POLICE armed with metal detectors scoured Swindon parks in search of stashed knives.

Half a dozen PCSOs and special constables spent the day searching play areas and green spaces in Eldene, Broadgreen and North Swindon.

It came towards the end of a two week knife amnesty, which has seen hundreds of weapons handed in to bins at police stations across the county.

 

Searching the undergrowth using the metal detector.

PCSO Lee Hare, who helped organise the metal detector search, told the Swindon Advertiser: "It's part of Operation Sceptre, tackling knife crime. We're targeting places where knives have been found or there's intelligence to suggest there might be weapons.

"Knives will be strategically placed. A drug dealer or drug user might put them in a place that's hidden but easily accessible."

 

PCSO Lee Hare

On Saturday lunchtime officers were searching the play area next to Broadgreen Community Centre. In the same park in mid-September armed police uncovered a £12 Wilko axe stashed beneath a planter and a teen searched during the operation was found with a makeshift knife.

In Swindon, knife crime has risen slightly in the last 12 months. Mr Hare stressed the knife crime rate in the town remained low: "However, there's a very small minority of people who carry knives. This operation is to show we're out there looking for the knives and get them off the street."

The PCSOs discovered drugs paraphernalia in the Broadgreen play area, including a cannabis grinder that smelled strongly of the class B drug. Earlier in the day in Eldene, Mr Hare said they had uncovered a length of metal pole that could be used as a weapon together with what appeared to be a makeshift knife fashioned from a sharpened spoon handle.

 

Officers search a planter in the Broadgreen play area.

Asked what message he had for those who carry weapons, Mr Hare said: "Most people who carry knives are more likely to be a victim of crime themselves. There is a a good chance the knife could be taken off them and used against them."

Anyone who comes across knives stashed in parks and hedgerows should call Wiltshire Police on 101 and officers would remove them, Mr Hare said.

 

The cannabis grinder