From September 24, these long knives with serrated edges and machetes will be added to a prohibited list of dangerous items – which also includes butterfly knives, samurai swords and push daggers.
The scheme will run for four weeks – between August 26 and September 23 – in police stations across England and Wales.
Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson urged the public to “do the right thing”.
Legislation was announced in Labour’s king’s speech, which built on the Conservative ban announced in January.
It will see six-month sentence for possession of a banned weapon will quadruple form six months to two years, while anyone caught selling knives to under-18 faces two years imprisonment.
We’re joined by Evening Standard home affairs editor Martin Bentham, to discuss the zombie knife ban and these weapons’ devastating impact on young Londoners.
Plus, in part two, Team GB Olympic 800 metres champion Keely Hodgkinson and victorious climber Toby Roberts on their plans after Paris 2024 gold medal success.
Here’s a fully automated transcript of this episode:
From London, this is The Standard podcast, and I’m Mark Blunden.
Coming up in this episode…
What’s next for Team GB’s new golden generation?
But first, zombie knives and machetes will finally be banned from next month amid horrific attacks on London’s streets.
Ahead of the ban, those in possession of these gruesome looking weapons are being urged to hand them in at special bins at the capital’s police stations as part of a blades amnesty.
Then from the 24th of September, zombie knives with those horrific looking serrated edges and machetes will be added to the prohibited list of dangerous items which also includes butterfly knives, samurai swords and push daggers.
Now for the time being, the government says there will not be any repercussions for those surrendering the potentially dangerous knives safely while Policing Minister, Dame Diana Johnson urged the public to do the right thing.
The scheme will run for four weeks from the 26th of August until the 23rd of September at police stations across England and Wales.
Legislation was announced in Labour’s King’s Speech, which built on the conservative ban announced in January.
It will now see the sentence for possession of a banned weapon quadrupling from six months to two years.
While anyone caught selling knives to under-18s faces two years’ imprisonment.
To discover more, we’re joined by Evening Standard Home Affairs editor Martin Bentham, who explains what zombie knives look like and their impact on London street crime.
Basically, they’re very big knives with serrated edges. Sometimes, well, they used to be with descriptions on them and so on and logos and things like that to make them look hideously dangerous.
But the impact of these types of knives, these sort of status knives as the police refers them, has been negative because, of course, one argument with knife crimes has always been that knives are around, every house kitchen knives and so on.
But the police will tell you, in fact, Commander Stephen Clayman, who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council, lead on knife crime, Metropolitan Police Officer, said to me recently for The Evening Standard that a lot of offenders were going out carrying these status weapons.
They like to intimidate other people.
And you often see it when you see photographs of weapons that have been taken from people.
It isn’t the average kitchen knife. It is the big, hideous looking knife that most people would never consider possessing, but have been acquired by people out on the streets committing knife crime and trying to intimidate running drugs or whatever else it might be, or just as general gang members trying to intimidate their rivals, their opponents and other people.
And so the impact has been very negative.
And of course, the reality is that although again, a kitchen knife can kill and can do serious damage, clearly the bigger the knife that’s been used, the more likely it is to inflict very, very serious harm on people.
And that’s what we’ve seen over the years in London and to an extent elsewhere in the country.
How come this blanket ban has taken so long to get onto the statute books?
It’s been a criticism of the new government.
So the government, the previous government had legislated and the new government, as Labour previously accused the Conservative government, as was, of failing to take action because there had been repeated promises of zombie knives being outlawed.
And of course, as you often find, and different measures passed, and there was a measure passed several years ago, but of course, it then turns out there was a loophole that meant that zombie knives could be kept, as long as they didn’t have images depicting violence on their handles, and they could be kept and sold.
So although they were legal to have on the streets, as any knife basically is, unless you’ve got a reasonable excuse for having it, which obviously you don’t with those types of weapons, there’s a loophole that people could have them.
And therefore, obviously, if you’ve got the ability to have them and the police can’t seize them, if they go and raid somebody’s home or whatever, and they know the people, and they know that people have been buying these weapons online.
Some people have been buying them in bulk to sell on to other people, to other offenders.
And so that created a loophole that allowed, in the case of zombie knives, them to be still in circulation and still available to people.
So that’s what the current legislation, which today we’ve got this surrender scheme amnesty coming into effect until the actual legislation comes into effect, banning zombie knives altogether.
Could you give us an overview of London’s knife crime rates?
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show a 16% increase year to the end of March this year.
The 12 months at the end of March, that’s slightly down with 20% increase over the 2023 year, calendar year.
But obviously, it’s still a very high rate of increase.
In fact, the overall total of just over 15,000 offenses was one of the very highest totals that have been recorded.
In fact, the highest total for the equivalent period recorded over the past decade or so.
And so, it’s a problem that’s certainly not disappearing.
And in fact, if anything has got worse again in the last two or three years, and we’ve had some very high numbers of teenage fatalities, this year so far, it’s actually relatively, relatively lower.
But again, one or two incidents, that can all change very quickly.
And certainly, we’ve been having, I think, 21 last year, not just knife crime, but teenage homicides involving a knife or other weapons, sometimes a gun, but most of them are knives.
And we’ve seen, obviously, an awful lot of homicides, but underlying that, there’s been a large amount of knife crime.
The mayor has pointed to the fact that there has been a decline in under 25s being injured with a knife over his time as a mayor.
And so there has been a little bit of progress, a little bit of progress in that respect, that the numbers receiving serious injuries and so on, a bit with a knife, young people has fallen, a little bit, but overall knife crime is high and continues to be high, continues to be a major problem.
And we do obviously still see, unfortunately, some absolutely terrible tragic incidents with young people, children dying as a result of, actually, wanton violence is not usually just something casual, it’s quite often something very deliberately inflicted on them.
If you read some of the accounts of the court cases, it’s really quite disturbing how violent some of these killings have been, and how deliberately people have been targeted, chased down, stabbed repeatedly.
There’s a group of people, troubled young people, who are involved in this type of offending and using the type of weapons we’re talking about here overwhelmingly, and very difficult problem to solve in the long term.
Of course, the issue is, yes, you can bound the weapons, that will certainly help and try to take some of these weapons off the streets, because that’s what they’re using.
Obviously, beyond that, there’s a much greater need to tackle some of the underlying causes that are driving some of these young people behaving this way, because clearly, the average young person, young man, it’s usually young men, does not go around carrying a knife.
So, there’s a certain group of people who are doing it, and it’s what’s motivating them to do that, and the whole sort of cultural violence that’s associated with it.
Coming up: Team GB Olympic champions, Keely Hodgkinson and Toby Clark on their post-Paris plans.
Why not hit follow in the meantime and give us a rating.
Now Great Britain’s Olympic Athletes came home from Paris 2024 with 14 gold medals, 22 silvers and 29 bronzes.
While this year was our lowest gold medal tally since Athens 2004, across the podium finishes, Team GB matched their London 2012 performance.
Now a couple of stars from this summer of sport shared their hopes for the future at the National Lottery’s Team GB homecoming events at Manchester Arena.
I’ve actually still got some more races to do.
In the track and field, our season hasn’t finished yet, so I’ll have the Diamond League final in a few weeks, and two other races as well. So, I’ll look forward to doing that.
Hopefully bring home what will be my third Diamond League title, which is always really fun.
So, I hope to do that and then I’ll have some downtime.
That’s Hodgkinson speaking to the Press Association, and she discusses her hopes for smashing the world record.
The world’s next year, late September in Tokyo, that’s the medal I don’t have.
I have European goal, I’ve got Olympic goal, but I don’t have a world goal.
So, it was really great to try and do that again next year.
It’s definitely something I’ve thought about probably since I raced in London.
I think that record has stood for so long, and it’s been a long time before anyone’s even hit the 53 seconds.
I think I can, I now believe I can do that.
And I think now with the science that we have in the sport and the technology that we have that’s up and coming, I think we should welcome it.
That’s what’s helping us get near to these records.
And yeah, I’m all for it.
Of course I can get to it.
And on to the climbing wall where Surrey’s Toby Roberts was victorious in the men’s combined sports climbing event.
It feels absolutely incredible.
It’s been just a week since the games and I’m still absolutely buzzing.
It just truly feels surreal to have this like medal around my neck right now.
Just making the Olympics is just an achievement in itself.
And then I go into the competition, I try to get rid of all of my expectations, even though I knew if I had a good performance, so I would have a chance at a podium.
You never expect to win a gold medal and there’s no right to go in there and take it.
So, to be sat here with it now just feels truly surreal.
When I started climbing, it was relatively small still.
So, to see it be included in Tokyo and then now in Paris and to see the massive amounts of growth and the amount of people who are getting into it, it’s just so nice to see.
Climbing, I think it really deserves the big stage and to see so many people enjoying watching it, it’s just really nice to see, and everyone should get into it because it’s a really cool sport.
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