Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
1–10 of 94 posts
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#2We recently moved to central-ish London (Zone 1), in a generally safe business area. A few weeks ago my wife & sister were walking home and a man started spraying them with a bottle, screaming "It's raining". Luckily it appeared to be just water.
They we're annoyed that they were wet, but now I look at this statistic, and it scares me to think that my family could have been painfully maimed.
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#3Does anyone have a link to the data (which is only mentioned once in the article).
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#4Is this peculiar to London or do other places in the UK have the same problem?
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#5Odd/interesting that they don't mention motives. They give one example of using acid to commit a mugging. Yet[1] seems to state that acid attacks are mostly male-on-female violence for relationships/shame issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_throwing#Epidemiology
So it is a real threat to tourists? It's like when you hear about high crime in some area, but it's mostly gang members killing each other -- it's a somewhat irrelevant statistic for tourists. London should release demographics on who is doing this to whom.
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#6Does this represent a sui generis rise of violence or is this the result of substitution of weapons to commit crimes (like mugging, say) that were already happening?
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#7We recently moved to central-ish London (Zone 1), in a generally safe business area. A few weeks ago my wife & sister were walking home and a man started spraying them with a bottle, screaming "It's raining". Luckily it appeared to be just water. They we're annoyed that they were wet, but now I look at this statistic, and it scares me to think that my family could have been painfully maimed.
Apparently it's now popular to do weird/stupid stuff to foreigners in public places while recording their reactions then post it online for internet glory.
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#8Is this peculiar to London or do other places in the UK have the same problem?
So far it seems pretty peculiar to London (at least within the UK). Of course, London is a huge part of the UK: something like 10% of our population live here.
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#9Are there any patterns in the data? I'd like to find out:
1) If these are people who have commited a crime before 2) Were raised in certain cultures/locations 3) Are gangs
Re: Fears for tourists in London as acid attacks escalate in recent weeks
#10Odd/interesting that they don't mention motives. They give one example of using acid to commit a mugging. Yet[1] seems to state that acid attacks are mostly male-on-female violence for relationships/shame issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_throwing#Epidemiology So it is a real threat to tourists? It's like when you hear about high crime in some area, but it's mostly gang members killing each other -- it's a s…
80% male, both perpetrators and victims: http://www.barkinganddagenhampost.co.uk/news/crime-court/eas...
At this point it's mostly gang on gang, and probably driven by anti-knife enforcement. Scooter riders snatching phones are a bigger threat to tourists. The two have been combined recently though, using scooter + acid to hijack and steal other scooters and bikes. This in turn is driven by police not chasing two wheeled vehicles due to danger to riders, and pretty much ignoring motorcycle theft. Scooter crime is up 600% since 2015 and motorcycle theft was up 44% in 2016 over 2015.
If you're not riding a bike and you don't have your phone in your hand, you're not at significant risk.
I've had 5 scooters stolen from me in the past 8 years though.