An Ely police office posted to social media four photos of knives he took off a suspect in the city.

“Alarming items recovered yesterday in a stop search procedure in Ely,” said PC Den Williams.

He said the suspect had been arrested on suspicion of theft and has been charged,

Included among the haul – which have price tags around the £20 to £25 mark- is a curved cimeter or scimitar knife.

This particularl knife is used mainly by butchers and comes, typically, with a blade 8-14” (20-35cm) long. Its use is mainly for cutting large pieces of meat into individual steaks.

In Peterborough earlier this month, Cambridgeshire Police organised a knife amnesty to encourage more people to hand in such lethal weapons.

In the past year there were 41 robberies in Peterborough involving a knife or bladed instrument.

A police spokesman said: “Thankfully knife and firearm crime is relatively rare in Cambridgeshire.”