North End stabbing is a wake up call that we need to tackle city's violent crime before it gets out of control

I think half of the city saw the video which circulated around social media yesterday of the horrific stabbing in North End which has left a man fighting for his life and five people arrested for attempted murder.

And while the investigation into that incident continues, it was just another reminder that many of us are becoming increasing concerned about the levels of violent crime in and around our city. Surely we have reached the point where enough is enough.

This is just the latest incident knife crime which has plagued our community in recent months and years. This includes the deaths in 2023 of innocent bystander Aimen Ahmed who was stabbed on steps of Portsmouth Guildhall and Levi Kent who was stabbed in Gosport following an altercation related to a drug deal.

There was also a stabbing in December 2024 in Buckland during a mass brawl and a stabbing outside Havant Railway Station in November 2024, and just last month a 16-year-old was also stabbed in Commercial Road. And now this.

Now of course in the vast majority of these types of incidents the victims of knife crimes are often attacked by someone they know and they are very often linked to criminal activity. Attacks such as the one on Aimen Ahmed are thankfully rare, but still completely unacceptable.

But our city is rightly concerned and there are fears things are getting out of control. We need a real and visible police presence to make our communities safer, we need our children to know that it is not normal to bring a knife to school or carry around a zombie knife. And we need the courts to send a clear message to criminals that this behaviour is just not acceptable.

Portsmouth never used to be like this. Yes of course it has always had some issues with antisocial behaviour, but our city seems to be succumbing to a national trend where violent crime, and particularly knife crime, is far more common than it should be.

And with (what feels like) an increase of drugs gangs and county lines activity happening around us, many of us are feeling increasingly concerned when we go out and let our children out of the door.

So steering our young people away from a life of crime is absolutely key. Shoplifting and petty crimes are a doorway to a criminal lifestyle with drugs often at the heart of it. It’s easy to say that the police and the schools should do more, but parents have the primary responsibility here - they are your children and it is up to you to nurture and protect them.

The wider community also has a responsibility to make sure we do not stay silent, that we share key information with the police about detestable incidents like this, and do not just shrug off petty crime as ‘kids being kids’. We need to do better.

The police have a tough job, especially at a time where budgets and resources are squeezed and there simply are not the numbers to tackle this. But the politicians control the purse strings, so we need to make sure the police has everything it needs to play their part in making our streets safer.

If we don’t then we run the risk of this simply becoming the ‘new normal’ - and then what hope will there be for the future?