We need long-term, major investment if we are to deal with knife crime properly

A £100m promised boost to police coffers to combat the rising tide of knife crime will only plug the gaps ‘short-term’ says South Yorkshire Police Federation.

A rise in the number of stabbings across the country has prompted Chancellor Philip Hammond to release the funds from his spring budget.

However, the funds won’t address the long-term issues of knife crime says Federation Chair Steve Kent.

“I do welcome any kind of investment into the problem and I understand that the £100 million will go to the force areas that have been affected by knife crime increases, of which I believe we are one of them,” he said.

“But all it is going to do is pay for short-term overtime for officers who are already stretched, to work over to plug the gaps.

“What we need really is long-term, major investment which, unfortunately, is going to be in the billions rather than the millions to raise the establishment of the police across the country, to give us the ability to go out and proactively police again, something that’s been lost.”

Having the resources and investment to do that proactive police work while taking a multi-agency approach to the spiralling knife crime problem is key, he said.

“It needs to be a multi-agency approach and obviously there’s a concern about the lack of youth facilities and the fact that society is feeling the pinch cost wise, which can sometimes force more people into crime.

“From our side of things, we need to have the tools ourselves to tackle that. We can’t be here to plug the gaps for every other service whilst we’re neglecting our own duties in trying to proactively deal with it,” Steve said.

“I do think policing has probably been cut the hardest of the lot really, across the board. So, they really need to start putting that money back into us, to get our infrastructure back.

“They have to tackle this head on.”