{"id":164076,"date":"2025-06-06T22:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T22:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/164076\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T22:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T22:31:08","slug":"i-live-in-one-of-londons-most-dangerous-neighbourhoods-life-is-not-what-youd-expect-uk-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/164076\/","title":{"rendered":"I live in one of London’s ‘most dangerous’ neighbourhoods – life is not what you’d expect | UK | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Controversial live facial recognition cameras will be installed permanently on lamp posts this summer in the centre of a London borough which has long tried to shake off its nickname as the country’s knife crime capital. The move by the Met Police<\/a> comes a year after law firm Lawtons analysed crime statistics and proclaimed it as the city’s “most violent borough<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

And, if truth be told, living in\u00a0Croydon, South London, was never part of my life plan.\u00a0I’d prefer to live in a multi-million dollar home overlooking the sea in California<\/a> than my mid-1970s block of flats in the town which is best known for tall buildings and knife crime<\/a>. But since moving to London’s most populous neighbourhood, I’ve been struck by an overwhelming sense of community, rather than a sense of danger.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t feel like a small village where everyone knows everyone, but it’s a place where I can always rely on the kindness of strangers. It’s more than the usual neighbourly thing of taking in packages when I’m out.<\/p>\n

They are strangers who would risk serious injury for someone they’ve never met. This includes putting their neck on the line – seriously.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One time this happened will always stick in my mind as something that would never happen anywhere else in the world.<\/p>\n

In the days when I could run, before being diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer<\/a>, I was running as fast as I could towards a tram which was closing its doors.<\/p>\n

The all-too familiar beeping sound meant it was about to leave the station without me, until I was spotted by a teenager wearing the de rigueur Croydon uniform of a big black padded jacket.<\/p>\n

He looked at me and put his head and neck in the way of the tram doors, so it couldn’t leave without me.<\/p>\n

I’ll never know why he didn’t just use his foot or bag to stop the doors closing but maybe that’s the spirit of Croydon.<\/p>\n

The borough definitely doesn’t do things by halves.<\/p>\n

When Croydon was the Borough of Culture there were not one or two but 60 giraffe sculptures on the streets.<\/p>\n

I’ve lost track of whether or not the borough has been bankrupt more times than glamour model Katie Price<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So Solid Crew once turned on the Christmas lights of the Boxpark street food place by counting down from 21 seconds instead of 10.<\/p>\n

And it’s where Archbishops of Canterbury<\/a> spent their summers for 500 years.<\/p>\n

So even though it was never my plan to live here, it might be home until I win Euromillions and can afford an oceanside place in California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Controversial live facial recognition cameras will be installed permanently on lamp posts this summer in the centre of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[68814,748,68813,188,15512,393,4884,12151,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-164076","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-borough-of-culture","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-community-spirit","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-croydon","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-knife-crime","16":"tag-london","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114638794575661169","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}