Tearful Susanna Reid blasts Sadiq Khan over Lawless London’s knife crime epidemic

A TEARFUL Susanna Reid today blasted London Mayor Sadiq Khan over the capital's violent crime epidemic as he admitted it could take TEN YEARS to tackle it.

The Good Morning Britain host became emotional as she recalled the deaths of several teens in London in the last week.

She told the Mayor this morning: "What do parents say to their teenage sons about travelling on the Tube, going out to buy chicken, going to Clapham Common in the afternoon after school?

"You can’t say that they’re safe, as the Mayor of London."

Susanna said she "can't talk about it without getting upset" because her kids regularly travel on the Tube and hang out in South London.

She added: "What will you say to parents?"

Last week 17-year old Malcolm Mide-Madariola was stabbed to death outside Clapham South station and Jai Sewell was killed when he went out to get chicken - just yards from his own home.

And a third lad was killed yesterday in Penge - just yards away from where a fellow teen was stabbed to death just a year ago.

The London Mayor said it could take up to ten years to slash crime, saying that's how long it took in places like Glasgow.

Mr Khan insisted he was "not excusing it" but pointed to violent crime rises across the country too.

He said: "The buck stops with me" but still blamed a lack of police resources and cash from government too.

"We’ve got to treat knife crime like an infection. So we’ve got to treat the infection, that means tough enforcement, that means more police officers on the streets like we’ve done," he said.

But last week there was an outcry after Sadiq Khan travelled to Brussels to beg the EU to delay Brexit - with critics saying he had "abandoned his day job".

Fellow GMB host Piers Morgan also blasted Mr Khan, telling him: "Your strategy is not working! Londoners don't feel safe!

"You talk a big game but this has increased on your watch.

"We mock the Americans for failing to deal with gun culture, they are now mocking us for our failure to deal with violent crime."

Mr Khan urged anyone who knows about their friends or family carrying knives not to uphold a "false code of honour"; and hand them in to cops to help bring them to justice.

Home Office minister Victoria Atkins told Radio 4's Today programme that the failure to charge enough people with violent crime was down to a shortage in detectives.

"We have got a problem with recruiting detectives," she said. "PCCs are nationally concerned about that."

She denied there was a link between police numbers overall and hikes in crime, but insisted that "criminals are changing their crime types" as a result of mobile communications and social media.

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