A KNIFE TO THE HEART OF BRITAIN
Shocking scale of youth knife crime revealed ++ Children with stab wounds double in 5 years ++ Knifepoint robberies up 50% ++ As two more teenagers’ lives are cut short, it’s...
SHOCKING figures today reveal the scale of the youth knife crisis after another weekend of carnage on Britain’s blood-soaked streets.
The families of two more murdered teenagers – a Girl Scout once invited to Downing Street and a pupil at a top private school – were in mourning last night. New statistics show the number of under-16s treated in hospital for stab wounds has nearly doubled in five years.
Doctors are battling to save three children a day on average as knife crime rates soar to the highest level since the Second World War. As a former police chief branded the epidemic of stabbings a ‘national crisis’, the figures revealed:
A total of 347 under-16s were taken to A&E with stab wounds last year, up from 180 in 2012-13;
The number of child knife killers has risen by 77 per cent in two years;
Knife-point robberies by teenagers have leapt by more than 50 per cent in the same period, and the number of teens
carrying out knife-point rapes has surged by a third.
It came after Jodie Chesney, 17, was stabbed in the back as she sat on a park bench with her boyfriend in Romford, east London, on Friday night.
Yesterday her distraught mother laid flowers at the scene as relatives said they were struggling to come to terms with a ‘random and unprovoked’ attack on a ‘beautiful, lovely and quirky young girl with her whole life in front of her’.
In another horrific attack, Manchester Grammar School pupil Yousef Makki, also 17, was stabbed to death in the Cheshire village of Hale Barns on Saturday. Police were quizzing two 17-yearold private school pupils yesterday.
The murders follow the fatal stabbings of three teenagers in a fortnight in Birmingham, which led to West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson declaring a ‘national emergency’.
Last night Home Secretary Sajid Javid promised to meet chief constables this week as he came under intense pressure to end the bloodshed.
Former Scotland Yard Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe accused ministers of failing to get to grips with a ‘national crisis’ and of leaving police ‘in the Dark Ages’.
An investigation by Channel 4 Dispatches into Wild West Britain, to be broadcast tonight, looked at hospital and police data to uncover the shocking rise in children being caught up in knife crime.
NHS data shows that 1,029 teenagers aged 19 or under were treated for assaults with knives or other sharp objects across England and Wales last year – up from 55 per cent from five years ago.
More than two-thirds of the kniferelated injuries were treated in hospitals outside London, the NHS Digital figures show. It follows Office of National Statistics data showing there is almost twice as much knife crime outside of London compared to in the capital.
Separate police data obtained by the programme under Freedom of Information laws demonstrates that the number of teenage perpetrators of crimes involving blades has also risen.
The number of knife killers under the age of 18 leapt by 77 per cent between 2016 and 2018, from 26 offenders to 46.
A breakdown of age-related data from 21 police forces shows that the proportion of youths committing knife-point robberies has increased by 50 per cent, from 656 offences in 2016 to 999 in 2018. In the same period, the number of teenage rapes and sexual assaults using a knife increased from 24 to 33.
Lord Hogan-Howe told Dispatches: ‘I have to admit to being shocked by the huge rise in the number of young people being stabbed.
‘It’s incredibly worrying and something we should all be concerned about... This is clearly a national crisis.’
The retired top officer called for an extra 20,000 police officers to flood socially deprived areas, saying: ‘We need to increase police numbers in these places and reduce the drug supply into the UK and its distribution, including by county lines. Our technology is in the Dark Ages. What we need is great facial recognition and behavioural science software that helps officers to find who and when to search.’
He added: ‘I just don’t see anybody getting a grip of this crisis. The Government needs to appoint somebody who is going to lead it day after day. Call it a knife crime tsar if you like.’
Policing minister Nick Hurd said: ‘One of the big challenges underpinning is the reality that for too many young people, particularly in our big cities, carrying a knife now feels normal.’
Mr Javid added: ‘Young people are being murdered across the country and it can’t go on. We’re taking action on many fronts and I’ll be meeting police chiefs this week to hear what more can be done. It is vital that we unite to stop this senseless violence.’
Britain’s Knife Crisis: Young, Armed and Dangerous, tonight at 8pm, Channel 4. Comment – Page 16