BirminghamLive sat down with West Midlands Police boss Craig Guildford to discuss knife crime and safety at this year’s Christmas German Market
Police will deploy new tactics to keep people safe at Birmingham’s Christmas German Market this year after two city centre stabbings in just eight days.
West Midlands Police boss Craig Guildford says his force will deploy new and familiar tactics to keep people safe during the festive season.
It comes after two 17-year-olds were stabbed in separate incidents near Primark’s flagship store in the space of just a week earlier this month – causing concern in the community.
Enquiries into both city centre stabbings are ongoing.
READ MORE: Inside West Midlands crime figures as police boss says he’s ‘pleased’ over 6 per cent drop
Mr Guildford sat down with BirminghamLive last week to discuss knife crime and how his force plans to keep people safe for the rest of 2025.
He said he was pleased to see an overall drop in crime, including knife crime, but admitted more work is required.
“Knife crime continues to reduce,” he said. “That’s really good, it’s healthy, it’s going in the right direction, but we have not let up any of our pressure on that and it needs to keep going down further.
“Knife-enabled robberies are down by a quarter and knife crime, down 16 per cent. When it comes to knife crime, we’re very forthcoming with making arrests and placing people before the courts – which is what’s required.”
When asked if he was satisfied with how quickly his officers responded to the two recent stabbings in the city centre, he said: “Yeah we have really good response rates.
“In an emergency, regardless of your postcode, we get there in under 10 minutes. Three years ago that used to take 15 minutes.
“Of course, we can’t be on every street corner, at every hour of the day, but the response times to the middle of the cities, across the West Midlands, are absolutely spot on. We get there quickly, we carry out efficient investigations.”
When asked what he would say to people who might feel afraid of going into the city centre, he added: “What I would say is, I regularly go into the city.
“I’ve got an elderly father and we regularly go out for a couple of evening drinks. We’ve got a safe city, Coventry is a safe city, Wolverhampton is a safe city.
“These crimes, when they do occur, do get quite a bit of focus but we’re determined to investigate them, to detect them, and to prevent them from happening.”
Mr Guildford said his officers will be “doing some of the same things” but also “some different things” to keep visitors to the German Market safe.
“I don’t want to give away too many of the tactics but obviously you will see us there, in high-visibility numbers,” he said.
“You’ll always see armed cops, you’ll always see neighbourhood cops, and there will be a number of officers in and around the market in plain clothes as well.
“That is a good tactic to prevent some of those offences where people may travel into the area to try and target individuals who are just visiting.”
He denied there was any link between the overall drop in knife crime and potentially people reporting less – perhaps through fear of retaliation.
“It’s never been easier to report things to the police,” said the top cop. “If you think about it, not many people come to front desk to report things anymore, but we have lots of online reporting now, because it’s easy to do.
“The fear of crime will always be there but the ability to tell us that something has happened has never been easier for members of the public.”