Avon and Somerset Police launch operation to tackle knife crime

Ch Con Sarah Crew said knife crime "is as much a community and public health problem" as it is "a criminal justice problem"

A police force is launching a new operation to tackle knife crime.

The announcement comes just over two weeks after teenagers were stabbed to death in Knowle West, Bristol.

Avon and Somerset Police's chief constable Sarah Crew said the force would be "standing up a much more high-profile proactive operation".

Ch Con Crew urged communities to share information about knives with the police and for people carrying knives to put them in surrender bins.

But she added that "unreasonable" use of stop and search powers was not the solution to the problem.

Speaking to the force's police and crime commissioner's regular performance and accountability board, Ms Crew said the new scheme would be "not unlike our Operation Hemlock that targeted anti-social behaviour on e-scooters and bikes, to bring all our various skill sets in the organisation together to tackle this problem".

Many say young people are carrying knives because they feel unsafe

She said: "This is not about short-term suppression, it is also about tackling the root causes as well in the medium to longer term," reports the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Asked by commissioner Mark Shelford about the police's use of stop and search for knives, Ms Crew said: "Stop and search, we know, is a really intrusive power.

"And, whilst we need to be very robust and confident in using it we can't use the scourge of knife crime as a reason to use our powers where the information isn't present and where our use of the power is likely to be unreasonable."

She explained the police had been delivering talks to young people in school and in other groups to explain the dangers of carrying knives, developed workshops for children, worked on preventing sales of knives to under-18s in shops and worked with Bristol City Council to develop a short film about knife crime.

The bleed control kits are installed next to defibrillators

Officers had also worked with youth services, carried out patrols, used data to target habitual knife carrying and worked with the border force to stop knives purchased online from entering the country, she said.

"We are also obviously championing the surrender of knives to make our communities safer," she continued, explaining there are 17 knife surrender bins across the force's area, which have seen about 4,000 knives handed in since 2016.

The police also hope to scale up the number of bleed kits which have already been rolled out to 150 locations, with plans for them to be at 300 other locations by the end of the year.