Cressida Dick, Scotland Yard's first female commissioner in an interview with Evening Standard has pledged a five-year crackdown on violence to curb the rise in gun and knife crime in London.
Sje has promised an “end-to-end” approach in tackling crime and a tough stance on violent offenders.
In an interview with Evening Standard, speaking within days of three young men being stabbed to death in the capital, she said knife and gun crime were among the most significant challenges she faced.
She declared: “I want to bear down on violent crime, in all its aspects from terrorism to sexual offences but definitely knife and gun crime, particularly as it affects young people.
“It’s an absolute tragedy losing young people in the way we have been to knife crime.
"We are seeing too many young people carrying knives feeling that it will protect them when in actual fact it clearly doesn’t and can be incredibly dangerous and tragic for them and their families.
"Violence, for me, is what this next five years is going to be about.
"You have to prevent people getting involved and you have to intervene really, really strongly with people who are habitual knife carriers, and that includes stop and search, definitely.”
In her first interview with the midia she also said that she planned to modernise the Met with a surge in digital policing to put people in closer touch with local officers.
She said more young people wanted to report crime online and officers were being equipped with tablets so they could spend more time on the streets.
Ms Dick added that she was proud of the Met’s response to the attack on March 22 and discussed the positive reaction of the public, saying: “Something good must come out of all that horror and one of the things is we must build on that goodwill.”
In another interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC today, she also said she doubted that Pc Palmer would have been able to protect himself if he had been armed because of the speed of the attack.
