KNIVES SEIZED FROM CHILDREN UNDER 16
As Met chief admits knife crime is worse than she’s ever seen, police release shocking images of …
BRITAIN’S top police officer admitted yesterday that knife crime is at the worst level she has seen in her 35-year career.
Cressida Dick blamed drugs for youth knife violence rocketing to the ‘highest and most worrying level’ she had ever encountered.
The Scotland Yard Commissioner spoke out as police released shocking images of deadly blades seized from children under the age of 16 in the past two months.
Miss Dick told MPs: ‘ Stabbings of young people specifically have been the number one priority for me since I was commissioner.
‘I’d have to say that the last couple of years undoubtedly have been the highest and most worrying levels I think in my service.
‘It’s deeply worrying, it’s a horrible set of offences, definitely more younger people involved. More knives involved in the serious violence on the streets.’
It was a ‘ new and tragic phenomenon’ for young people using weapons like rambo knives to stab other teenagers multiple times with ‘extraordinary’ violence, she told the Home Affairs committee.
The Met Police chief urged the Government to step up efforts and put in more money to combat knife crime which she blamed on drugs.
‘We have to really stress just how much of this serious violence facing our young people is connected to drugs one way or another,’ she said. ‘It’s actually in my view at the root of it all.’
She warned that county lines gangs were ‘ teaching each other’ how to groom children as drug runners.
On the war on drugs, Miss Dick said: ‘I think people have slightly taken their eye off the balls in the last few years and I regret that.’
In a bid to stop children being lured into gangs, the number of neighbourhood police officers in London schools is set to rise from 270 to 500 this year.
Miss Dick also told the committee that police were starting to turn the tide and in the past year the number of under-25s reporting knife injuries has dropped by 15 per cent.
Her comments on the problem were echoed by Chief Constable Dave Thompson. He said youth stabbings in his West Midlands region were at the worst level he had seen, particularly within deprived communities.
Dealing with the problem has led to a backlog of 2,100 calls about other crimes to which officers have not yet responded, added Mr Thompson.
He said enforcement or stop and search alone would not solve the problem. ‘We need to make our young people feel safer, in many of our inner city areas they do not feel safe enough,’ added the chief constable.
In the last year nationally, 27 teenagers have been stabbed to death.
Miss Dick referred to an attack ‘just yesterday’ on a 15-year- old boy with an 8in kitchen knife in Forest Hill, south-east London. A boy of the same age has been arrested.
Yesterday an 18-year-old was fighting for his life after suffering multiple stab wounds in an attack four miles away in Kidbrooke.
The haul seized by police included a banned zombie knife with a 12in blade found in a search of a property in Worcester Park, south-west London. A 15-year-old boy was arrested.
Separately, three knives, a hammer, an axe and a mallet were found in the bedroom of a child in Stoke-on-Trent.
TORY MP Sir Christopher Chope asked Mr Thompson if people could protect themselves from knife crime by learning martial arts such as judo. But the police chief told the committee ‘the best prevention technique is to run away as fast as you can’.