Met Police detective: Stop and search ‘saves lives from knife crime’

The controversial tactic is one of the ways the Met hopes to bring down the presence of knives in society.

Among the young Londoners to be killed using knives in recent years are 15-year-old Elianne Andam, stabbed to death in a row over a teddy bear, and 14-year-old Kelyan Bokassa who was attacked on a bus in Woolwich.

The use of stop and search is something that the force’s commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has been transparent about as a “challenge” in confronting such offences, posing potential to jeopardise trust within communities in London.

In an interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Sir Mark said: “As we reach in to tackle those issues, the confrontation that comes from that reaching – whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek – the danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.”

Pictures of police vehicles at Barkingside Police Station (Image: Newsquest)

Talking to this paper, Det Ch Insp Jackie Sweeney reiterated its importance as a tactic in battling knife crime, but also stressed the need for stop and searches to be conducted responsibly.

She said: “Stop and search is always quite a hot topic of conversation. When we’re talking about knife crime there’s probably no better example of why it’s still such an important tactic.

Det Ch Insp Sweeney said stop and searches are a hot topic (Image: Newsquest) “It’s obviously got to be used with all the things we would expect, all the dignity and procedural justice and all those things.

“Sometimes I think the importance of that tactic in saving lives can be lost, because knives are recovered from individuals and it’s quite a binary outcome. It’s a really important aspect of our strategy.”

This problem of trust is something officers in the East Area Command – which covers Havering, Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham – and beyond see as “central to the focus” of all teams.

Det Ch Insp Sweeney added: “Neighbourhood teams tend to take the lead on a lot of it, but actually it’s everyone. Whenever they’re having an interaction with the public, it is part of the thought process that this is an opportunity to build trust.

“There’s lots of specific engagement work that goes on, but it’s also again part of an everyday approach because it has to be in order to build trust. It’s central to all of our decision making and it is a really important aspect of it.”

She admitted they “can never really tell” what public reaction they will get in their attempts to tackle knife crime.

But she said recent work with knife amnesties has seen some pleasing feedback.

Det Ch Insp Sweeney pointed to the charity FazAmnesty, which visited East Area and saw “dozens of knives surrendered”.

On patrol with the Met in east London (Image: Newsquest) “We were really pleased with how engaged people were around that, you can never really tell what you’re going to get from things like that but it was a really good outcome.

“In terms of engaging with the community, it’s always a case of really wanting to find the right balance between reassuring them that action is being taken, engaging with them to hope to get additional information and intelligence, but then not overdoing it and making people think there’s nothing but knives wall-to-wall in London.”

It is not just crime that the Met is fighting.

A major budget shortfall of £260 million has seen significant cuts to policing levels in the capital, resulting in the loss of around 1,700 police officers and plans to see around half of all remaining police front desks close.

On a day out on shift with the East Area Command, this reporter witnessed first hand how staffing levels boost the Met’s ability to address crime. 

There were five police cars out patrolling and responding to incidents across the three boroughs. 

But this is not the resource level they encounter on a day-to-day shift, as we were told they sometimes only have two vehicles left to cover their large area of operation. 

When asked how the cuts are affecting the Met’s ability to successfully address youth violence and knife offences, Det Ch Insp Sweeney confirmed officers are having to make more focused strategic decisions, adding that a joint approach between public services is required.

She said: “It makes it really important for us to always make sure that we are using the best information, we’re prioritising with as wide a range of resources as we possibly can. Obviously, we always want to do more with more.

“It just means that we’ve got to be really focused whenever we’re making strategic decisions about resourcing. The mental health side of things – it overlaps more with the gang culture and youth violence than perhaps we think sometimes.

“We sometimes tend to think of mental health being a particular group or demographic that’s separate to kind of gang nominals.

“But actually the more joint working there is between mental health services and all of those different services, the better equipped we are to tackle it jointly.”

Knife crime features heavily in every day decision-making, she added.

“It can make a difference between when we’re talking about the use of resources and how we can prioritise different things.

“The involvement, or potential involvement, of knife carriers enables us to focus more resources in those areas because obviously the high risk.

“There’s a lot of strategic oversight, but actually I’d say it weaves into the decisions that people make right down to out on the street patrolling.”

She said communication from the public is always needed.

“That is the absolute number one thing that I would always ask everybody to be thinking about.”