British police chief combats 'fashionable' guns
Reuters UK
7 July 2002
A senior British police chief has called for tough new measures against the growing number of youths who carry guns as "fashion accessories," the Independent newspaper reported on Sunday.
Commander Alan Brown, who heads London's fight against black-on-black gun crime, said a minimum jail sentence of five years for gun possession would help curb the nation's sharp rise in firearms offences.
Figures due out this week are expected to show armed offences up by a half in some areas.
On Friday night in London, 39-year-old Alan Musgrove was gunned down in front of his girlfriend and three children by two attackers, police said.
Brown was quoted as saying the current "derisory" minimum sentence of nine months was partly to blame for a sharp rise in gunpoint muggings.
"Yardie"-style gangland shootings have become a feature of London life in recent years.
"In some sections of society, if you don't have a firearm, you don't have respect," Brown said.
"Stiffer penalties for carrying guns would reduce offences where a dispute takes place in a club," he added.
But the problem is not limited to the capital. Police in the Midlands town of Nottingham are considering armed foot-patrols after 11-year-old Ashley Howman was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in April.
According to The Sunday Times, official figures due out later this week will show a 50 percent increase in gun crime in the West Midlands in the year to March 2002, with London gun crime up by a quarter.
It quoted Mark Williams, a member of the elite SO19 firearms unit, as saying police were struggling to contain the phenomenon. "We are just about holding the line, but are close to bursting," he said.
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