The big four supermarkets have been caught breaking the law banning knife sales to juveniles, a police chief revealed today.
Chief Constable Alf Hitchcock, who leads the nationwide fight against stabbing crimes for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said the breaches were discovered during undercover test purchases carried out by under-age police cadets in areas where there was a known blade problem.
He said that smaller shops had also been found making unlawful sales and that those caught continuing to do so this year will face prosecution rather than further warnings.
The officer said that one in five of 391 recent test purchases by under-age police cadets had resulted in a shop breaking the law by selling a blade. The 78 occasions when the law was broken included 23 in London.
He added: “We have at least one fail in each of the big four supermarkets. You would hope and expect that most of the big stores would have got it by now, but they still fail.” He stressed that the bulk of the failures were local corner shops.
He warned: “We generally tend to focus on stores in high crime areas and the areas where they have got knife crime problems. So it is targeted and you would expect the stores to be thinking, ‘This is not a good thing to be doing because of what’s going on in the area’.
“During this year we will start to revisit places and if they haven’t sorted themselves out they will find themselves in big trouble.
The big stores, we have agreed to provide them with details of which store it was so without trying to get the manager sacked we have said, ‘Here’s where your problem is, can you see if you can put it right’ — giving them feedback to get it right. The bulk [of those breaking the law] are the smaller stores.
"During the next 12 months if we don’t see an improvement some of those are likely to see themselves prosecuted.”
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