Staff member stabbed seven times at Bromley South

[Jtommo]

Just awful, thoughts go out to the victims and families

 

[InOban]

Are station staff not provided with body cameras?

 

[lordbusiness]

BTP have an annual budget of £300 million & 3,000 officers.
That is £100,000 per officer. (Including overheads)

A huge sum bearing in mind staff & the public rarely see them, except for occasional PR shows at main line stations.

Staff do not ring them because BTP response times are usually “non attendance” or in hours not minutes.

BTP need a good shake up, or abolition & the yearly £300 million given to proper police in rail trouble hot spots.

I hope that is one good thing that will come from this horrid event. But it won’t.

Like everyone else - very best wishes to the injured staff.
Lets hope the youth court do not give the offender one year which will lead to release in four months.
Sadly very likely- so his mates continue ur to realise there is no downside to “chagging” or whatever they call attempted murder.

It will be interesting to see how BTP fare in the GBR shakeup. As a fair bit of the funding through Police Service Agreements comes from TOCs one wonders if GBR will pick up the majority of funding if GBR have a bigger slice of the cake.

 

[RPI]

Sadly my many years experience of BTP is that they are hopeless, every now and then they're in the right place at the right time, im not someone who calls BTP out for just anything and everything, in fact, when it comes to a ticketing dispute I will literally try everything else first as they just aren't interested and sadly that's why we end up with incidents like this, minor offences are fobbed off so the railway becomes a free for all, same with antisocial behaviour and vandalism, just not interested and the offenders know there will be no consequences to their actions.

 

[Horizon22]

ely. The more reports that are logged, more power of challenge is available, not just to unions, but also to managers who often find it difficult, if not impossible, to convince BTP to change/increase patrols

The issue has always been the availability of BTP patrols and their staff. Unfortunately they’re incredibly thinly spread, especially in London for the amount of incidents that happen. They have to prioritise. You arrest someone on a station and you’ve tied up several officers for hours. I’ve worked at London terminals where they’ve been impossible to get hold off at reasonable times in the day. I’d hate to think of what it’s like at suburban or rural locations.

Local (senior might have more luck?) management can only achieve so much. As has been stated their funding comes via train service agreements so ultimately TOCs have some power but they’d have to fund it more.

 

[ScotGG]

The Southeastern suburban lines have always been notorious for trouble.
Hopefully the staff member will make a full recovery and receive decent compensation from Southeastern for work injury and trauma.

I'm not sure it's any worse than the rest of London.

Difference is far less staff and police around to keep it safe. Many think they can do as the please, and aren't used to being challenged. I'm surprised this person didn't know Bromley South is one of very few places with barriers and didn't get off the stop before like many others.

 

[rg177]

What an absolutely horrible incident.

I hope all involved make a speedy recovery, you simply don't come to work to end up in hospital.

As for the police response to incidents, we usually find that miscreants will smash gates open and run away before police can even turn up. Response times, as others say, are usually dire.

 

[Aictos]

Are station staff not provided with body cameras?

Some platform dispatchers have them, I know the staff at St Albans City for Thameslink do use them.

 

[mmh]

Until the rail industry as a whole realises this is all linked and starts taking revenue protection seriously and not the mere inconvenient box ticking exercise most TOCs treat it as then this will continue to happen. If an individual is carrying a knife then they intend to use it, its as simple as that, and in this case the victim was stabbed 7 times. Not once,7.That is deliberate and intentional. They may think it is for defence however a knife is not a defensive weapon, it can and will kill. Using a knife is attempted murder, and sadly many knife crime deaths are caused by the knife holders own weapon.

Its blatantly obvious, remove staff from stations and trains and it becomes a free-for-all. Yes it will cost money but when the travelling environment is safe and secure the gain in revenue from both increased patronage and better revenue collection will contribute significantly to the cost. It won't cover the cost but what price is safety worth it?

This is beyond that stage and level. Bromley South is not a quiet un-staffed backwater - the victim was staff. The problem is deeper, sadly.

I'm not sure it's any worse than the rest of London.

Difference is far less staff and police around to keep it safe. Many think they can do as the please, and aren't used to being challenged. I'm surprised this person didn't know Bromley South is one of very few places with barriers and didn't get off the stop before like many others.

If he's a teenager he'll almost inevitably have an oyster card. If he's the type to stab someone seven times I doubt he's got many qualms about arguing if a ticket barrier doesn't open.

 

[steve_wills]

I hope everyone is ok

The issue has always been the availability of BTP patrols and their staff. Unfortunately they’re incredibly thinly spread, especially in London for the amount of incidents that happen. They have to prioritise. You arrest someone on a station and you’ve tied up several officers for hours. I’ve worked at London terminals where they’ve been impossible to get hold off at reasonable times in the day. I’d hate to think of what it’s like at suburban or rural locations.

Local (senior might have more luck?) management can only achieve so much. As has been stated their funding comes via train service agreements so ultimately TOCs have some power but they’d have to fund it more.

I think any stabbing should be a priority

 

[WelshBluebird]

I hope everyone is ok


I think any stabbing should be a priority

I think the point is, and is what the union are probably arguing too, is that other antisocial behaviour has gone on prior to this and it has built up to this stabbing. Had the BTP treated the usual antisocial behaviour calls as a priority too, then maybe the criminal who did this wouldn't have been so brazen as to stab a staff member. These events don't just happen, there's usually clues prior and build up that those locally can see but unless you actually listen to those people you'll miss the warning signs and eventually something like this happens. By the time someone is stabbed then it's too late, the time to intervene was way before it got to that point

 

[jon0844]

I'm surprised this person didn't know Bromley South is one of very few places with barriers and didn't get off the stop before like many others.

As I said elsewhere, people now know how easy it is to force a Cubic gate so gates aren't a deterrent - and doubling up is even easier to do given how slow the gates are to close (especially the wide gate).

Someone who wants to go from A to B without paying isn't going to get off at C and walk the rest. Maybe they'll short fare, but that still costs money and many people have no intention of paying a penny.

The railway needs more effective enforcement, so that when someone does push through there are people who can stop and detain. That's basically the police, and it seems from all I hear that the police aren't interested in fare evasion (if such offenders might be carrying drugs (county lines), knives and travelling to commit crime, wanted on warrant etc).

BTP is less likely to want to get involved with people who might be of more interest by local police, which causes a problem because while we need police with railway knowledge, they don't seem able to work in cooperation with local forces and it becomes a case of passing the problem off on each other.

 

[bicbasher]

I'm not sure it's any worse than the rest of London.

Difference is far less staff and police around to keep it safe. Many think they can do as the please, and aren't used to being challenged. I'm surprised this person didn't know Bromley South is one of very few places with barriers and didn't get off the stop before like many others.

Southeastern Metro reminds me of how the Bendy routes were in London, one big free for all and all types of undesirables being unchallenged for a fare.

The Metro side had an opportunity to become part of London Overground in 2016 which was scuppered by Grayling and has continued to be a terrible TOC with no incentive for improvements as the franchise was allowed to hike up fares which led it to be more expensive for local paper fares before Oyster PAYG was introduced with set NR fares across the franchises served inside the capital.

Abbey Wood at least has seen improvements since the station became managed by TfL Rail.

 

[jon0844]

c2c reminds me of that too. First place I think I saw even gateline staff wearing stab vests (I might be wrong - they could have been REOs) and certainly one of the first lot to get body cameras.

With County Lines, it isn't even a case of keeping clear of stations at night.

 

[Horizon22]

I hope everyone is ok


I think any stabbing should be a priority

Obviously and the BTP were on site within minutes. I’m referring to the general availability of BTP for lower levels of anti-social behaviour.

Southeastern Metro reminds me of how the Bendy routes were in London, one big free for all and all types of undesirables being unchallenged for a fare.

The Metro side had an opportunity to become part of London Overground in 2016 which was scuppered by Grayling and has continued to be a terrible TOC with no incentive for improvements as the franchise was allowed to hike up fares which led it to be more expensive for local paper fares before Oyster PAYG was introduced with set NR fares across the franchises served inside the capital.

Abbey Wood at least has seen improvements since the station became managed by TfL Rail.

Southeastern has also been in the “last year” of its franchise for several years so I can understand somewhat the lack of desire for big investments. This more feeds into the catastrophic job the DfT did of franchising in the end which is a tad off-topic but still relevant.

It’s not surprising that if you throw money at a problem (Abbey Wood/Crossrail or London Overground) you solve a lot of issues, some of which pay medium-term dividend. But if you’re constantly looking to the short-term it allows problems to be compounded.

 

[TheEdge]

The issue has always been the availability of BTP patrols and their staff. Unfortunately they’re incredibly thinly spread, especially in London for the amount of incidents that happen. They have to prioritise. You arrest someone on a station and you’ve tied up several officers for hours. I’ve worked at London terminals where they’ve been impossible to get hold off at reasonable times in the day. I’d hate to think of what it’s like at suburban or rural locations.

At rural locations in my experience a call to the BTP will often result in a response from civil police. A big issue with the BTP is they are a very specialised police force covering a very small area of responsibility spread over a massive physical area. Just in my area if you have a BTP station at Norwich and Ipswich (in reality they are only at Norwich) many of the rural Anglian stations are still a good 30+ minutes, if not a hour by road, even on blues and twos. Unless you have a BTP station at each end and halfway along pretty much every line (which would mostly be a massive waste of resources) response times for most incidents is going to excessive.

Its a very hard thing to solve practically.

 

[matt_world2004]

This is beyond that stage and level. Bromley South is not a quiet un-staffed backwater - the victim was staff. The problem is deeper, sadly.

Bromley doesn't need to be an unstaffed station to be effected by anti social behaviour from people travelling from other stations

Swiss cheese model needs to be taken with trying to combat anti social behaviour. The more holes in the system through unstaffed stations and poor station ambience the more likely that people will engage in anti social behaviour at nearby staffed stations

Someone is more likely to barrier barge at a station if one end of their journey is unbarriered /unstaffed.

 

[lordbusiness]

One of the major problems BTP have is the need to cover every aspect of policing across the railway- a possibly disproportionate amount is spent on countering the terrorist threat (something that is unlikely to change as the new CC comes from the a CT background in the MPS).

Millions of pounds were spent on setting up a dedicated Northern Firearms Team (who were noticeably absent at Manchester arena) and the capability of high visibility deterrent patrols and armed response could arguably be covered by HO forces in Manchester, Brum and Liverpool.

Add onto to this the requirement to cover the whole vulnerability issue - Mental Health, Child Exploitation etc means out of the quoted 3000 there's actually not very many officers actually doing core policing on a day to day basis.

All this means that the priorities of the BTP leadership are often at odds with the priorities of the railway.

A classic example of this is graffiti- a few years ago the dedicated graffiti team were disbanded and graffiti was classed as just any other crime- incidents were allocated to local teams to investigate which basically meant very little happened.

This has now been reversed due to pressure from the TOCs but the team is significantly smaller and the process for reporting it is much more drawn out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to knock the officers on the ground who are doing the best they can but they're dealt a bum hand by their leadership and unlike HO forces there's very little governance from outside or transparency.

Then factor in the influence of the DfT......

 

[ScotGG]

This is beyond that stage and level. Bromley South is not a quiet un-staffed backwater - the victim was staff. The problem is deeper, sadly.



If he's a teenager he'll almost inevitably have an oyster card. If he's the type to stab someone seven times I doubt he's got many qualms about arguing if a ticket barrier doesn't open.

Yep but there's a whole culture now of not paying and doing as you want on SE metro as it's so minimally staffed. When there's a very rare occasion someone is challenged they kick off as a culture has become embedded. It's a symptom of the unsafe railway that's developed through inadequate staffing and policing.

Obviously and the BTP were on site within minutes. I’m referring to the general availability of BTP for lower levels of anti-social behaviour.



Southeastern has also been in the “last year” of its franchise for several years so I can understand somewhat the lack of desire for big investments. This more feeds into the catastrophic job the DfT did of franchising in the end which is a tad off-topic but still relevant.

It’s not surprising that if you throw money at a problem (Abbey Wood/Crossrail or London Overground) you solve a lot of issues, some of which pay medium-term dividend. But if you’re constantly looking to the short-term it allows problems to be compounded.

I'm not sure it's even medium term (2-5 years). Wasn't it the case that within a month or two counted passenger numbers at Abbey Wood near doubled after allday staffing and barrier lines were introduced. That's a couple of million journeys per annum.

But yes I agree that still no incentive for south eastern to do it as they never had more than a few months to run for half a decade.

 

[Monarch010]

There have been proposals in the past to merge BTP with the Met and Police Scotland, but nothing happened. What's the issue?

 

[JamesT]

There have been proposals in the past to merge BTP with the Met and Police Scotland, but nothing happened. What's the issue?

If BTP are already overstretched and don't respond quickly when they're dedicated to policing the railways, what's the chance of it getting any better when it becomes merely another thing to police for a larger force? There's also issues around carving out bits of a force with a national view into forces with a smaller geographic focus, and how the current funding from the ToCs would be affected when the thing they're currently paying for doesn't exist.
There was a long running thread on the forum around the Police Scotland proposals if you want further detail.

 

[alf]

Reading through the 53 posts an idea has occurred to me that I never had before.

At post 39 Horizon22 said an arrest ties up BTP officers for ages.
BT police are said to be railway specialists. They do not need to process an arrest. They could be on their way using their specialist skills(if they exist) on other calls.

They should immediately hand over the suspects to the local police who should have the responsibility for processing & detaining if necessary.
BTP travel 2 in a car so the second officer can give all the details to the local officers as they go to another railway job.

If forum member think this silly then I still think BTP should be abolished.
What are the specialist skills? Other professionals, RAIB, do accident investigation. BTP often get in the way.
Local non BTP police really know their beat including the railway stations. We do not need, or have a Tyne & Wear Metro force, or a bus or taxi police force.

 

[alistairlees]

Reading through the 53 posts an idea has occurred to me that I never had before.

At post 39 Horizon22 said an arrest ties up BTP officers for ages.
BT police are said to be railway specialists. They do not need to process an arrest. They could be on their way using their specialist skills(if they exist) on other calls.

They should immediately hand over the suspects to the local police who should have the responsibility for processing & detaining if necessary.
BTP travel 2 in a car so the second officer can give all the details to the local officers as they go to another railway job.

If forum member think this silly then I still think BTP should be abolished.
What are the specialist skills? Other professionals, RAIB, do accident investigation. BTP often get in the way.
Local non BTP police really know their beat including the railway stations. We do not need, or have a Tyne & Wear Metro force, or a bus or taxi police force.

There are quite a few specialist police forces. The Civil Nuclear Constabulary is an example.

 

[RPI]

The other thing that baffles me about BTP being "underfunded" is that it is funded by the industry and not the Home Office.

 

[LOL The Irony]

In my view, the biggest problem here isn't Southeastern having a reputation for wasting BTP time on trivial matters, nor the BTP being underfunded, but rather the knife crime issues in this country that need sorting out.

 

[GB]

Given that the BTP have to deal with all railway related crime, crime that isn't necessarily at or near a station, the quoted 3000 officers does not seem very much...particularly as 25% of that number probably aren't on shift due to rest days, training, sickness and annual leave.

 

[Alteran Ancient]

I was somewhat stunned to hear about this. Bromley is generally a non-violent area and one of my regular haunts. Of course, just because most of the locals are non-violent, it doesn't mean that people who think it's acceptable to carry a knife won't travel through.

I understand that revenue enforcement is one of the less pleasant areas of the railway, but at the same time, staff who work on the gate lines and front-line revenue checks should not have to work in fear of being sworn at, spat on, pushed, punched, kicked or in this case, stabbed. They're here to do a job that, in an ideal world, shouldn't need to be done because people should pay for what they use.

I fail to understand what's going through someone's mind when they stab someone in a public place, surrounded by onlookers and CCTV. Like, you will be detained and you probably will get a sentence, get put away and have a violent offence on your record when you're eventually let out again.

My thoughts remain with those affected by this. I do hope the transgressor gets a sentence suitable for the crime.

 

[TheEdge]

There are quite a few specialist police forces. The Civil Nuclear Constabulary is an example.

It's only three isn't it? MoD, BTP and CNC?

 

[Typhoon]

There are a few details that I can't see above, reported in https://www.kentonline.co.uk/bexley...harged-after-ticket-inspector-stabbed-248308/

A teenager has been charged after a ticket inspector was stabbed and two other members of staff were attacked at a railway station.

The boy, 17, is alleged to have struck out at staff after being challenged over a ticket.

Bromley South was evacuated after the incident at 1pm on Bank Holiday Monday.

One of the victims, a man, suffered wounds from a knife and was taken to hospital for treatment.

His injuries were not life threatening and he was released the same day.

The other two victims were treated at the scene for injuries.

The suspect was arrested moments after the attack and has since been charged with grievous bodily harm, actual bodily harm, assault, possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply and possessing a knife.

He is due to appear today at Bromley Youth Court.

It may be that he resorted to violence because of one thing that he was charged with 'possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply'.

 

[alistairlees]

It's only three isn't it? MoD, BTP and CNC?

You are correct. I had thought it was four for some reason.