KNIFE FOUND HIDDEN IN CITY PARK

WEAPONS UNCOVERED AS PART OF POLICE CRACKDOWN IN COVENTRY

A LARGE knife, a serrated blade and a saw were among weapons found by police in a park in Coventry.

The nasty array of weaponry had been hidden in Primrose Hill Park, in Hillfields, just yards away from a football area and play equipment.

The blades had been hidden in undergrowth or behind trees in a bid to keep them concealed by people who are willing to come back and retrieve them if deemed necessary.

It isn’t the first time that weapons like this have been found at the Hillfields park, with machetes and baseball bats previously found. Yesterday’s searches were part of a much bigger crackdown on knife crime in the city and further afield.

Sergeant Paul Mercer said: “Part of our daily operational business now is to do weapons sweeps. We do have individuals secreting weapons - baseball bats, small kitchen knives, machetes.

“In this particular park we have found rusty old machetes previously and baseball bats. Those are then confiscated, brought in to the police station and we then destroy them.”

He said that criminals hide the weapons because “if they are found in possession of them that’s a criminal offence, so they do secret them in bushes where they know where they are and easily accessible to them”.

A large number of officers were in Hillfields for the first day of Operation Sceptre - a weeklong campaign of activity to tackle the growing problems of knife crime.

Activity this week will include:

Weapon sweeps with community members where police will be looking for knives hidden in public places.

Checking that retailers are being responsible and only selling knives to people of the correct age.

Officers using knife arches and knife wands to search for weapon.

More officers at transport hubs including bus stations where we will be talking to children about knives and in some cases using knife arches to check if pupils have knives on them

A knife pole - a tall, free-standing metal detector - was used in Hillfields to search for potential knives on people, and the pole is also set to be used in the city centre today.Other police activity will take place across the city throughout the rest of the week.