Britain’s top police officer has said falls in gun and knife crime under lockdown are “silver linings” to the pandemic. Cressida Dick, the Met commissioner, said officers had a “smile on their face” as they had more time to go after criminals. “There are undoubtedly some silver linings,” Dick said. “With people not being on the streets, [there are] less opportunities for criminality during this period. We have seen a relief from violent crime for so many people. And clearly many criminals being inhibited in their activities.” She said the Met had been able to hunt down longtime wanted suspects, who had often shielded at their home addresses. “Some of them actually aren’t so bright, and they’re in rather obvious places,” she said. Dick pledged new tactics to stop crime returning to pre-lockdown levels, including having officers visit 1,000 alleged violent offenders twice each to offer them a chance to give up crime. Knife crime in the capital, which has been the continual crisis of Dick’s commissionership since 2017, is down by more than 50%, and stab wounds among people under 25 have fallen by 69%. Across the UK, police have reported huge falls in crime. Dick said: “As the restrictions ease, we are absolutely determined to continue to bear down on violence, on violent people, to police those places where violence takes place as well as we possibly can, and to prevent an escalation of violence back anywhere near the previous levels.” She said that despite the streets being emptier, the Met had increased the use of stop and search compared with a year ago. The force carried out 30,608 stops in April, up from 20,9881 in April 2019 and 23,783 in March this year. The Met says one in five led to a “positive outcome”. The backdrop for the Met is that homicides in the capital rose in 2019 while elsewhere in England they fell. The assistant commissioner, Nick Ephgrave, said the time criminals had had at home and away from the streets during lockdown may have made them realise there is value in being with their families. “We want to make sure that we give those individuals an opportunity to reset their lives in a more positive way, so we are visiting every single one of those individuals twice and offering them the opportunity to engage in diversionary activities.” Ephgrave said there had been a big fall in numbers of missing children who may have been victims of exploitation by gangs and organised crime, such as for county lines drug dealing. Separately, police in England have been told they cannot enforce physical distancing, while officers in Wales have been told they can. As changes to some lockdown rules came into effect in England but not in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the College of Policing and police chiefs issued guidance to 125,000 officers. They said to apply legal guidelines only, and not what officers may have heard from politicians. In Wales, the guidance says, “Two-metre distancing is enforceable” and exercise is allowed only in an “area local to the place where the person is living”. The guidance also says: “The police have no powers to enforce two-metre distancing in England.”