The transport secretary has dominated out putting in airport-style safety scanners in stations, following an alleged stabbing assault on a practice on Saturday night.
Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow dwelling secretary, has known as for “tough and radical action” to sort out knife crime, together with rolling out reside facial recognition know-how on the town centres and practice stations.
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The questions round safety on public transport comes after 10 folks have been injured in an alleged mass stabbing assault on a high-speed practice on Saturday, and a practice workers member – hailed as a hero for confronting the attacker – stays in a crucial however secure situation.
A 32-year-old man from Peterborough has been charged with 11 counts of tried homicide following the assault on the Doncaster to London King’s Cross LNER service close to Huntingdon, and one other at a station on London’s Docklands Gentle Railway (DLR), early on Saturday morning.
Picture:Armed law enforcement officials patrolling at St Pancras Worldwide station on Monday. Pic: PA
Requested by Mornings presenter Sophy Ridge if airport-style scanners ought to be put in at railway stations to make sure public security on trains, the transport secretary replied: “I don’t assume airport-style scanners can be the best way to go.
“I perceive why you requested the query, and I perceive why a few of your viewers is likely to be questioning about that.
“Now we have hundreds of railway stations throughout the UK, and people stations have a number of entrances, a number of platforms. So what we are able to’t do is make life unattainable for everybody.
“But we do need to take sensible and proportionate steps to make the public transport network safe.”
She additionally stated there might be elevated “visible” police patrols at practice stations for “the next few days” to supply reassurance to the travelling public.
Will additional safety be sufficient to calm the priority?
For commuters at King’s Cross station in London – one of many busiest within the nation – it should have been laborious not to consider Friday night time’s incident in Cambridgeshire.
This morning, I caught the practice with passengers heading into the capital, prepared for a brand new week.
Pulling into the concourse, we have been instantly met with a handful of police group assist officers watching passengers as they spilled off the practice.
Residence to the Eurostar service, the presence of armed police is a well-recognized sight at King’s Cross and London St Pancras.
However right now extra officers from the Met have been deployed to main stations.
The concept is to reassure passengers they’re secure on the practice community.
Outdoors the station, we met grandparents Tracy and Darren from Yorkshire who had travelled down on Saturday morning on the identical LNER service that was affected on Friday for a Marti Pellow live performance on the O2.
“We were absolutely terrified, we were both really scared,” Tracy informed me.
“We got on the same train line that it happened the night before.”
Darren and Tracy are returning to Yorkshire this morning. They’re amongst many who would welcome extra safety on the railways.
Darren says: “I’m not going to lie, it makes you worry about like your safety. Are you safe on the trains? No, you’re not.”
Right now’s extra police presence is supposed to supply reassurance – however will simply two days of additional safety be sufficient to calm the priority?
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3:14Man charged over practice stabbings
Ms Alexander went on to say that, whereas she doesn’t wish to minimise the “horrific” assault on Saturday, the trains within the UK are “some of the most safest [sic] forms of public transport anywhere in the world”, saying that for each million journeys, there are 27 crimes dedicated.
She added: “For me, one crime is one crime too many. So we will, after this, review all of our security measures, because that is the right thing to do.”
However Conservative shadow dwelling secretary Chris Philp informed Mornings with Ridge and Frost that there must be extra “surge hotspot policing in high crime areas” to sort out knife crime, and the usage of “live facial recognition to identify wanted criminals as they wander round, including as they go to train stations, so they can be arrested”.
“We also need more stop and search as well because stop and search takes knives off the streets,” he added.
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3:57Philp requires elevated use of cease and search
Final week, the federal government launched new knowledge displaying that knife homicides have fallen by 18% in a 12 months, whereas knife crime general has dropped by 5% – the primary discount in 4 years.
The Residence Workplace attributed that to the usage of hotspot patrols, knife arches that may detect knives in environments like colleges, drones, and plain garments officers, in addition to partnerships with campaigners and charities.
