London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s response to the knife crime epidemic overtaking his city has been to issue metal-detecting ‘knife wands’ to schools — but City Hall is not tracking how many times they are being used, or how many knives are being confiscated, if any.
Seventy-six schools across the capital are already using the wands, under what City Hall described as “Sadiq’s robust and comprehensive knife crime strategy”, and is “urging” more to take up his offer to provide them.
Breitbart London asked the mayor of London’s office how long the initiative had been planned, and whether it was a response the Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC) figures, as well as where it has already been rolled out, how effective it has been in driving down knife crime, and how much it is expected to cost.
Mayor Khan’s office was also asked if he had any comment on the MOPAC figures, or on London’s rising crime rates more generally.
But the response Breitbart London received was evasive. The planning timeline was not disclosed, and information on how many times a school uses a wand or how many knives they actually capture is not being compiled.
Costs of £20,000 over two years (financial year 2017/18 and 2018/19, £10,000 each year) on a total of 300 wands (150 each year) were revealed — making the lack of tracking all the more remarkable.
Khan’s comments that London is “the safest global city in the world and one of the safest cities in the world” in March 2017 — like his remarks that preparing for radical Islamic terror attacks are “part and parcel of life in a great global city” shortly after Afghan migrant Ahmad Khan Rahami detonated a bomb in New York City — have come back to haunt him.
Stats show the crime wave gripping his city is continuing to spin out of control, with homicides, rape, gun crime, knife crime, serious youth violence, robbery, burglary, and theft all soaring.
It has also become a global capital for acid attacks, and the Metropolitan Police force has revealed child grooming gangs — which have become infamous worldwide for their activities elsewhere in England — appear to be active in the city.
London has also been subject to numerous terror attacks in recent months, and Khan himself has confessed that around 200 people who fought for the Islamic State are at large in the city.