THE BLADES OF DEATH Police seize 50 knives from city streets in just two weeks
THESE shocking pictures lay bare the number of knives police took off the streets in just two weeks.
The Metropolitan Police released nearly 50 images on Twitter of the weapons used in robberies, left in bushes or found in stop and searches and alongside drug finds.
One shows a bid to conceal a razor-sharp blade in a shopping bag, while a discarded knife was found by a walkway on the Tower Gardens Estate in north Tottenham.
A machete at least 25in-long was recovered after a moped chase in Catford and other blades were seized from children as young as 15.
In Camden, three knives were taken from a man who decided to use a meat cleaver as a weapon – and a sickening picture from Islington shows a 20in sword carried with several bags of cannabis.
Even more genteel areas of London do not escape. One knife was unearthed in a Highgate street, while in Notting Hill officers took a kitchen knife, baseball bat and a rolling pin from three men.
Tackling
Since the launch of anti-knife crime Operation Sceptre in 2015, the Met has made 5,791 weapon sweeps, 700 test purchases in shops selling knives and 4,565 stop and searches.
There were 2,294 arrests, 473 for knife or weapon possession and 1,435 weapons taken off the streets.
Last year the London murder rate of 134 hit a 10-year high, with more than a fifth of victims teenagers or children.
Campaigners praised police for posting images and their sweeps of parks and public areas, which Patrick Green of the Ben Kinsella Trust said was “really welcomed”.
Dr Mark Prince, who runs the Kiyan Prince Foundation, named after his 15-year-old son who was fatally stabbed in 2006, said: “Work like this does make a difference.”
East Ham Labour MP Stephen Timms, stabbed at his surgery constituency in 2010, praised the Met but added: “We also need to stop people getting them [knives] in the first place. That means tackling the online platforms which supply them.”