A good friend was mugged this week at Hammersmith roundabout, waiting to cross the road in the evening, with dozens of people around. A man on an electric bike rode straight up, yanked her handbag off her shoulder and vanished into traffic. On Saturday, yet another clip went viral online: robbers hammered through the glass of a jeweller in Richmond at 10.30 in the morning, calmly emptying the display while passers-by filmed on their phones. The response was as shocking as the brazen act. No shock. No outrage. Just weary acceptance. This happens now. These are not marginalised places, but affluent, busy, well-lit parts of London rich in CCTV: exactly the areas where people once assumed everyday crime would still be deterred by visibility alone. Increasingly, it isn’t.

I recently had my own small encounter with this reality: my car’s........

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