DANIELLE BECCAN, aged 14, a young black girl, died on Saturday morning from a gunshot wound, after emergency surgery at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham. The story was in all the Sunday newspapers, and was reported on television and radio. For most newspapers it was far from being the lead story, though it rated about a column of print, and comparable time on television. Yet it was, surely, extremely important, telling us something very alarming about the war on crime in England, just as Ken Bigley’s murder told us something very alarming about the war on terror in Iraq.

To start with, the circumstances had a deep pathos. Danielle had been with her friends to Nottingham’s Goose Fair, an ancient local fair, where there are all sorts of dodgems and roundabouts for children. She was coming home, not particularly late, a little after midnight, and was with 20 or so of her friends. Her mother was waiting for her at her home only a few yards from the place where she was shot.

The shooting was deliberate, though Danielle may not have been the intended target. A car drew up; the headlights blazed on the group of youngsters. At least two shots were fired. They all ducked; Danielle was hit in the stomach. Perhaps there were gang members in the group. If so, Danielle was not one of them. She was just a schoolgirl who had been enjoying an evening at the fair.

Danielle’s murder is a tragedy, even if it is one that the world may not remember for very long. Those of us who watch a lot of television news risk becoming callous as one tragedy succeeds another. Danielle’s death did not have very high saliency as a news story, even on the first day.

Yet it is a serious defeat. We are not winning the war against drugs, guns and gangs. Danielle’s murder is representative of a class of crimes that have been occurring across the country. A few weeks ago two young women, a few years older than Danielle, were returning from a nightclub in Bristol. Two men they had met in the club offered them a lift home in their car.

Another car drew up alongside. Shots were fired; one of the girls was mortally wounded; the other was hit in the eye and may have lost her sight. The driver of the first car and his friend were not injured; the driver had the decency to drive the girls to a local police station before he ran off.

Nottingham and Bristol: they used to be among the safest of large provincial cities. Both of them were tobacco towns, with Wills in Bristol and Players in Nottingham. Tobacco was a business little affected by the great slump. In the 1930s Nottingham and Bristol were relatively prosperous and surprisingly law-abiding. In 1940 you might get killed by the Luftwaffe, but for sure you would not be shot by a gangster.

Now Bristol has what are almost no-go areas, and nightclubs that are far from safe. Nottingham has even bigger problems. For gun crime it is probably the worst city of its size in England. Last year there were more than 50 shootings in Nottingham. Many of them were carried out by drug gangs, said to include Yardies from Jamaica, other Afro-Caribbeans and Asians. Nottingham is a distribution centre for hard drugs, including crack cocaine. It has an epidemic of drugs, as do so many other towns and cities, but it seems to have an even worse epidemic of guns.

At this point of the argument the politician might feel bound to offer superficial solutions for the social problem. Obviously city-dwellers want to feel safe on their streets; when their children go out clubbing, if they do, parents want them to come home safe and sound. The objectives of breaking up the gangs, imprisoning the drug dealers and getting rid of the guns are not in doubt. Finding the best ways to achieve them is the problem.

My experience, such as it is, is that policing is a profession, and that professionals, although not infallible, understand the issues better than amateurs. The easy answers, ranging from decriminalising all drugs to restoring capital punishment, are wrong. We see the advantages of professional experience in the House of Lords, where the law lords do know more law, the eminent doctors more medicine and the few retired policemen more about policing. Professionals should be questioned and occasionally over-ruled, but we still prefer to be operated upon by a consultant rather than by the most gifted of amateurs.

Last year the Nottinghamshire Police Authority held an emergency meeting to discuss the rise of gun crime. Steve Green, Nottinghamshire’s Chief Constable, has had some successes in an extremely difficult situation. Last year he set up Operation Stealth to tackle the rise in gun crime. That team has made 593 arrests, recovered 162 weapons and drugs worth £2 million. Yet Mr Green’s urgent requirements go much further. Despite this improvement in performance he argues that his force needs another 1,000 officers. Last year 2,435 officers had to deal with more than 160,000 offences in Nottinghamshire.

Mr Green also believes that a national strategy is needed, involving co-ordinated action by Government, police, local authorities and the criminal justice agencies. He is one of the English supporters of tougher policing, for which he has been criticised by Liberty, and is attracted by the “zero tolerance” approach adopted by the last New York Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, and its police chief, Bill Bratton.

His analysis is that drugs are driving the general increase in crime, with 60 per cent of those charged with criminal offences testing positive. His tough line on hard drugs seems to be in accord with the views of David Blunkett, the Home Secretary.

Mr Green has his own critics, but he seems a tough-minded and vigorous chief constable. The Home Secretary does need to develop a more effective national strategy against drugs, guns and gangs; some of the policies advocated by Mr Green would certainly contribute to that. It is important not to divert police officers from other major crimes; more officers are needed if gun crimes in the big cities is to be overcome. At present the war against guns is being lost, not only in Nottingham.

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