London vows knife crime action after tragic weekend

Britain’s knife-crime epidemic should be treated “like a disease”, interior minister Sajid Javid said Tuesday, as the government announced a summit following another weekend of stabbings. The issue was top of the news agenda again after 17-year-old Jodie Chesney was killed in an east London park as she sat with friends, and Yousef Ghaleb Makki, also 17, died near Manchester -- the ninth and 10th teenagers to be knifed to death this year.

Prime Minister Theresa May announced she would hold a “summit... in the coming days... to explore what more we can do as a whole society to tackle to this problem. “A growing number of young people have lost their lives in a cycle of mindless violence that has shocked us all,” she told MPs. “We will only defeat the scourge of violence if we understand and address the complex root causes,” she added, under pressure from main opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He blames cuts to police forces for making the problem worse.

“If there are sufficient police numbers, can the prime minister please explain why yesterday the defence secretary was offering to send in the military to assist,” he asked. “The police clearly do not have the resources to deal with it.” Home Secretary Javid earlier held emergency talks with police chiefs, saying that “police resources are very important to deal with this”. “I want serious violence to be treated by all parts of government, all parts of the public sector, like a disease,” he added.

May caused controversy earlier this week by saying there was there was no direct link between certain crimes and police resources, contradicting London’s police chief Cressida Dick, who said there was “obviously” a correlation. Javid also promoted the use of stop-and-search powers in preventing knife crime.

“I think that stop-and-search is a very valuable tool and some police forces have started in recent years making even more use of that, and they have my full support,” he said. May introduced reforms when she was interior minister to use the powers in a more targeted way following accusations that black and ethnic minority individuals were being disproportionately affected.