“OUR INTELLIGENCE was that youngsters were carrying knives and we needed to do something about it.”
Nearly 100 people in Crowthorne and Sandhurst were searched for weapons over the weekend as Thames Valley Police mounted a major crackdown on fighting, feuds and knife crime across the villages.
The force used its powers, known as Section 60, to enable it to stop and search anyone for items connected with violence. Initially in place for 24 hours from Friday at 2pm through to the following Saturday, it was extended twice and ended at 2pm on Monday.
The order applied to an area defined by the road boundaries of the B3430 to the north, Wokingham Road to the west, Yorktown Road to the south and Rackstraw Road into Foresters Way to the east, including Sandhurst Memorial Ground.
Officers were reacting to several weekends of violence, which they said included organised fights where weapons had been used.
Local Policing Area Commander for Bracknell and Wokingham, Superintendent Felicity Parker, said that the order had had the desired effect in preventing outbreaks of violence, although no weapons had been found.
And she also said that the force would reimpose the Section 60 order if necessary and continue to monitor Crowthorne and Sandhurst with a visible police presence.
“Unfortunately, knife crime is on the up, nationally and locally,” Supt Parker told Wokingham.Today. “We want to take every opportunity we can to minimise the impact people carrying weapons has on the community.
“Sadly, in Berkshire we’ve had several stabbings over the past couple of months and we need to try and do more to stop this from happening.
“Section 60 is a really good power where, particularly if we know that there is a developing situation, we can show that this behaviour is not tolerated, and that we’re doing something about it. Most of all, we’ll stop someone getting seriously injured.”
Knives were being used, she said, as a way of settling an argument. “Sometimes it starts off with a low-level matter, but then it escalates out of a small, low-time feud.
“In this instance, in Crowthorne and Sandhurst, it was around young people of school age, having disagreements. Our intelligence was that they were carrying knives and we needed to do something about it.”
Thames Valley Police had been working in the region over several weekends. Supt Parker said that the force had been concerned about gatherings in parks, and anti-social behaviour.
Officers had been dispersing youngsters and then returning the following weekend to deter further gatherings.
“We did make several arrests and we did recover knives from the area as well,” she said. “By this weekend, we’d done a lot of work with the police and with the schools to work out what the motivations were, and to understand why these things were happening.
“We put the Section 60 in place to ensure we had those powers, and got additional resources to come into the area: we had a lot of uniformed officers to make those searches and to show the community that we take this matter seriously.”
And despite the heavy rain, the police had intelligence to suggest that the gatherings would have continued.
“Yes, there was bad weather, but there were people congregating in the locations that we had defined under our Section 60 powers. We searched just under 100 people over the weekend.”
Supt Parker said that prevention was always preferable to needing to respond to incidents and the increased police presence would continue.
“I hope it helps nip things in the bud,” she said.
“Not only has it been a police effort, but the schools (have helped) as well. The secondary schools have been extremely onboard giving out those messages that the police are going to be out and ordering groups to disperse and that you will be searched.
“It is a clear message that carrying knives, carrying weapons in our area is not acceptable.
“Unfortunately, carry a knife and the consequences can be absolutely catastrophic,” she continued. “I cannot underestimate the importance of people knowing that.
“Maybe some of our young people don’t understand the gravity of what will happen if they do draw a knife or a weapon on someone.”
She also thanked officers for their work over the weekend: “I’m pleased that we’ve been able to have a significant amount of officers in those locations where people have been carrying knives, they have been able to search people who we believe could have been carrying those knives.”
