Tories tell police to step up ‘stop and search’ as ​​knife crime czar warns guns are…

15 May 2024, 00:16 | Updated: 15 May 2024, 00:24

Police have been urged to step up their use of “stop and search”, with Police Minister Chris Philp insisting it is a “vital tool” and not discriminatory.

Mr Philp, MP for Croydon in south London, said the controversial policing practice was not being used enough to tackle knife crime.

“The police must use the powers at their disposal without fear or favour. I want to see them take a robust approach and that starts with increasing the use of stop and search,” Mr Philp wrote in The Telegraph.

“In the current climate, police stop and search is the best way forward, we know that. What we can’t do is use these tiptoe powers to appease.

“The first priority must always be prevention and public safety.”

Police Minister Chris Philp will join Nick Ferrari at the breakfast from 7am. Listen global player, the official LBC app.

I met with the commissioner to expedite the stop and search

It comes amid warnings that underage teenagers are being sold knives on social media apps including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.

Commander Stephen Clayman, the national leader of policing, said: “It’s still a very worrying picture of the accessibility of knives online.”

Official figures show that knife crime rose by 7% in the year to December 2023. In the year to March 2023, 82% of teenage homicide victims were killed with a knife, compared with 73% the previous year.

Read more: Met with police to increase stop-and-search, announcement coming ‘within the next couple of months’, commissioner says

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The Met has already unveiled plans to step up stop and search, and Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told LBC’s Nick Ferrari on Breakfast at the start of May that an announcement would be made within months.

Sir Mark told LBC the controversial search tactic was “working” in reducing violent crime.

Responding to a call from a black police officer who favors the tactic, he said stop-and-frisk “has gone down in the last two or three years,” with part of it being “officer confidence.”

He added that his officers “are afraid of the complaints and the investigation they get and if they feel supported behind it”.

Sir Mark told Nick: “We’re looking at ways to increase our stop and search and we’ll be making some announcements about that over the next couple of months.”

The Home Office announced on Tuesday that it will provide an additional £3.5 million in funding to research and develop new technology to enable knives to be detected remotely when a suspect passes through two points.

In addition, £547,863 will be awarded to the Metropolitan Police to fund four more vans with live facial recognition cameras.

Laws on zombie knives, machetes and swords are to be tightened from September, giving police more powers to confiscate weapons found on private property.

Anti-knife campaigner Patrick Green tonight told LBC’s Ben Kentish that the new funding would make “little difference”.

“If it leads to the development of technologies that can detect knives that have been taken out on the street … then obviously that’s a very, very good thing,” Mr Green told LBC.

“It’s not just about getting knives off the streets. They shouldn’t be on the streets and they shouldn’t be carried in the first place.

“It’s the ‘why’ we tend to miss.”

Ben Kentish speaks to a knife crime campaigner

Police practice became particularly controversial during Theresa May’s tenure as home secretary.

Mrs May admitted in 2014 that 250,000 street searches were likely to have been carried out illegally in 2013, prompting the reform of the practice.

There are concerns that it is being used to disproportionately target people from ethnic minorities.