Chicago's data team shows last Memorial Day weekend, 41 people were shot, 12 fatally. This past weekend through Sunday, 22 people were shot and two died. The weather this weekend was mild, but Mayor Johnson said he doesn't base his investments on the weather. "We base our investments on building the quality of life for all residents," the mayor said. "Again, you know, violent crime continues to go down, and that's because we're making critical investments. You know, April, we've had the fewest homicides since 1962." Brennan said every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at Ellis Park, at 3520 S. Cottage Grove Ave. in the Bronzeville neighborhood, his group hosts hoops therapy. It gives access to a licensed therapist. The hoops therapy program starts June 14, after 1,000 Black and brown boys from Male Mentorships Program come together to march against violence.
