The Home Office is looking for ways for police to identify or detect people carrying, overtly or covertly, steel-bladed knives in open spaces, crowds and uncontrolled areas (that is, where there is no presence of security). There is a requirement to detect steel-bladed knives in the presence of other commonly carried benign metal items (such as keys, phones, coins). As well as being concealed on the person, this also includes knives carried in bags (such as handbags, backpacks).
The Home Office is interested in all forms of potential solutions from specific technologies, through to advances in behavioural sciences. Potential solutions could be at any level of maturity, but the department is particularly interested in those at the higher end of the scale. A deadline to email a submission form to [email protected] is 5pm on July 20. This comes under the Defence and Security Accelerator scheme (DASA), that’s featured in the July 2018 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
As the Home Office admits, the UK has seen more use of knives to enable acquisitive crime and in stabbings; yet the ability to detect concealed knives is limited.
