Pupils in capital face knife checks to foil gangs

London mayor to tackle ‘scourge’ of stabbings with metal detectors

EVERY school in London is to be equipped with metal detectors in an effort to stop an alarming increase in knife crime.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is launching a £625,000 campaign against knife and gang crime in the capital after the number of offences in London involving knives rose by 24 per cent in 2016. Nationally, the figure was 11 per cent.

Metal-detecting “knife wands” will be sent to all schools in the area in the wake of three fatal stabbings which were reported within hours of each other.

An Italian national, Pietro Sanna, 23, was found dead with multiple stab wounds after a “brutal and vicious attack” in his own home in Canning Town at 11.40pm on Monday, police said.

A man in his 30s died after officers were called to reports of a stabbing in East Ham around 8pm.

And a 29-year-old man died after reports of a stabbing at a property in Islington at around 2am.

Since January, 24 people under the age of 25 have been fatally stabbed in the capital. There have been nine murders in London in the last month.

Mr Khan said: “Every death on the streets of London is an utter tragedy, and I am deeply concerned about the rise in knife crime on London’s streets. Dozens of families have been bereaved; many more have seen their loved ones severely injured.

“We need to send a strong signal that carrying and using knives is totally and utterly unacceptable.

“The only way we can truly beat the scourge of knife crime on our streets is by properly funding youth services.” Part of the mayor’s initiative would involve naming and shaming retailers that continue to illegally sell knives to underage customers.

Police and Trading Standards officers will be conducting “test purchasing” to check online sales.

Pastor Lorraine Jones, whose son Dwayne Simpson was stabbed to death three years ago, joined Mr Khan at the initiative’s launch at the Dwaynamics boxing club in Brixton, south London.

The club was started by her son Dwayne in 2013 as a boxing and fitness project to serve residents in the local Angell Town estate.

She welcomed the mayor’s new measures, saying: “I know first hand the devastating impact knife crime has on a community and a family.

“It is incredibly important

‘The only way we can beat knife crime is by proper funding of youth services’

that everyone works together to stamp knife crime out of our city once and for all.”

Mr Khan said he backed the Met’s use of a “targeted, intelligence-led” version of the stop and search policy.

He added: “What I’m not in favour of is an indiscriminate use of stop and search, or stop and search being used on industrial scales.”

The latest bid to tackle knife crime in London comes just a week after the Met said they would arm hundreds more officers with Tasers, bringing the total carrying the weapon to more than 6,400 in the capital.

As well as gang-related knife crime, some recent high profile attacks, including the murder of Jo Cox, and the Westminster and London Bridge terrorist attacks, have involved knives.

The Met said in just one week this month they had recovered more than 500 knives from the streets.