Backlash as May rejects link between stabbings and police numbers

Members of the public speak to a police officer near the scene at St Neot’s Road in Harold Hill, east London following the fatal stabbing of a 17-year-old Jodie Chesney on Friday night. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PAThe prime minister has sparked a backlash over the government’s handling of rising knife crime after she insisted there was “no direct correlation between certain crimes and police numbers” amid new evidence of a sharp rise in teens using knives.Police and crim