INDIVIDUALS carrying knives are being warned they will be caught as the police have ordered metal detector wands for all police cars. 

Police and crime commissioner for Dorset David Sidwick said “enough is enough” and ordered £20,000 worth of wands to hunt down knives on criminals. 

Mr Sidwick has also ordered a new portable knife arch which can be used by police officers across the county to search for knives. 

Speaking to the Echo, the PCC said he was “very moved” by the murder of Cameron Hamilton in August and had made sure all the right pieces were in place. 

Bournemouth Echo:

“But there is a piece missing,” he said “and that was the use of knife wands – so I have committed over £20,000 so that every police car in Dorset will have a knife wand on board and can be used.  

“The force will also have a portable knife arch coming in the near future which people may be familiar with from the train station and used by the British Transport Police. 

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“This will make not only the centre of Bournemouth but also the whole of Dorset safer from those people who decide it's a good idea to carry knives. I'd like to get to the stage where it is extremely difficult to carry a knife in Dorset.” 

Mr Sidwick added Dorset is in the bottom five forces nationwide for knife offences and that his priority around knife crime is the prevention of young people having and using them as weapons. 

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“We know too many of them are carrying them, hence the reason I started campaigning for violence reduction unit straight away.  

“Did I think that we would have that sort of tragedy on the streets of Bournemouth? Absolutely not and I hope we don’t have this again. 

“We've got to get this done and get this done fast, which is why I've committed over £20,000 for these wands and a portable knife arch.  

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“I'm determined that we will have a violence reduction unit in Dorset in order to take a public health approach and stop some of our young people carrying knives so very clearly it is a priority.” 

He added: “The only way that we will defeat the knife crime situation, the fact that too many of our young people have decided to carry knives, is in partnership. 

“That's why I'm so grateful to local authorities working with the police, working with my office, working indeed with the Bournemouth Echo on its No More Knives campaign, which is utterly brilliant, because it brings together more partners in order to actually solve this scourge on our streets.”