Knife haul of horrors
The deadly arsenal taken off streets in only 7 days
THIS is the shocking haul of deadly weapons taken off the streets by police in just seven days.
In a terrifying snapshot of blade Britain, the lethal arsenal recovered in a week-long blitz includes samurai swords, zombie knives, butterfly knives, machetes and even a chainsaw.
Thousands of weapons were recovered last week as part of a country-wide knife amnesty across Britain named Operation Sceptre to reduce the number of weapons on the streets.
In one case, a boy of 11 was arrested for carrying a blade in Swindon town centre.
Wiltshire Police also identified ten other children who habitually carry knives, including a 16-yearold boy found with a hammer and a CS gas canister. Elsewhere, some forces recovered a record number of blades through stop and searches or weapons being handed in to bins at police stations.
In Cumbria, 282 weapons were given to the force, more than double the 113 blades surrendered last autumn. Hertfordshire Police saw 680 blades dumped in marked wheelie bins at police stations.
And in Humberside, officers recovered seven deadly swords, while a chainsaw and dozens of knives were seized in Kent.
In response to a 150 per cent increase in knife crime in Kent between 2010 and 2018 – the highest rise in any region in England and Wales – the force’s chief constable, Alan Pughsley, announced yesterday that any officer in a public-facing role who is likely to have to deal with violence will be trained to use a Taser.
Across 34 counties in England and Wales outside London, kniferelated offences have risen by 45 per cent, recent figures show.
The number of people caught carrying or making threats with knives is at the highest level in a decade. More than 21,000 offences were recorded last year in England and Wales, with one in five culprits aged under 18.
It comes as a 13-year- old boy caught using a kitchen knife to clean his teeth in the street avoided jail yesterday.
The youngster was caught on CCTV strolling the streets in east London waving a six-inch blade, which he used to dig out food from his teeth, before stabbing a bollard, Highbury Corner Youth Court heard.
He had been arrested in Stratford on March 16 after trying to hide the knife down the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms. The teen, from Kentish Town, north London, had admitted possession of a bladed article in a public place.
District Judge Gill Allison said her hands were ‘tied’ over what she could do due to his age.
She handed him a ten-month youth referral order, and ordered him to attend a knife awareness course and pay costs of £60.
The knife crime epidemic has helped fuel a six-fold increase in shop robberies in the last year, figures show.
On average, 115 shop workers are attacked at work every day, with the number of robberies increasing by 508 per cent, according to the British Retail Consortium.