Knife robberies fall under dedicated new taskforce
The number of robberies involving a knife – or the threat of one – have dropped after months of targeted police action in seven highest risk areas, according to new data published by the Government.
After seeing a stark rise in knife-enabled robbery in the year to June 2024, driven by a 14 per cent increase across seven police forces, the Home Secretary set up a dedicated police taskforce last October.
After just nine months of activity, there has been a six per cent overall reduction compared with the previous year across those highest risk areas – with places such as the West Midlands seeing a substantial annual drop of 25 per cent.
The reduction has been driven by intense police efforts and a range of tactics, including upping visible patrols, using drones, knife arches and detection dogs to support police on the ground, and deploying plain clothes officers.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: ‘When we came to office, knife-enabled robbery was increasing at a concerning rate, but we have now started to drive numbers of those offences down through the work of our dedicated taskforces, and as a result, we have also seen the first small reduction in overall knife crime for four years.
‘The drop in knife enabled robbery in key problem areas shows the impact that our strong new action on knife crime is having, but we now need to supercharge these efforts through more smart and targeted interventions.
“New ‘hex mapping’ technology shows that the vast majority of knife crime is concentrated in a relatively small, hyper concentrated number of areas.
“We will use that new technology to support our mission to halve knife crime over the next decade.”
The announcement came as a ban on ninja swords comes into force. Ahead of the ban, at least a thousand deadly weapons have been handed in following the country’s largest weapons surrender scheme.