Shock stats reveal knife crime extent
ABLITZ on knife crime in Runcorn led by a police street intelligence trawl to produce a ‘heat map’ of the most weaponsblighted areas has resulted in police seizing two blades a day over the first month of the operation this year.
Senior officers leading the efforts to blunt the threat posed by potentially deadly arms such as combat knives, machetes and swords to the town’s residents have now revealed how stop searches scored a 66% hit rate, with 56 out of 85 individuals stopped leading to a find.
Despite qualifying Runcorn’s problems against the backdrop of a national knife crime problem, they were frank about the town’s issues with blades over the last year and said that taking weapons off the streets alone will not work but that a ‘culture’ shift is needed to reverse a trend for young people, mainly teenage boys, to be sucked into a life ruined by knives and child exploitation at the hands of drug dealers who recruit cannabis-buying youths to become suppliers
ne of the key trends is young men and youths carrying knives also found to be carrying cannabis. ●
Sergeant Chris Maddocks, who has been leading the efforts in Runcorn, Chief Inspector Sarah Heath and Inspector Fez Kahn, revealed that in the 12 months to November 2017, the unit received reports of 184 offences involving a knife in the town such as threats, robberies and assaults.
Although none was fatal, Ch Insp Heath said it was the quick actions and response of an officer responding to a serious assault that had caused an arterial bleed that may well have saved the victim.
Insp Kahn added that carrying a knife should not be dismissed as not being ‘in use’ either, arguing that carrying poses a tacit risk and threat.
Sgt Maddocks, who described how the ‘heat map’ had been used to identify the areas with the highest probabilities of finding knives, also discussed how the second phase of the operation, aimed at steering young people found with knives away from crime, had been backed by research in Scotland and added that data from the Runcorn initiative would now feed into an academic study into the diversionary programme.
Ch Insp Heath said Runcorn had been kept back from the precipice of mainly city urban areas with the most severe problems but stressed that arrests alone will not solve the issue because of the accessibility of blades.
She said: “For me you can’t arrest your way out of this, I could put out three times the amount of officers and for every knife we take off the street, people can just replace it – we’ve got to stop the mindset.
“It’s not a cost thing or about police numbers, it’s something going on with the youth of today carrying knives.
“We always say the public are the police and we’re part of Runcorn, we work here and some live here.
“Work with us on this, because it could be your son or daughter who ends up coming to harm or causing someone else harm.”