Carnival war on knives – but the police turn blind eye to hippy crack
THE atmosphere at Notting Hill yesterday reflected a year of murder and violence in London as the largest police presence in six years patrolled the carnival.
Metal detectors known as ‘knife arches’ were placed at strategic points and officers were given increased powers to stop and search indiscriminately.
Scotland Yard imposed a Section 60 order across the carnival area between 9am and midnight, allowing the 7,000 officers to search anyone they believed might be carrying a weapon. By 6pm, there had been 125 arrests, including 25 for possession of an offensive weapon and four for assaults on police officers.
There were 133 arrests the previous day, known as the carnival’s family day, and 16 knives recovered.
Near the Ladbroke Grove entrance, where there were two knife arches, police who searched carnival-goers made three arrests in just half an hour early yesterday afternoon. The public’s reaction was mixed. Henry Wood, 25, from New Cross, said: ‘He told me I was detained under Section 60 while the search was going on, then afterwards was free to go. I was happy for them to do it, it only took a few minutes and the police were fine.
‘Obviously it’s quite a controversial topic and everyone has an opinion on it but if you’ve got nothing on you then you’ll be all right.
‘Until things quieten down in London in terms of violence, then this is the only way really to keep things from getting out of control.’ Teacher Padraigh Wheeler, 24, from nearby Kendal Rise, added: ‘You only have a problem if you’ve got something on you.’
Yet some suggested a disproportionate number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds were stopped. Zephon Allen, 22, and his brother Raphael, 19, were both searched after passing through the arches.
He said: ‘It is a bit embarrassing – you think of all the people going past who see you being searched
when you’ve done nothing wrong. And you see many other people going through and wonder why they aren’t being stopped.
‘They said it was a random search but you do wonder if the fact that me and my brother are black had anything to do with it.’
Carnival- goers said police told them their priority was finding weapons rather than drugs.
It was claimed that police told revellers they were not interested in confiscating ‘hippy crack’ during the searches. One man said the officer who searched him told him not to worry if he was carrying ‘balloons’ – a reference to nitrous oxide, which became illegal under the Psychoactive Substances Act in 2016 – because their focus was on finding weapons.
Another man was photographed walking through the knife arches past watching officers with what appeared to be a balloon filled with the gas in his mouth.
Elsewhere at the carnival, however, an officer was photographed with a bag containing dozens of confiscated canisters. The party atmosphere on the parade route came to a halt at 3pm for a 72-second silence in memory of those killed in the Grenfell Tower fire, just half a mile away.
Not all the revellers seemed to get the message, though, as many continued to party despite the music being turned off. The silence was broken with cheers, whistles and the booming voice of the late Aretha Franklin singing Respect.