Sadiq Khan’s plan to secure London knives won’t work

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has a problem. Violent crime rates in his city are rising dramatically and as mayor, the buck stops at Khan’s desk. But what is the mayor proposing?

It won’t work.

While knives are the most commonly employed murder weapons in London, there are hundreds of millions of then across Britain. And where firearms are heavily regulated in the U.K., anyone over 16 years of age can walk into a store and buy a set of steak knives. Correspondingly, it will be impossible for Khan to get knives off the streets. Even then, Khan’s claim that “there is never a reason to carry a knife” and that the police will catch all such offenders is farcical.

For a start, there are good reasons to carry knives. The Washington Examiner‘s commentary editor, Tim Carney, notes that he often carries a knife for reasons of “self defense, whittling, cutting threads, and carving love notes to my wife in the bark of beech trees.”

That versatility of use speaks to another problem for Khan: Those whom he most wants to prevent from carrying knives, young people in gangs, are wise to the law. They know that if they can produce a “reasonable excuse” like Carney’s for carrying a knife, prosecutors will not carry the case forward to trial. That’s why, for example, British gang members are known for carrying baseball gloves alongside baseball bats. Although very few Britons play baseball or even understand its rules, the gangs know that a glove gives them an excuse to carry a bat. If stopped by police, they simply tell the officer, “We’re just off to play some baseball.”

Everyone knows it’s a joke, but everyone also knows that no jury can convict beyond a reasonable doubt.

So what should Khan do instead? First, he should drop the narrative that small steps will produce outsize results. The mayor’s announcement of a 120-strong Metropolitan Police unit dedicated to countering violent crime is not going to do much in a city that is home to dozens of well-organized and aggressive gangs.

A better alternative would be to dramatically boost the personnel and resource strength of existing Metropolitan Police commands such as the Trident anti-gang warfare and serious and organized crime units. Khan could also instruct the Metropolitan Police commissioner to innovate from prior operating procedures. For one, the commissioner might consider altering the form of current armed response vehicle patrols in London. Those patrols currently consist of three officers at all times, but if one officer was moved to support local response units, the police could confront armed gangs more quickly. Two unarmed officers with batons and CS gas spray cannot be expected to confront a large group of armed men. An armed officer would balance that equation.

Next, Prime Minister Theresa May should instruct Britain’s National Crime Agency to prioritize London-focus intelligence gathering on gang command structures, organization and operations. This is a major weakness of the Metropolitan Police at present and would allow, with patience, senior gang leaders to be sentenced to prison under long sentences.

Khan is right about one thing: The Metropolitan Police need more political space to carry out stop and search activities. While there are obvious civil rights concerns here, the police can target their activities to gang neighborhoods. It might also be preferable to offer small compensation payments to those who suffer repeated stop and searches without weapons being found.

Finally, the courts need to support the police more effectively. Weak sentencing does little to impose serious punishment on those convicted of knife offenses. Government statistics show that in in 2017, only 57 percent of those convicted of unlawful possession of a knife were given custodial sentences. Accounting for early release statistics, the average effective time incarcerated was around 3 to 4 months. This allows gang members to gain respect from incarceration without suffering serious punitive consequences.

Ultimately, however, Khan must wake up. This isn’t a problem with his favorite pet hate, social media, it’s an issue with intelligence and enforcement.