Yahoo News Police show off the terrifying knives seized from London's streets as violence grows
Forbidden on the streets and hidden from sight these are the lethal weapons seized from London’s streets as knife crime rockets.
Police forces across the capital have used their social media accounts to showcase the deadly knives they’ve taken off the streets.
The images were shared as former commander Bernard Hogan-Howe saidBritain needs 20,000 more police officers on the streets to combat the epidemic.
On Friday, 17-year-old Jodie Chesney was stabbed to death in a park near Romford, east London. A day later, Yousef Ghaleb Makki, also 17, was killed in Hale Barns, near Altrincham.
Weapons ranging from a meat cleaver to a lock knife – have been seized and posted online by police. The true number of confiscated weapons is likely to be much higher.
It comes after two teenagers, a Girl Scout and a pupil at a top private school, were stabbed to death in over the weekend.
The assortment of knives recovered by police officers in Camden, Islington, Shoreditch, Enfield, Haringey and Charlton come as new statistics show the number of under-16s treated in hospital for stab wounds has nearly doubled in five years.
Doctors are battling to save three children a day on average as knife crime rates soar to the highest level since the Second World War.
Recent figures have revealed 347 under-16s were taken to A&E with stab wounds last year, up from 180 in 2012-13, the number of child knife killers has risen by 77% in two years, and Knife-point robberies by teenagers have leapt by more than 50% in the same period
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This weekend’s murders follow the fatal stabbings of three teenagers in a fortnight in Birmingham, which led to West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson declaring a ‘national emergency’.
On Monday Theresa May has a cross-Government response to knife crime as she rejected claims police cuts had contributed to a series of brutal stabbings around the country.
The Prime Minister vowed to tackle the causes of knife crime by addressing the issues which led “so many young people” to carry blades.
But Mrs May was accused by political opponents of presiding over reductions in police numbers and cuts to youth services which have contributed to a rise in violent crime.
