182 offences involving knives or sharp instruments in Derry

In total 182 offences were recorded by the PSNI in the local policing district in the Derry City & Strabane District.

That amounts to eight per cent of all knife crimes reported across the north over those three years.

Most of the offences related to instances of actual bodily harm (ABH) and grievous bodily harm (GBH) with 47 in 2018, 39 in 2019 and 53 in 2020 - 139 in total.

But there were also six reports registered of attempted murders, 21 robberies and 14 attempts to kills involving knives or other implements.

The police definition of a sharp instrument, according to a PSNI Freedom of Information (FoI) release, is ‘any object that pierces the skin (or in the case of a threat, is capable of piercing the skin), e.g. a broken bottle’.

The knife and sharp instrument figures are based on weapon details taken from a live operational system and are therefore subject to change, police said.

Across the north as a whole there were 2,227 reported offences over the three year period.

Unsurprisingly, given its larger population size, the Belfast district accounted for the majority of reported crimes with 891 in total.

In Fermanagh and Omagh, the area with the lowest number of reported incidents, there were 73.