Another Hackney Murder

Stevens Nyembo-Ya-Muteba was a forty year-old maths student and the father of two children. On Sunday night he was stabbed to death almost literally on his own doorstep in Evergreen Square on the Holly Street estate after asking a group of stoned and noisy youths to move on. It seems they did. But police believe that one or two of them returned later and attacked him. Four teenagers have been arrested in connection with the killing.

I got the news from the Today programme this morning: Hackney once more the centre of unflattering attention. Holly Street is a thirty-minute walk away. You hear this kind of thing and hope your children aren't listening and later, when they've all gone off to school, you get on with your business under a familiar cloud of dismay. The coverage on Today (scroll down to 7.50) involved a disagreement between the Reverend George Hargreaves, whose Hepsebah christian centre is on the estate and Jeanette Arnold, member of the London Assembly and the Metropolitan Police Authority, about who was doing most to tackle youth crime in the area and whether or not progress was being made.

I don't doubt that both these people are commited and capable, but their debate quickly descended into a sort of local spat that gave me no comfort at all and I very much doubt I was alone. And once more I'm left fighting the familiar psychological battle to keep faith with the optimism I feel every day about my neighbourhood and the good work that goes on there and, at the same time, keep at bay the dread that comes with knowing that you and your loved ones are never very far away from a spaced-out child nihilist who might just kill you if you don't show him "respect."

Comments

[kris]

"...at the same time, [I]keep at bay the dread that comes with knowing that you and your loved ones are never very far away from a spaced-out child nihilist who might just kill you if you don't show him "respect."

Exactly.

[james higham]

A world I know little of but plan to look at if you'll write on it.

[James]

Frightening how commonplace this sort of thing is becoming, yet it's only the fatal attacks that get into the mainstream press. Interesting how the media enjoys freakish stuff like the Amish murders (the sort of thing that is pretty rare, Hungerford, Dunblane etc tend to be isolated psychopaths). It is the banal evil of youths who are unexceptional (in every sense) but have no morals/inhibitions re violence whatsoever that I find frightening. Friend of a friend is a copper in South London, his tales of the banal stabbings he encounters almost make one run to the hills, and certainly make one cautious about confronting the local yobs who occasionally show up around my way.

[OBSERVER]

My heart goes out to those grieving for Steven Nyembo-Ya-Muteb. My life became a living hell because of a crowd of youths who made me and my neighbours suffer noise and abuse on a daily basis.

I knew these kids as toddlers and they were adorable, but as teenagers they've become hell to share the street with.

Worst of all is the torture they impose via their in-car hi-fi systems and the deep boom boom bass noise that penetrates every room in my house and makes my wisdom teeth vibrate.

In the days when Hackney had a decently manned 24-hour noise patrol service, something could be done about it; I'd call and the Noise Service would turn up and deal with the kids.

Now that Mayor Jules "there have been no cuts to services" Pipe has reduce to the Noise Service to a pale shadow of its former self (personel cuts and operating hours vastly reduced) we are left to deal with it ourselves or suffer "in silence" (no pun intended).

I've been attacked, physically and verbally, and kids have threatened to kill me, for complaining (in a civil manner) about the noise.

When we don't have a decent Noise Service in Hackney, have to do the job ourselves and suffer from threats and attacks; responsibility for failing to provide a decent service should fall squarely on the shoulders of the man who cut the service; Mayor Jules Pipe.

[Katy]

Dave, well put. And of course at the lower end of the spectrum - because they don't always KILL you - you have the guys at the back of the bus, the chicken-eaters, music-players and even the ones who just get in your physical space.

OBSERVER, your story sounds only too familiar. I could also point out the transformation I've watched in my own kids, as they've moved from being eager, adorable toddlers to jaded, street-weary teenagers who've been mugged so many times it doesn't even seem unusual any more.

I mysefl once got hit in the head on a 253 for asking some 13-year-old girls if they could keep it down.

[Quink]

I heard that Today coverage too, and I felt the familiar dread as I listened to it degenerate into what you rightly call a spat. Your comment about the spaced out nihilist will make the spine chill of anyone who knows what it's like to be molested by one.

[Noosa Lee]

This is a terrible, terrible thing. I don't buy the cheap imperatives that are being issued by government, police or council to residents in the most pressurised parts of the country, like where we live in Hackney, to take personal responsbility for challenging criminal behaviour. I do, however, live in a place where I have lots of teenagers as neighbours and fellow residents. I have fought to keep benches from being torn out so that I and local kids have a place to sit. I talk to groups of kids, even when they're taking the piss by giving me a bit of a scare. I've gone outside and spoken to youths in the street that I thought were making too much noise. I can't accept that I take my life in my hands every time I do that. The death of Steven Nyembo-Ya-Muteb is tragic, but it should not influence the way we Hackney residents live our lives and interact with our neighbours. With the greatest respect to Steven's memory and deepest sympathy to his grieving family my instincts from living in Hackney for 25 years tell me that he was one of the unluckiest guys on the planet that day. He went outside and did a normal thing. We can't be afraid to tell kids to shut up if we are being disturbed by their noise to a level where it is reasonable to protest. We must trust our own judgement about when and how to engage. I don't believe that the Safer Neighbourhood Teams have been any more effective than any of the previous attempts to reintroduce neighbourhood policing in the last fifteen years. But please don't everyone freak out and make it about all kids. Is there something positive we could do as a community instead?