Education the key word from latest knife crime week of action

(from left) Chloe Castledine delivering a speech, Chief Inspector Karl Thomas, officers conducting a knife sweep

Hundreds of the county’s young people were taught valuable lessons about knife crime during a week of action dedicated to this topic.

From hearing heartbreaking accounts of loss, to having the punishments knife-carrying can lead to outlined to them, students learnt a lot.

This was all done as part of a national police-led campaign around knife crime called Sceptre, which Nottinghamshire Police participated in last week.

Education was the key focus, with officers visiting lots of schools to hold classroom workshops for pupils in their communities, while providing a presence at colleges too.

Neighbourhood teams joined community partners at 52 school engagements in total, while attending 12 other education events to speak to people and hand out knife crime leaflets.   

One example saw the force’s Prevention Hub team up with Nottingham College to hold a knife crime ‘Impact’ event at its Basford campus, which attracted crowds of around 200 students.

They all heard from key speaker Chloe Castledine, who was able to get across the immeasurable damage that had been caused to her family since her 22-year-old brother Danny was stabbed to death in June 2022.

The Mansfield student was attacked at random by a man in the street who stabbed him 44 times while he was on holiday in Amsterdam, with the Castledine family left to pick up the pieces after losing their son and brother.

Officers also teamed up with partners to host a stand at Bilborough College during Sceptre week, where they spoke with more students and handed out ‘say no to knife crime’ wristbands.

The national knife crime lead visited Nottingham on Tuesday (12 November) to see some of the work being done to tackle knife crime across the city, with the force’s ongoing efforts alongside the Violence Reduction Partnership and other partners labelled as “exceptional”.

Metropolitan Police Commander Stephen Clayman added that it was “compelling to see real examples of people embedded in their communities, not only suppressing violence in the moment, but also building in longer term prevention work.”

A catalogue of different policing activity was carried out during the week of action – all with the intention of shining a light on the work that is conducted all year-round by police and key partners to tackle knife crime.

As part of this, 12 knife amnesty bins were rolled out inside police stations, which resulted in 166 weapons being handed in by members of the public during Sceptre, which ran from 11 – 17 November.  

This was on top of the 161 knives and other weapons that were recovered a few days earlier when the force’s four permanent amnesty bins were emptied for the first time since August.

Other police activity saw neighbourhood teams make several arrests linked to weapon-enabled crime, while carrying out 22 knife sweeps in the community and setting up metal detecting knife arches at two locations too.

It wasn’t just students who were educated about knife crime, with these lessons also extended to shopworkers, with 23 stores visited by officers to remind them of the rules around selling knives.

On top of that, the force’s cadets supported the knife crime team in visiting 18 stores to conduct test purchase operations, during which the young visitors tried to buy knives at the till.

Of these, two stores failed the test, with appropriate follow up action now due to be taken against the shops, in line with Trading Standards.

Chief Inspector Karl Thomas, Nottinghamshire Police’s knife crime lead, said:

“Knife crime is a subject we never take our eyes off as an organisation, with a lot of work going on all year-round between us and our partners to try and stay one step ahead of these offences before they happen and to take weapons off our streets.

“Educating the public, especially young people, about the dangers and consequences of knife carrying is essential to helping ensure they don’t feel the need to pick one up in the first place.

“We were therefore really pleased to be able to engage with so many school pupils, college students and other young people about this critical subject during the latest week of action.

“Hearing someone like Chloe Castledine talk about the devastation knife crime can cause is far more impactful than anything our officers could say, so we’re really grateful to her for sharing her experiences.

“I’d also like to thank everyone who listened to our last appeal to utilise our knife amnesty bins and take weapons off the streets, which again makes a real difference.”

#NottsAgainstKnives