Sometimes something so horrible, so gory and dreadful occurs that we are left asking ourselves, how, why could this possibly happen. The gory murders of two French students in London this week are a case in point. So horrific are they that it is difficult to grasp their true magnitude. The usual questions are being asked -about society, culture, who we are, where we are going and why. Why, why, why?
Well, think about this. These murders are seemingly the apogee of the current spate of knife crimes. Knife crimes have recently replaced terrorism as the number one priority for the Metropolitan Police. At a time when the murder rate in London is at a ten year low, the one thing we are apparently more worried about than anything else, is being murdered in our beds by a knife wielding maniac. For Laurent Bonomo, and Gabriel Ferez this has sadly and tragically been made real.
But how likely is it for the rest of us? How right are we to dwell upon such an awful prospect? Who knows, but dwell upon we most certainly do. Knife crime has become the number one priority for the Met because for some months now it has been the number one priority for newspaper editors.
Having talked up the threat of Islamic terrorism for seven years, and Islamic terrorists not co-operating with a front page spectacular, editors have realised that they now need something else with which to scare us. That something else is knife crime. It panders to all that most concerns us; Youth delinquency, dramatic and appalling violence, blood and guts, rising crime, shadowy figures concealing meat cleavers stalking the streets where children play. Get the picture? It's sexy, It sells copy. It is an editorial dream.
One thing is certain, if you had never even thought about knife crime before, you certainly have now. It's everywhere. People have been getting stabbed since time began, but only this year has it been front page news.
But here's the thing. There will be plenty of fifteen year old boys out there who had never thought about knife crime either. They would never have dreamed of carrying a knife because it just wouldn't have occurred to them to do so. Today they will be raiding the kitchen drawer before going to school because they think it is what normal fifteen year old boys do. They will be tooled up to high heaven with all manner of implements and ready for trouble and the worst of it is, trouble will surely find them, flick knife in hand.
A teenage brawl twenty years ago ended when one participant was knocked to the ground, or got a black eye or a split lip. Today it only ends when one is either dead or on life support. This new reality is then reported and the cycle of violence continues. By plugging into our fears and concerns and creating a national debate with them, editors have fed those fears and by doing so have made them real.
For poor Laurent Bonomo, and Gabriel Ferez it is too late. But it is not too late for our media chiefs and opinion leaders to stop feeding the frenzy of knife crime and to talk about something else instead. Now that would be a story!
