Damilola dad: Stop and search to curb knives

THE father of murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor has called on new Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick to increase stop and search to combat the “uncontrollable” spate of knife crime in London.

Richard Taylor said the Met should expand the use of the tactic but urged police to adopt a “more humane” way of stopping and searching young people. He spoke out after a week in which six men were killed in knife attacks in London and several others seriously injured in stabbings.

Mr Taylor, whose 10-year-old son was stabbed to death in Peckham in 2000, said: “It’s become so uncontrollable, beyond my imagination.

“I cannot imagine why young people have now taken it to that level, treating it as a game to kill each other. I don’t

think those kids have heart, if you can take a knife to go and pierce it through another person. They know what they are doing, they really want to kill.”

Eight teenagers have been murdered in London so far this year, five of them in knife attacks, and the Met has

recorded a 24 per cent rise in knife crime.

Mr Taylor, a former civil servant who leads the charity Damilola Taylor Trust, said: “Stop and search has to be increased. They should review the method by which they carry it out at

the moment and change the strategy. You don’t need to use that force, to pin someone down — you have to find a more humane way of doing it.

“You have to target the people carrying knives, you have to watch them, study their family background.” The Met has scaled back the number of stop and searches carried out in London in recent years after controversy over the tactic’s use.

In 2014 Theresa May, then Home Secretary, said stop and search should be more targeted as it was undermining relations between police and ethnic minorit y communities. Research showed black people were seven times more likely to be stopped.

New Met chief Ms Dick, who has made tackling knife crime her priority, has said she would back her officers if they ordered a rise in more intelligence-led stop and search tactics. Police say there has been an increase in the number of young people carrying knives.

Mr Taylor was speaking as his charity launched a scheme to create opportunities for disadvantaged young people in the banking and financial sector.

Fo r m o re information visit damilolataylortrust.co.uk.