Lives rest on a knife edge
Thursday, 24 July 2008
There have been calls this week for a local amnesty on knives such as this one issued by the Home Office in May and June.
THE Mayor has issued a heartfelt plea for an amnesty to slash the number of potential 'murder weapons' on the streets of Antrim after shocking new figures confirmed that knife crime has more than doubled in the past year.
The Guardian can reveal that there were 35 blade-related offences in Antrim last year, compared to just 16 in the previous 12 month period.
This disturbing rise in knife crime has been reflected nationwide - and already dozens of young men have lost their lives as the epidemic of senseless violence takes hold.
In response to the 'worrying statistics', Independent Councillor Oran Keenan called for this latest collection, where handheld blades can be anonymously discarded in concealed containers, in an attempt to make Antrim safer.
Councillor Keenan believes Antrim Borough Council must work with Police locally to stamp out this growing problem - before more lives are lost.
“We have worked with the PSNI in the past setting up amnesties to remove knives from our streets and obviously another one wouldn't do any harm," he said.
“The threat of knife crime isn't confined to Antrim either, it stretches right across the Borough, which was seen when a home in Crumlin was burgled recently by a man armed with a knife.
“We need to prevent this situation from getting to the stage of murder or attempted murder."
Tough new sentencing measures unveiled by Criminal Justice Minister, Paul Goggins, this week saw the maximum sentence for anyone caught carrying a knife double to four years.
Adopting a zero tolerance approach, offenders face a possible jail sentence just for possession of a knife - and the Mayor has applauded this uncompromising new stance.
“Knife crime seems to have doubled throughout the whole of the UK and Ireland over the last few years, which is evident through more people ending up on mortuary slabs and in the Accident and Emergency wards of our local hospitals," he said.
A new system for recording crime, in particular when a knife is involved, was implemented in April 2007.
This records all knife-related offences within one attack, or 'occurrence', where previously it was seen as one separate incident.
