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Police easing fears after knife murder
POLICE chiefs are trying to restore calm in the Sheffield suburb rocked by the murder - stressing fatal knife attacks are rare and the general public have nothing to fear.
Chf Supt Simon Torr said knife crime is down 17.7 per cent so far this year.
Between April and July there were 93 incidents reported to South Yorkshire Police where knives were believed to have been seen compared to 106 in the 12 months before.
And police say overall violent crime is also down 14 per cent, with 512 fewer incidents reported compared to the same period last year.
"We are doing a lot of work to reduce knife crime and we don't actually get many stabbings but we take knife crime very seriously," said Chf Supt Torr.
"On this occasion we are keeping an open mind as to the motive, however we can say there is no-one out there attacking indiscriminately.
"We think there was a reason for this attack and that the general public are not at risk.
"As part of our house-to-house enquiries in the area trying to gather evidence we are urging people not to worry, telling them that crime is down and giving them some key messages to try to reassure them."
Chief Supt Torr said the force is one of a number involved in the Government's Tackling Knives Action Programme, where operations are mounted to reduce the number of youths carrying knives. The force also regularly uses knife arches to catch people carrying weapons.
"We also run our successful Guns and Knives Take Lives campaign where we go into schools to warn about the dangers and consequences of carrying weapons," added Chief Supt Torr.
"As part of that we show young people injuries sustained by people who have been stabbed in the hope of deterring them from getting involved. We also use Section 60 powers which give us the right to carry out wide scale searches in specified areas.
"The majority of knife crime involves younger people which is why we focus on them, hoping that if we educate them at a young age they won't grow up to carry weapons. But with this latest incident we don't believe that to be the case. Older people were involved.
"Where older people are involved we do enforcement work. If you compare Sheffield to core cities such as Nottingham, Leeds and Liverpool we have less knife and gun crime."
Chief Supt Torr said he has been "liaising closely" with the senior investigating officer overseeing the murder investigation.
A core team of around 50 officers are working on the case but with associated raids and enquiries there have been as many as 200 involved.
Chief Supt Torr has vowed to make use of every possible resource his force has available.
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
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