Overheard on a bus: a long talk between two young black guys on how to sit in the bus to avoid ambush, how to place yourself, how to walk in the street, and descriptions of how they had felt when robbed, or acted during it.
”...you´ve got to learn this stuff, okay, you´re eighteen now, a big man, you need to take care of yourself, I can´t do it for you anymore...”
Leaving, I see them on the staircase and think they are brothers, one older, one slightly younger, both dressed in black, discussing tactics for survival on a bus passing projects and London housing estates.
Knife-crime is up a lot here, even though the government tries to change it.
They have now announced that the armed police will start being present on the Tube trains. This is a monumental piece of news in England: police here carry no weapons at all. Only truncheons for the regular officers, and only elite and specialist armed police are trained to carry handguns and submachineguns or sniper rifles. The news of having armed police on the Tube trains, carrying MP5 submachineguns...still shocks me, actually.
Last week a young black man was killed on the bus I usually travel on. He was chased into it by a gang after a football-game. The bus-driver closed the doors and drove off, with the teenager bleeding on the floor of the bus and a nurse trying to help him. He died. Now his face looks out from posters in the neighbourhood marked ”Murder – can you help the police solve this crime?”.
