Overview
- The Metropolitan Police concluded a two-week run of Operation Sceptre on Tuesday and arrested 243 people while seizing 159 knives.
- Eighty-eight arrests were credited directly to a new data-led targeting method that pulled information from multiple Met systems to identify highest-risk knife suspects.
- Stop-and-search operations made up a large part of the work with 77 stops recovering knives and officers running 72 test-purchase checks at shops to find illegal sales.
- The force says the campaign helped drive a 17% year-on-year fall in knife-enabled crime and delivered a 67% rise in arrests and 69 more knives seized compared with the November 2025 Sceptre run.
- Beyond the immediate removals and arrests the operation links to longer-term tactics used in programmes such as V100 and raises questions about wider use of predictive data in policing and its effects on communities and civil‑liberties oversight.