New Metropolitan Police boss Cressida Dick yesterday pledged a five-year crackdown on violence to curb the rise in gun and knife crime in London.
Scotland Yard’s first female commissioner promised an “end-to-end” approach in tackling crime and a tough stance on violent offenders.
Speaking within days of three young men being stabbed to death in the capital, she said knife and gun crime were among the most significant challenges she faced. She declared: “I want to bear down on violent crime, in all its aspects from terrorism to sexual offences but definitely knife and gun crime, particularly as it affects young people.
“It’s an absolute tragedy losing young people in the way we have been to knife crime. We are seeing too many young people carrying knives feeling that it will protect them when in actual fact it clearly doesn’t and can be incredibly dangerous and tragic for them and their families.
“Violence, for me, is what this next five years is going to be about. You have to prevent people getting involved and you have to intervene really hard.”
Speaking on the London terror attack last month, Dick said the unarmed policeman who died during the attack might not have been able to protect himself even if he had been armed.
The attack on Westminster, in which a man drove into a crowd of pedestrians before stabbing policeman Keith Palmer, prompted scrutiny of security arrangements at the Houses of Parliament.
However Dick, who gave a reading at Palmer’s funeral on her first day as Metropolitan Police commissioner last week, said that he might still have died even if he had been armed.
“It’s very hard to say that if Keith had been armed, he would be alive today,” Dick said on BBC radio. “There’s a backdrop of loads of members of the public where he was standing, so it might have been, even if he had had a firearm, difficult for him to take a shot.”
Khalid Masood ploughed a rented car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and stabbed Palmer to death, killing five in total before being shot dead by another officer. Some politicians have criticised security at the parliament and suggested that Palmer should have had a gun.
Dick said she would wait for the results of reviews into the attack before drawing any conclusions. She said there would likely have to be “some changes” to security provisions, but added that the attacker was looking to challenge freedoms that Britons value.
In a separate interview with LBC radio, Dick said that “we need to be alert” to any possible new attacks but emphasised that people should carry on going about their daily business as usual.
CRESSIDA DICK INTERVIEW WITH SARAH SANDS AND JUSTIN DAVENPORT. PICTURE JEREMY SELWYN
Cressida Dick
