Sniffer dogs unable to detect knives

BRITAIN’S most senior policeman has admitted that officers failed to train sniffer dogs to detect knives.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, made the disclosure while giving evidence to the London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee.

“I’ve tried to find out if you can get dogs to search for knives, but they told me it was impossible,” he said. “You can do it for guns but not for knives. We have tried.”

A Scotland Yard spokesman suggested that the force’s Dog Unit would have been able to assess the practicalities of using dogs to detect knives.

It is unclear how far training progressed before dog-handling experts deemed it unsuccessful.

The revelation came as Sir Bernard announced plans to reverse the Home Secretary Theresa May’s cuts to stopand-search procedures following a recent surge of knife crime in London.

The commissioner said that rates of violent knife crime had begun to rise after years of scaling down stop and search. Ten people have been killed in attacks this year.

“When you’ve got kids stabbing each other, it’s not good, so we are increasing it in a reasonable way,” he said.

He suggested that reducing the practice may have “gone too far”.

He said: “We did reduce it and during the three years we did that, two things have happened. We arrested more people and violence came down. Stabbings came down.

“[However] there was always going to be a point where if [stop and search] had any value at all, that would bottom out and there is some evidence that it has bottomed out. So we are going to increase it in a targeted way.”