Extra officers are being posted into dedicated knife crime teams after Nottinghamshire Police completed its national officer Uplift allocation a year early.
Additional police officers have been allocated to proactively target criminals who carry weapons and drugs on the streets.
These officers will see the dedicated front line knife crime teams grow again.
Nottinghamshire Police is adding new officers to each of its two specialist knife crime teams, proactive mobile policing units trained in assertive stop, search and containment techniques.
In the last year the teams’ actions have led to 259 people appearing in courts and 168 potentially lethal weapons being taken off the streets during more than 1,400 proactive stop and searches.
Patrolling in police cars, unmarked vehicles and on foot, team members carry out operations in every part of the county, often responding to specific intelligence from neighbourhood policing teams.
Superintendent Kathryn Craner, of Nottinghamshire Police, said: “We are committed to reducing knife crime and safeguarding victims, and we will take any action necessary in order to do that.
“Our specialist knife crime teams are a vital resource in our work to keep people safe and have delivered exceptional results since they were introduced.
“Not only they an effective way to take potentially lethal weapons off the streets; they also help us to lift the lid on more serious drug-related criminality.
“Put simply, some people often carry knives because they are involved in other types of crime and feel the need to protect themselves. The more of those people we find the more related offences we uncover and the safer our streets become.”
PC Ken Tinley, of the city knife crime team, explained how the teams operate. He said: “We regularly patrol areas that have been highlighted as areas of risk, where we look out for faces we know from our intelligence and look for certain behavioural indicators.
“Things like people who might be acting strangely or hanging around with individuals who are of interest to us from the intelligence we receive.
“When we are out on the road we are always in pairs – a driver and passenger. The passenger in that scenario is really acting as a real time intelligence officer – checking out who may be in a target vehicle, why they are in a particular area and any known links they may have to criminality.
“When we do decide to pull people over we know we could be dealing with potentially dangerous people, so we work to ensure we have all the resources we need to safely detain them. For example, if we have four suspects in a car we will ensure we have four officers to detain them. Our aim is to safely strike very quickly and in numbers to make it clear to people that there is nowhere for them to go.”
Chief Constable Craig Guildford said: “We are passionate about this work because we know it helps us to take serious offenders off the streets and also keeps members of the public safe. I am delighted to announce some additional officers for our specialist knife crime teams and know they will each play a vital role in taking weapons off our streets and locking up dangerous offenders who blight our communities.”
The news of the additional investment comes as Nottinghamshire Police supports the national Operation Sceptre, a week-long campaign to highlight the work forces undertake all year round to tackle knife crime. The latest ONS figures show the force now sees less knife crime than neighbouring Leicestershire and Derbyshire with less offences per 1000 population than the national average.
We will be undertaking more weapons sweeps, educational input for schoolchildren and proactive operations to reduce offending and keep people safe.
