‘Zombie knives’ causing rise in stabbing deaths in UK: Police
Violence is spiraling out of control in the British capital as gun and knife-related attacks have reached record highs and the metropolitan police are dealing with a shortage of officers.
London's murder rate is soaring because "feral" youths are stabbing people multiple times with so-called zombie knives, making it virtually impossible for paramedics to save them, one of Scotland Yard's most senior officers suggested.
Martin Hewitt, assistant commissioner of Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement in Greater London, said the level of violence had got significantly worse over the past five years with his officers now routinely administering "trauma medicine" on the streets of the capital.
"The violence is getting greater. If I was stood here five years ago, I would probably be talking about knife offences where there was generally a single puncture wound,” he said.
"We are now routinely seeing multiple stabbings. That is one individual stabbing somebody multiple times,” he added. "Some of the CCTV footage that we see is shocking and quite frankly feral when you look at a group of individuals bearing down on another person."
"You will have all spotted the other trend change which is the nature of the weapons being used. These so called zombie knives, the hunting knives and machetes.”
There have been 1,296 stabbings in London since the beginning of 2018 and at least 51 people have been fatal, according to official statistics from Metropolitan Police.
Deadly stabbings are occurring every three days in the British capital amid fears of the resurgence of the so-called “postal code wars” between rival gangs in London, according to figures released in March by the Office of National Statistics.
Stabbings in London are at their highest level in six years, ONS figures show.
Last year, nearly 13,000 knife crimes took place in the capital, about 2,500 more than 2016. The spate of violence has sparked large-scale police operations and urgent policy changes.
Overall, there were about 40,000 recorded knife offenses and 7,000 recorded gun crimes across the UK in 2017.
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