00:00Certainly, so Operation Lido is an operation that's been running for the past couple of months
00:04across southeast BCU in order to reduce the violence within this area.
00:08We've had a couple of really tragic youth murders that have taken place since January 2025
00:14and we've been doing everything we can to try to reduce that violent vigil within this area.
00:18The operation itself has been really successful so far.
00:20We've arrested over 40 people, seized over 20 weapons, including a taser last night.
00:25So there's been some real successes in this so far.
00:28The Metropolitan Police said stop and search remains one of the most effective tools available to officers
00:34to prevent violence and detect crime.
00:37The force carried out a three-day surge operation in August focused on tackling serious youth violence
00:45with a particular emphasis on identifying and disrupting the carrying of knives and other weapons.
00:52The operation, involving 114 stop and searches, resulted in 14 arrests,
00:58including six for possession of an offensive weapon, one of which was for possessing a taser.
01:04Officers carried out targeted activity across Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley
01:09using crime data and intelligence to deploy at locations where the risk of violence and weapon carrying was highest.
01:16So over the last year, we've seen a decrease in knife-enabled offences.
01:21We've seen a 10% decrease across the whole of the Met for knife-enabled robbery.
01:26We've also seen a decrease in knife-enabled offences across southeast BCU,
01:31which is higher than that trend, up to 12% recently,
01:35which is all thanks for operations such as this.
01:37So the stop and search is a really useful and successful tactic.
01:41We find in the last 12 months, we've recovered 3,800 weapons.
01:46We've recovered 28,000 drug seizures.
01:50So it's an effective tool.
01:52It reduces the amount of weapons on the street,
01:53and every weapon we take off the street is another life saved.
01:56So there's a lot of work that's been done for other areas as well.
01:59So there's been a change in the law very recently,
02:01which makes a lot of these weapons illegal to owning the home as well,
02:05which is a really positive step forward.
02:07We need to remove them from the streets as well.
02:09It's the streets where they're being used, where they use that violence,
02:13and where they're causing serious injuries to our public.
02:16So that's where we need to focus our attention as well.
02:18So we work with education as well.
02:19We work with our partners in education to ensure that our youths are fully aware
02:25of exactly what we're doing as police.
02:27And obviously, we have that education piece as well.
02:29When we stop and search young people in the area,
02:34educating them on exactly why we're doing it.
02:37And what a good stop and search is about informing them
02:39of the reasons why they're getting stopped,
02:41educating them about the area,
02:43educating them about the impact that knife crime can have.
02:46I think they're easy to get hold of in this day and age
02:51with such an easy access through social media and things to weaponry.
02:55We're seeing increases in gang violence,
02:58which we're having to combat.
