January 16, 2025
How can police stop knife crime? Here’s what they’re trying
This article was previously featured in The Times
After a Times report exposed the scale of the problem across England and Wales, we explore some of the measures being taken to tackle it
David Woode, Crime Correspondent | Constance Kampfner, Northern Correspondent
The Times
Weeks after they regained power, Labour launched a coalition to stop young people being drawn into violence and to gather evidence to help inform government policy.
Knife crime has risen across England and Wales since the Covid-19 pandemic, driven by a 47 per cent surge in violent robberies and knifepoint phone thefts.
• Knife crime is rising — we looked at the data to find out why
Ministers will come under greater pressure to flesh out details of their programme when the national policing lead for knife crime submits his review into online knife sales this year.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has already used a speech to “make it a mission for our whole country to halve knife crime in a decade”.
But frontline police officers rely on a patchwork of initiatives to fight knife crime.
The projects include:
- State-of-the-art knife-detection poles replacing arch-style metal detectors in West Yorkshire.
- Firearms officers — trained to deal with catastrophic bleeds during terror attacks — passing on these lifesaving skills to young people in the City of London.
- Teenage police cadets in Greater Manchester going undercover to expose law-breaking shopkeepers selling cheap knives to children.
Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told The Times it would “take an enormous effort to move the dial” to reduce knife crime.
In a frank interview, Rowley, Britain’s most senior police officer, admitted: “We’re not going to tackle a problem of this size without deep, serious commitment across multiple agencies.”
Here, as part of a Times series on knife crime, we detail these projects that are designed to halt knife deaths and protect the public.
The basement bleed workshop
In the basement of a central London police station, 15 sixth-form pupils from London and Berkshire watch a firearms officer demonstrate how to save the life of a teenager who has been stabbed.
PC Liam Masterson, of City of London police, kneels beside a bloodied crash test dummy with a “Stop the bleed” training kit — containing scissors, a tourniquet, rubber gloves and a vented chest seal.
The sight of “bright red blood” means the casualty is experiencing heavy blood loss and could suffer organ failure or death, Masterson says, adding that asking for help, applying pressure and dialling 999 will buy the victim time.
A tourniquet should be applied above the joint and pulled tight. A scarf or tie can also be used. “If they try to remove it, bat their hand away,” Masterson says. “This is the only thing saving their life.”
Officers launched the workshops last year and can work with up to 200 people a day. After a pilot in select schools it has since been introduced across London and the home counties.
PC David Jarvis, a firearms officer, says: “We’re not saying all young people will be involved in knife crime but these skills can be used on victims of road traffic collisions or on someone who has cut themselves in a bar. We weren’t made to do this but we wanted to pass [on] our skills.”
Charles Oppong, 18, from Kennington, who wants to work in project management, says: “Being from south London where gang crime is quite high, if you were attacked in the street, you’d wish somebody would come to help you.”
Since 2019 the force has installed more than 300 bleed-control kits in bars and pubs across the Square Mile. Hundreds more are located nationwide at train and bus stations, near corner shops and public buildings — often alongside defibrillators — and are accessible 24 hours a day.
When used, they can increase the chance of survival. There are at least 15,000 kits in the UK but there is no central register of their location.
Meet the knife cadets
Dressed in puffer jackets and trainers, two boys advance to the checkout and hand over a 5in knife. One is a GCSE pupil with braces on his teeth. The other, with his mop of blond hair and cherubic features, has just started college.
They wait for the woman behind the till to ask for their ID. She glances at them before scanning the blade.
After paying a few pounds, the boys step out onto the streets with their weapon. “No one batted an eye,” they tell a police officer as they surrender the knife.
These are no ordinary 16-year-olds — they are Greater Manchester police cadets who have been given the day off school to go undercover and test shopkeepers in some of the city’s most violent neighbourhoods.
It is illegal to sell a knife to anyone under 18 in England but, in just one morning, a third of shops fail to demand proof of age — despite the cadets looking too young to buy such items.
In one shop, a woman sells them a £2 knife and says: “Be careful, guys, don’t be messing about.”
Sergeant Paul Heap of Greater Manchester police says officers are increasingly seizing cheap knives. “They’re easy to carry, they’re easy to get,” he adds.
The shops targeted as part of Operation Venture — Greater Manchester police’s violent crime-reduction programme — are independent discount and hardware shops, which are the most likely not to comply with legislation, police said.
Some carry a wide array of knives, from 2in blades to large meat cleavers.
After each positive undercover purchase, Heap and his colleague PC Aspinall speak to the shopkeepers.
Of the six shops we visit, two are given warnings and told they will face prosecution if they break the law again. Heap says the approach is “not about catching them out” but to encourage them to operate a Challenge 25 policy.
But Shazia Shahzad, a shopkeeper at the Big Discount Bargain Store in Gorton, a suburb southeast of the city centre, appears defensive when challenged by the officers.
“The problem is the parents,” Shahzad says. She claims to have faced aggression from parents who send their children to buy them vapes, cigarettes and other restricted items.
Heap dismisses her argument. “I think that might be just an excuse to pacify us,” he says later. “She’s got all the power in the world by not selling the items.”
Greater Manchester police record about 400 knife-related crimes each month — with most taking place in the north of the city. Ten per cent of the knife carriers are aged 15-17, figures show.
In September 2023 Nathaniel Shani, 14, was murdered by two boys armed with a knife and a screwdriver in the inner-city suburb of Harpurhey.
Shani, an air cadet, had ironed his uniform and polished his boots moments before he went out.
The killers, Kyle Dermody and Trey Stewart-Gayle — who were 14 and 13 at the time of the crime — were each convicted of murder.
Both were detained for life with a minimum term of 13 and 10 years respectively.
The cadets helping Operation Venture, whose identities are protected, are worried about knife crime. “Someone got stabbed around the corner from my house,” the first boy says. “You don’t know if someone is carrying or not, it’s a guessing game.”
Knife arches
Outside Krakow Mini Market in the Harehills area of Leeds, primary school pupils glide past on scooters unaware of the state-of-the-art portable knife detector looming beside them.
The Metrasens Ultra search pole stands at 6ft tall and flashes red when activated:
West Yorkshire police have five of the £10,000 devices to help officers conduct targeted searches.
Teenagers standing outside a kebab shop glare at officers detaining a young black male. Plain-clothes colleagues watched him clock the knife detector and change direction. His behaviour, they say, gave them reasonable grounds to search him.
“He’s refused to provide his name or co-operate so we’re bringing him in,” a PC says. Earlier that day a Rambo-style knife concealed in a black leather sleeve was seized during a body search.
“Every knife taken off the street is a potential life saved,” says Stephen Clayman, a Met police commander and the lead for knife crime at the National Police Chiefs’ Council, who is leading a review into online knife sales.
“Their accessibility has changed immeasurably with the internet,” Clayman says. “If you’re minded to get a knife and you’re determined, you will get one, but we must invest in work that confronts why they’re picking up knives in the first place.”
In November The Times joined Clayman in Leeds during Operation Sceptre, a biannual national week of action to tackle knife crime. Officers seized 77 knives and made 75 arrests.
Across West Yorkshire 275 people were sentenced for possessing a knife in 2023 — the fourth-highest number after the Metropolitan Police, West Midlands and Greater Manchester. The majority of offenders (71 per cent) were white.
There were 93 people killed by a knife in the ten years to 2023, and 73 per cent of victims were also white.
Clayman, who spent many years as a homicide detective in London, said: “We used to deal with kitchen knives, machetes and £3.99 lockable knives sold through newsagents. The knives I came across many years ago didn’t tend to be the zombie knives we see now.”
Since September last year, it has been illegal in England and Wales to possess machetes and zombie knives, but these weapons are still being sold online from black-market dealers.
Clayman appealed to the parents and guardians of “someone who is potentially vulnerable” to carrying a knife.
“It doesn’t take much to get hold of one — even if you think they can’t,” he said. “It’s only a click away, probably on a social media feed.”
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