Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Stabbing on Pemberton / Wightman Road
He also had a very resigned look and said it was happening every day all over London but the powers that be don't seem to care.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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The head of SNT Haringey West (the police) is holding a public mtg this Friday in Harringay to explain what they are doing to try and combat current crime levels, more specifically around Ducketts Common but they will want to hear about the wider area as well.
The mtg is being held at North Harringay Primary school, Falkland Rd, N8, 5:30 - 7pm.
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Permalink Reply by Judith Box on
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Whilst there is a worrying increase in the amount of knife crime nationally (10% over last year - but actually the West Midlands has driven a lot of that increase) - overall general trends have shown a consistent decrease.
The big problem is perception - and in particular perception as driven by reporting in the media and particularly how things are 'reported' in social media. So how heading grabbing 'tweets' and postings on message boards like this - contribute to the general feelings that we are somehow unsafe and likely to be the victim of crime.
Of course people care - but if the general perception is different to the actual reality (as reported in the crime statistics) I'm not sure what the 'powers that be' can do.
But we can all play our part by thinking about what we post on social media and the effects that has on others perceptions of our local neighbourhood. The words we use are powerful and feed into that perception.
I don't want to single you out (as this is an ongoing much wider societal issue) - but think for moment about the ongoing effects of a post titled 'stabbing in.....' - (with no real factual information) - this gets tweeted out to all followers of Harringay Online. It gets posted on all the Facebook pages of people who follow Harringay Online. When people search for information on a local area - this is what will come up. It all feeds into the general perception that your local area is somehow unsafe.
This 'unsafe' perception takes hold and the fear takes over. Suddenly people are primed to look for that 'unsafe' feeling in everything that they see. They lose the sense of perspective and start to alter their behaviour and look for other things that bolster their view of the situation.
These feeling are very real and perception is a very powerful thing. And people feel that the real actual facts are somehow wrong because it doesn't match their perception - because their perception is driven by what they are exposed to in the media and via social media and by conversations with neighbours on street corners - (whose perceptions are also driven by the media and conversations with other neighbours) - and so you can see what happens...
We are more safe now than in any other time in our history. I think the incidence of knife crime nationally is something like 499 in 1,000,000 (and usually between people who know each other somehow - not robberies etc) - you honestly have more chance of being hit by a bus.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Thanks for that Judith.
It's easy to feel that crime is knocking at our doors every day when in reality it's much less common than people perceive it to be. We've lived here since the early 1980s and it feels far safer now than it did back them.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Judith, I share your concerns about the potential for mis-reporting violent crime and about the way this can have a negative impact on the way an area is perceived. However, in fairness to Kat, I didn't see her title as being in any way sensationalised. I thought both her heading and her reporting was pretty matter of fact. Nonetheless, I still end up wincing when I see posts like this because of my fear that it may mischaracterise our area, which whist not trouble-free, I still see as being pretty average for London. You see similar reports referring to Crouch End and Muswell Hill.
The element of what Kat said that may most resonate with readers is her statement in her reply to Ben when she opined that things are now 'so bad' for her here that she wants to move out. This doesn't match with my feelings and it's unclear to me what has made Kat feel this way. However, I take no issue with the fact that she nonetheless does feel very fearful and she did express herself in a pretty measured way. And, whilst part of me wishes she wouldn't, it is appropriate to defend her right to do so and perhaps recognise the utility of it.
This incident does come on top of a number of issues which impact on the degree of safety or comfort people feel in living here. So it is perhaps an appropriate time for the community to assess the whole situation in a measured way and consider if we can contribute to an effective civic response. I wonder if perhaps the LCSP might lead some thinking on this.
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Sorry - I tried not to make it personal - and I in no way want to detract from the fear that anyone may feel. That fear is very real and very valid. I am however also concerned about what is causing that fear - and what if anything can be done about it. I am sad that people will consider moving away from our area because of it.
My comments were not about Harringay in particular - but more generally about how the use of social media (and the media as a whole) is driving a perception that we are somehow unsafe. (and that basically the world is going to hell in a handbag)
But I do think that we as members of communities such as Harringay Online - need to think about how what we post in the forum then gets reposted into social media and contributes to that general feeling of fear as a whole. How we choose to word a title that then essentially becomes 'clickbait' (whether intentionally or not) - because lets be honest these are probably the ones that people probably react to the most. Maybe there is some interesting analysis to be done there on which posts most people read or respond to through twitter/facebook feeds.
We can't pinpoint where the fear comes from because our exposure to the messages is drip-fed and insidious and constant. Sometimes I see the same message in 3 different places, then there will be gossip on street corners, and chatting with mates down the pub - that's a lot of 'stabbing' that is dripping into my sub-conscious. Pair that with the fact it will get picked up by the local press - which then again will be reported over and again in social media - and you can see how 1 incident - suddenly becomes a snowball though the minds of local residents - a whole big game of Chinese whispers.
There were 3000 incidents of knife crime in the whole of London in 2015 - there were 25,000 collisions with a bus - (1 fatality every 3 weeks)
I guess what I'm saying is that words are powerful - and how we choose to deploy them can have lasting effects - particular given our digitally connected times - we all love a little bit of drama (hence the reason why the Daily Mail can trap us so many times) - but I think there is a wider issue here about how our personal fears can drive and foster underlying perceptions.
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Permalink Reply by Antoinette on
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So what title would you have given this piece?
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Antoinette, I think Judith has already explained where she's coming from.
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Well I don't think it's an unreasonable question. How do you report on a stabbing without using the word "stabbing"? Or are we saying that we shouldn't report on it at all?
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I've already given my view on the post title in a previous response. My reply to you gave my view on your question.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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You use the word "incident" in the title and perhaps allude to the stabbing further on. New articles are tweeted out to HoL's 10,000+ followers on twitter and the first hundred or so characters make it into the tweet (hence clickbait).
The power that newspapers get is mostly derived from the headlines they produce and indeed the front pages that they're permitted to put in our way as we go to and from work. I think that as concerned citizens we can do better than that, after all we're not trying to earn a living or control people's thoughts. Are we.
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Whatever. ..I choose to no longer engage with anything you have to say...I say black, you say white, and then I get called names...find someone else to pick on because I'm not playing any.more
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I thought I answered your question in a very anodyne and inoffensive way. I wasn't picking on you.
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