After recent figures showed knife crime has doubled across Greater Manchester over the last three years, GMP moved fast to remove more than 600 weapons from the streets last month.
The report – carried out by Manchester Metropolitan University on the behalf of Greater Manchester Police – uncovered that there has been a huge 90% increase in crimes involving blades with teenagers at the forefront of most of the offences.
During the week of September 16-22, 10 Amnesty bins were spotted around Greater Manchester in an attempt to encourage members of the public to anonymously dispose of their knives.
An impressive 632 knives were taken off the streets of Greater Manchester prompting police to keep them permanently in an effort to ease the growth in knife crime.
Superintendent Chris Downey said: “The consequences around carrying a knife are huge and range from being expelled from school, through to loss of life.
“A big part of my role is to inform people of the catastrophic after-effects of carrying a knife, with one point in particular being that even if you don’t plan on using the knife, just by carrying it, your chances of becoming a victim of knife crime increases.”
Across the week of action, officers made 44 arrests for separate incidents involving knives – arrests varying from suspicion of carrying to robbery, while over 230 stop searches were conducted, the majority of which ended in an arrest.
Throughout the week students from schools and colleges across Manchester received over 120 educational visits from officers to spread awareness and educate the youth on the dangers of carrying a knife.
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