The Catch-up: Soaring knife crime linked to police cuts, Met commissioner says

What happened?

The UK’s most senior police officer today disputed Theresa May’s claim that soaring levels of knife crime in the UK are not linked to police cuts. Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said there is ‘obviously’ a connection between reductions in officer numbers and street violence. The number of police officers in England and Wales has dropped by more than 20,000 since 2010, and levels of violent crime have risen in recent years. On Monday the Prime Minister said there ‘was no direct correlation between certain crimes and police numbers’.

What is causing the surge in violent crimes?

Ms Dick joined the numerous voices insisting increases in violent crime are indeed linked to police cuts. She said: “There is some link between violent crime on the streets obviously and police numbers, of course there is and everybody would see that.” John Apter, chairman of the Police Federation, said Mrs May was ‘delusional’, and former Met Commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe called for 20,000 officers to be recruited and demanded that ministers ‘get a grip on the crisis’. Figures released last month show the number of fatal stabbings in England and Wales last year, 285, was the highest since records began in 1946.

The Met Commissioner also hit out at middle-class recreational drug users, saying they have ‘blood on their hands’. The drugs trade is one of the key drivers behind street violence, particularly the ‘county lines’ drug dealing networks that target children and teenagers to work as couriers.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan accused the Prime Minister of crying ‘crocodile tears’ over rates of knife crime. He blamed cuts to preventative services and police for the rising rates of street violence. He said: “We have fewer police in London now in 2019 than at any time since 2003 – our population has grown by a million-and-a-half since 2003. Also, over the last eight years dozens and dozens of youth centres have closed down, hundreds of youth workers have lost their jobs, thousands of young people who used to have youth centres to go to (now) haven’t.”

Read more about this story
More police isn’t the answer to knife crime (The Independent)
Family of victim call for tougher sentences (Evening Standard)
Middle-class drug users ‘have blood on their hands’ (Yahoo News UK)
The laws being used to tackle knife crime (Sky News)

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