This article reports a research that is based on a European Safer Schools Partnership that included ten countries and specifically the UK case study which was located in London. The initiators of this partnership had been involved in early SSPs in the UK and the educationalists were very much focussed on work that would address problematic behaviour in schools. This was then coupled with a wider European development that linked the promotion of democratic values with violence prevention. The UK case study local authority is based on five schools in an inner London borough, the police and local authority education department. Four schools are for primary age children and the other is for secondary age young people. The empirical data collected in this research includes a school based survey completed by 119 school based staff (51 from the secondary school and 68 across the four primary schools); and, in-depth interviews with 17 adults closely involved in the initiative (2 partnership co-ordinators, European and National; 3 local authority education advisory staff; 7 head or senior teachers; 5 other teachers). The research illustrates the kind of context and issues SSPs are concerned with in the UK. The nature of schools as organisations means that high profile incidents are a shared experience and affect everybody but we should be careful not to exaggerate the prevalence of such events and look carefully at the evidence available. (Contains 5 figures and 1 note.)