Get grip on knife crime, Met told

TACKLING knife crime must be top of the agenda for the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, London's deputy mayor for policing said today.

Kit Malthouse accused Home Office ministers of "blundering around" on the issue and warned "it's about time somebody got a grip on this".

He said London Mayor Boris Johnson's focus on knife crime since his election in May last year had "tapped a vein of concern".

"The message is definitely out there. We have galvanised the public," he added.

But he cautioned against claiming success too soon, saying: "The one thing the public do not want to see from politicians around crime is complacency.

"We will have to be very, very careful to see a really sustained reduction before we claim anything."

Mr Malthouse is also vice-chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, which will help to choose the Met's next Commissioner from a shortlist of four in the coming months.

Asked whether tackling knife crime should be the number one concern of Scotland Yard's new top officer, he said: "I think it has to be. The Met have already said it is their highest priority now. One of the things we said to them right at the very start of our mayoralty was the efforts on knife crime had to be up front and, above all, sustained.

"It had to be much more than a blitz."

A total of 34 teenagers died from stab wounds in Britain last year, 23 of them in the Metropolitan Police's area.

Mr Malthouse said Mr Johnson's Conservative administration in City Hall was looking beyond the next election on dealing with knife crime.

"Every death is a failure and a tragedy. Every death is an appalling thing to happen on the streets of London, and the longer it goes on the worse it is," he said.

"We want to put in place some of the long-term work that is needed, so that when Boris and I are no longer here, kids that are four now and will be 18 then will be taking different directions. We took a strategic decision that we weren't going to mess around with crime in the same way other politicians have - you muck around with the statistics, you dance around like an amateur John Sergeant in Strictly Come Dancing."

Asked whether he thought the Mayor's team had won the battle against blades, Mr Malthouse admitted: "I don't think we have. Are we detecting a change? I think so, yes."

The deputy mayor was scathing about the way the Home Office released apparently favourable knife crime figures on 11 December that were criticised the next day by the UK Statistics Authority as "premature, irregular and selective".

He compared this to US president George Bush's notorious "mission accomplished" speech in May 2003 suggesting major combat operations in Iraq were over. Since then a bloody insurgency has claimed thousands of civilian and military lives.

"There is a serious problem. Labour will trumpet that crime is falling," Mr Malthouse said.

"But in that mix crime is also changing, and in many ways it is becoming more serious."