By Dan Gallivan-Haley
@cymroofbarri89

A 34 year-old woman described as “our special and gentle daughter” by her family was stabbed in the neck last week in an unprovoked attack at a bus stop in Birmingham. The victim, Katie Fox, was rushed to hospital but sadly succumbed to her injuries on Monday.

Her family paid tribute to her in a statement released to West Midlands police describing her as “so beautiful and kind” and a “shining light in their lives” whose passing had left them with “such sadness and heartache”. Djeison Rafael, a 21-year old Black British national has appeared in Birmingham Magistrates Court charged with her murder.

He has also been charged with two counts of causing actual bodily harm regarding incidents on October 27th and November 7th, possession of a Stanley blade on November 7th and assaulting a detention escort officer on November 8th. According to the district judge, Rafael interrupted the six minute hearing “multiple times.”

Djeison Rafael is due to face trial possibly in May of next year.

Katie Fox is yet another precious life in such a short span of time that has been tragically and horrifically cut short. It was only a week before on Wednesday evening, just six miles away where 19-year old mother Lily Whitehouse was fatally run down by a white van on Old Park Lane in Oldbury, West Midlands. She was simply enjoying the fireworks. 41 year-old convicted rapist Mohammed Azim, was later arrested and charged with her murder.

Inconvenient questions need to be asked as to why certain ethnic groups per capita are
disproportionately represented in crime figures. Even though Black individuals are just just 4% of the population, they make up 14% of the prison numbers. Black children make up a staggering 30% of the juvenile prison population.

Arrest rates for every 1,000 people from April 2022 to 2023 (the most recent) showed that Black, Black Caribbean, and Black other were 20.4, 22.7 and 52.4 respectively and were the highest compared with other groups.

Black people overall had the highest arrest rate in 38 out of 42 police forces. Asians (at 8.6% of the population) and Blacks are clearly overrepresented per capita in terms of conviction ratio for sex offences (52.2% and 52.5% respectively), robbery (65.0% and 59.%) and violence against a person (63.9% and 61.4%).

Murder rates by ethnicity are unfortunately harder to get a hold of in the UK even with submitting a FOI request. But these other stats from 2009 to 2017 clearly show consistent trends in behaviour, however uncomfortable
that may be for some.

Many are already asking, how many more precious innocent lives must be laid at the altar of our multiracial, multicultural society? There are many British women who fear even going out any more.

This was captured rather painfully on TalkTV recently where host Julia Hartley-Brewer received a call from a ‘Sarah from London’ who was in tears, fearing even leaving the house without a man.

There are fresh calls growing louder by the day to legalise pepper spray for self-defence, and it is not hard to see why. Possession of pepper spray can currently land you prison time and a hefty fine.

Whether you are simply walking your dog in the recent and equally horrific case of Wayne Broadhurst, or catching the train, or just walking your own streets in the case of Lily Whitehouse and Katie Fox, normal, everyday Brits are having to adapt to an increasingly unpredictable, changing and violent country around them, one they never actually asked or voted for.

Living with our own host of violent offenders, criminals and monsters is an unfortunate inevitability, others are simply not and are a consequence of political choice.

The future choices in terms of what kind of society Britain becomes must be taken into account, but many are not ready to hear the answers or even the solutions necessary.