We spent the day with Luton police as part of its week of action on knife crime

Our reporter went along with community officers for a glimpse into the work done to tackle knife crime in the town

Transcript

00:00 I spent the day with police in Luton as part of their week of action against knife crime.

00:16 Starting at 7am I got into the back of the police car for my morning with PC Dobbs and PC Khan

00:22 up for their patrols around the town. This week was Operation Scepter, a national crackdown on

00:28 knife crime and preventing blades from falling into the wrong hands. This includes talking to

00:33 young people about the dangers of carrying knives and pointing out where the knife bins in the area

00:38 are. Before long we were blue lighting across the town to respond to an incident. Luton is now the

00:47 hot spot for knife crime in Bedfordshire. Figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request

00:52 to Bedfordshire Police revealed that between January 2023 and March of this year there were

00:58 449 knife crime related incidents in Luton, nearly double the amount for the same period in Bedford.

01:05 As well as Operation Scepter, Operation Mercury Blade is also going on at the same time. The force

01:11 are using tactical patrols, deploying officers in specific locations at certain times when drug

01:17 dealing and other criminal activities are usually committed. The issue of knife crime and violence

01:30 often goes hand in hand with gangs, drug dealing and serious youth violence,

01:35 as Detective Sergeant Ramita explained. Luton has quite a few mapped gangs, in particular

01:44 what we call urban street gangs, which are gangs of mainly youth or younger people,

01:51 and we find that they are the most violent. So those gangs are mapped to us, we look at ways to

02:02 tackle the crime but also to look at safeguarding and working with partner agencies to make sure

02:09 that we protect the public and protect the people who are involved in those types of crimes.

02:17 Especially when you're looking at children who maybe don't have much or might feel isolated in

02:25 their day to day lives, they might be looking for that reassurance from a group of people

02:30 who essentially feel like family to begin with and that's sort of the exploitation piece around how

02:37 people get brought into the gang lifestyle because they feel looked after and they feel

02:42 like that is their family. And so it is a lot about safeguarding, we don't

02:50 want to criminalise children and we definitely don't, there's this sort of image of us going

02:58 after people but we don't, what we want to do is make sure that everyone's safe and is happy to go

03:03 about their life but that children are able to go to school and engage in activities that children

03:11 should engage in and that does not include drug dealing, it does not include going to crack dens

03:16 anywhere, it does not include being around weapons and firearms and knives, that's not

03:22 what we want for children and if they are involved in that lifestyle then we want to try and show

03:28 them that there is a better way out there, a way in which they don't have to risk their lives because

03:34 they will at some point, that familial link, that idea that they're safe in that group,

03:42 that's going to go because ultimately for the higher up people it is a business.

03:47 I then met up with community officers who were doing a knife sweep in the fields by Rochford

03:52 Drive. Police community support officers were trawling through hedges to find blades hidden

03:58 by criminals. Also part of Operation Scepter, community officers have been going to different

04:06 schools and institutions talking to the young people about the risks of carrying knives and

04:12 getting involved with gangs.