FEATURE
HOW SAFE
IS LONDON
AT NIGHT?
Written by Jasmina Matulewicz
Little feels more peaceful than
a midsummer night at the pub,
jumper in hand, the buzz of the
city and friendly background
chatter warming your heart,
especially after months of
cabin fever. And yet it doesn’t
take much for an urge to go
back inside, call a friend,
speed-walk to the nearest tube
station, because, in a city as
wonderfully unpredictable as
London, your life may depend on it.
Before the country was put
on hold, ONS reports showed
that knife crime across
the UK has increased by six
percent in 2019, reaching an
all-time high. And although
the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has
invested millions into antiknife
crime campaigns and
prevention training, you might
find yourself questioning your
safety. Now, the Metropolitan
Police is bracing itself for
how newly found freedom will
impact crime rates.
Apart from a predicted rise in
theft, anti-social behaviour,
and gang violence, pubs and
clubs will start to return to
their pre-lockdown nature –
hubs of excitement and laughter
and, more often than we’d like
to admit, of aggression. At
25 years old, Chelsea Kirkman
had seen her fair share of
conflict managing the floor of
a popular club in Kingston.
Between having broken glass
thrown in her face and escorting
out violent customers, she
recalls how often she was in
danger.
‘It’s not personal – something
possesses people. The way
people behave when they’re
drunk or when they’re high,
that’s just how they really
are,’ she adds. She says that
violence doesn’t discriminate,
but being 5”1 and the only
woman on her team left her
feeling especially vulnerable.
Kirkman’s shifts spanned
between 3pm and 8am, and
although she hopped from job
to job for another five years
to avoid a monotone routine,
it got too much. The violence
made her hard-faced, unphased
by threats, and immune to
adrenaline rushes. ‘It wasn’t
worth it anymore. It started to
affect my home life. The first
time I came home with a black
eye, my dad was devastated,’
Kirkman says.
She explains the skewed concept
of reality, the toxic bubble
of being constantly drunk,
how aggression was standard,
and how she took a break from
bartending for four months and
came back thinking, ‘this is
not normal’. She quit that
day.
That was back when London was
business-as-usual. And it’s
not that Kirkman’s workplace
lacked crime-prevention
policies. Between radios, rape
alarms, and panic buttons, her
team were constantly looking
out for each other. There
were no closed-off areas, in
comparison to other places
she’d worked, where customers
would lock her in their
private booths, and they had
CCTV installed at all possible
heights and angles.
04