Residents choose to fund a police sweep of Poplar Park, leading to discovery of 15-inch knife and other weapons

A HAUL of weapons, including a 15-inch bowie knife, metal bars, wooden poles and claw hammers were found in a police sweep in Poplar on October 1, funded at the request of local residents.

A council-run You Decide programme allowed residents in the Limehouse and East India & Lansbury wards to electronically vote for local projects to receive �275,000 of council and NHS Tower Hamlets money in February, including a police weapons search of Poplar Park.

Officers cordoned off parts of the park and green areas in and around the nearby Will Crooks Estate, near Poplar High Street and recovered over 75 items, including the bowie knife with a 11-inch blade, seven other knives, a knuckle duster, a quantity of herbal cannabis and face masks.

Sergeant Wayne Collett, from the Limehouse Safer Neighbourhoods Team, said: “This is a fantastic find.

“These weapons have been safely removed from the street.

“We will now begin the task of finding out whether any of these have already been used in a crime.”

The You Decide programme provided �2.4 million this year to be spent on projects in Tower Hamlets.

Projects allowing children from the age of 11 to take a GCSE in their mother tongue, including in Bengali or Chinese and providing out of school study support and community football coaching were among those chosen.

Each secondary school in Tower Hamlets also received �10,000 to give one-to-one tuition for 15 to 16-year-olds ahead of their GCSEs while the council also funded teams of ‘handy persons’ to help older people with house tasks, home security and accident prevention.