Poundland in Thornton Heath has removed its display of large-bladed knives from its High Street shop window.
Poundland: they have a strict policy on knives point of sale. Though clearly not strict enough
The store’s management removed the deadly weapons from display within hours of Inside Croydon bringing the matter to the attention of one of Croydon’s Labour MPs, Sarah Jones.
Jones, the MP for Croydon Central, had delivered a hard-hitting speech to Parliament on Wednesday night in a debate on rising levels of knife crime across the country, with particular reference to Croydon.
There have been two knife attacks, one fatal for a 15-year-old boy, in Thornton Heath just in the past four weeks.
Sarah Jones: wants more police to battle knife crime
Jones said that the Poundland window display was “shocking”, and was probably in breach of the government’s voluntary guidelines with retailers over the display and sale of large-bladed hunting knives.
The MP undertook to write to the company, while some time later council leader Tony Newman said that he had instructed council officers to take action.
The Thornton Heath shop’s display was first noted by an anti-knife crime charity supporter, who posted a video of the shop window on Twitter. Once Poundland’s head office was alerted to its store’s misjudgement and the ensuing out-pouring of public anger and condemnation of the crass act, the knives were removed from the display.
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