Inside the stop and search blitz desperately trying to save teenage lives
LBC joined The Proactive Disruption Unit, whose sole focus is to get knives off the street to tackle youth violence
Within 30 seconds of setting off from Plumstead Police Station in southeast London, a teenager had been spotted with a knife.
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The 14-year-old was brandishing the weapon on the Barnfield housing estate in Woolwich at 3pm on a Thursday afternoon.
Sirens blazing, we raced to the scene where the officers I was with immediately recognised the boy, challenged him with tasers and tackled him to the ground.
The Proactive Disruption Unit has been told to focus solely on getting knives off the street here as part of their latest operation, tackling youth violence.
Over 16 deployment dates since June, the team has seized 30 weapons in the areas around Lewisham, Bellingham and Catford and made 54 arrests.
"The borough has one of the highest rates of youth homicide, knife crime and gang violence in London," the boss, who didn’t want to be named publicly, told the team, as he explained the plan for their latest deployment, this time with an LBC camera following along.
The task was to stop and search anyone who looked suspicious and to hunt down people known or reported to have been carrying a weapon.
Sergeant Jay Gray, formerly a Met traffic cop and now attached to the Southeast Basic Command Unit (BCU), explained that the 14-year-old we’d arrested in Woolwich was a familiar face.
"Did we not stop you on an e-bike not that long ago?" one of the officers asked, as another told me he had been arrested just one week earlier for being involved in masked armed robberies.
Asked why he was allowed to remain out to continue offending, the PC said: "You’ve got to give kids the benefit of the doubt that they make mistakes but there's got to be a line somewhere."
Over the next three hours, I watched as police drove around, following mopeds that appeared to be driving erratically or had no insurance, and pulling over boys struggling to hold their tracksuit bottoms up.
"They’ll sometimes wear more than one pair," sergeant Gray explained, "and you can often see the cuts in them where they’ve been carrying a machete."
Over the last three-day deployment at the end of August, five knives and a taser were seized by this team.
Two arrests were made for theft of a motor vehicle and three for possession of drugs with intent to supply.
Stop and search has long been labelled a controversial tactic by some, over concerns that young Black males are disproportionately targeted by officers.
The Casey Review into the culture of the Metropolitan Police in 2023 concluded that the force was institutionally racist, as she singled out the poor experience black boys were having during police interactions.
Detective Superintendent Lewis Anderson, who manages the southeast command unit, told LBC a lot of work has gone on to change how officers do it.
"There’s a lot more scrutiny on stop and search now, we make sure all of them are looked at by a supervisor. We’re doing over 1,000 a month in southeast BCU alone but it’s a tactic that works to reduce violence."
His officers know why they’re doing this work, and don’t shy away from making it clear to concerned onlookers.
On Rushey Green in Catford, I watched as a woman felt the need to film the officers who were searching two teenagers.
"Don’t worry, I have this all on camera," she told the boys, while they complained about being in handcuffs.
Nothing was found on them, but a tense conversation followed between her and one of the officers.
"Do you know why we’re doing this? Because young boys just like them are dying. Do you have a son? We’re doing this to protect him."
Figures show Black males under 25 are nine times more likely to be a victim of murder in London than their White peers are.
Scotland Yard says by the end of July this year, 14 of the 21 homicide victims under 25 were black.
Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan told LBC that officers would continue to do stop and search in areas where crime is high.
"Crime does not fall evenly across locations and ethnic groups; it’s a complex problem and what we’re doing is saving lives," he said.
As the teenagers on Rushey Green were released from their cuffs, they too started to film the officers.
"Good boy!" One of them said repeatedly to the PC who had searched him and then let him go - a nod to a social media trend showing police officers "comply" with requests from the public.
Not deterred, we get back in the car and continue hunting for weapons.