Calls for more stop and search as knife crime soars by 26%
A SURGE in knife crime prompted calls last night for greater use of police stop and search tactics and a crackdown on social media websites that promote gang violence.
Offences involving a blade or another sharp weapon rose by 26 per cent to nearly 37,000 in the year to June, the biggest total since 2011.
Police chiefs fear it signals a knife crime epidemic, with 214 men and women stabbed to death in the last year – four a week.
Experts blamed a decision made in 2015 by then Home Secretary Theresa May to curb the ‘excessive and inappropriate’ use of stop and search. It was thought that the searches bred resentment because of disproportionate targeting of ethnic minorities.
Campaigners also said websites such as YouTube – owned by Google – should do more to pull down videos promoting violence and knife crime.
It is easy to find online films of gang members threatening and goading rivals, which fuel the bloodshed.
At the start of the decade, recorded knife crime in England and Wales was tumbling but the trend has reversed to reach a sixyear high, according to the Office for National Statistics. It comes after charity worker Abdul Samad, 28, was stabbed to death by moped muggers on Monday night in Little Venice, North West London, because they wanted to steal his iPhone.
Patrick Green, manager of anti-knife crime charity The Ben Kinsella Trust, said: ‘All social media sites should take greater responsibility in terms of knife crime. It is clear in the conversations we have with young people of the impact social media plays in their lives. The availability of videos showing criminal acts with knives, some gangs bragging about knives, contributes to violence with knives.’
Yvette Cooper, Labour chairman of the Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee, said: ‘For knife crime to soar by 26 per cent in the space of just one year is truly appalling. These are awful crimes that devastate families and blight communities.
‘We need comprehensive action, including enough police and neighbourhood policing, and broad prevention work right across communities. Too much of the effective community prevention work tackling gangs and youth crime has been lost.
‘There are also new challenges from the promotion of gang culture and glamorisation of knife crime online that need to be addressed by social media companies.’ The rise in knife crime comes against a 57 per cent fall in use of stop and search checks. A record low of 387,448 checks were made in 2015-16 compared to 904,089 in 2013-14. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has said that stop and search could be stepped up in problem areas of London after the huge rise in knife crime.
David Green, of think-tank Civitas, said: ‘Police are wary of conducting so many stop and searches despite the prevalence of knife crime because they do not want to be accused of racial discrimination.
‘But if someone carrying a knife knows that if they are stopped there is a chance that they will get a serious punishment, they will think twice about it.’
Last week Home Secretary Amber Rudd launched proposals to crackdown on knife crime by stopping online knife sales to under18s and banning blades at universities.