260 knives surrendered during Shropshire police amnesty - with video
More than 250 knives were surrendered at Telford and Shrewsbury police stations during a campaign aiming to make Shropshire’s streets safer.
The four-week knife amnesty, launched by West Mercia Police last month, has come to an end and the weapons that were handed in at police stations have been counted.
More than 200 knives were handed in at Telford Police Station and 60 were surrendered at Shrewsbury Police Station.
Superintendent Jason Wells said: “More than 250 knives have been taken off the streets of Shropshire and Telford as part of this campaign. Each of the knives surrendered represents one less chance for another life to be ended or ruined needlessly.
“The impact of knife crime goes beyond just those involved; it affects the whole community.
“Hopefully, following this campaign people will think twice before carrying a knife and consider the consequences for others and themselves.”
The amnesty, part of national campaign called Operation Sceptre, was launched after 20-year-old Declan Graves, of Dymchurch Road in Liverpool, was ordered to serve life in prison, a minimum of 20 years, after he stabbed 16-year-old Michael Warham from Bootle through the heart on the street in Meole Brace.
Michael was stabbed several times and died three days after he was attacked in August 2016.
People who surrendered knives at police stations across the region did not have to leave their names or any details. The blades will go towards making a plinth for Shropshire's famous Knife Angel sculpture. All the knives surrendered will be added. to the monument, which has been created to raise the awareness of knife crime.
All the weapons collected will be given to the British Ironwork Centre in Oswestry to create a plinth for the sculpture.
The 26ft angel sculpture has been made from more than 100,000 knives already collected by police forces around the country.
It is planned to stand the angel in the grounds of the Ironwork centre, overlooking the A5.
The long-running Knife Angel project “Save a Life, Surrender Your Knife” was run by the British Ironwork Centre in conjunction with police forces across the whole of England.
