Met police tweets may encourage young people to carry knives, research finds

Force published about 2,100 seized knife images in a year, which experts say could be counterproductive

Young people may be nudged into carrying knives by the police, research has found, as a new count showed the Metropolitan police circulated more than 2,100 images of seized knives on Twitter in a year.

In the same period, three leading violent-crime prevention charities - Hope Collective, the Ben Kinsella Trust and Dwaynamics - circulated two images of knives between them, according to research by the Green party in the London assembly.