Police in Aldershot carried out a high profile crime prevention operation on Friday night in the town centre to highlight the dangers of drugs and weapons.   By using a knife arch, hand held metal detectors and an Ion Track drug detection machine hundreds of people were checked by officers to see if they were carrying drugs or weapons.  

A total of 400 people had their hands swabbed for drugs using the Ion Track machine. By wiping a persons hand with a Teflon swab officers can then feed it into the machine to detect the presence of drugs.   A further 342 people passed through the knife arch outside Vox, the arch will detect if someone is potentially carrying a weapons.

As a result of people walking through the arch 171 were then searched using the hand held metal detectors.   Nobody was found to be carrying a weapon.  

Safer Neighbourhoods Sergeant Rob Wallis, of Aldershot police station, said: "We want to send out a strong and clear message that drugs and weapons are not acceptable in our town centre.   "During the course of Friday night we spoke with more than 700 members of the public and received positive feedback from almost everyone.   "We want to work with residents and visitors to Aldershot to ensure the town is a safe as it possibly can be so they can enjoy their night out.   "Fortunately knife crime is rare in our town and but we are planning to carry out similar operations in the future. We want to re-assure those people on a night out that we will take positive action against anyone found carrying a knife.   "The simple message is carrying knives ruins lives."  

For more information about policing in your area visit the local policing pages of Hampshire Constabulary at www.hampshire.police.uk.