The man capured on CCTV who is being searched for. Pic, Metropolitan Police

Detectives are searching for a man suspected of being connected to the robbery of an elderly man in December last year.

The pensioner was leaving Langdon Park station in Poplar at 11pm when a man wielding a small knife approached him.  The 71-year-old was forced to hand over his money and returned home to call the police.

The suspect’s photo was taken from CCTV footage and has been released. The police describe him as a “white man, aged in his 30s, with short brown hair. He was wearing a blue hooded top with red stripes on the sleeves, blue jeans and trainers.”

Constable Ryan Smith, a detective from Tower Hamlets CID, said:  “The pensioner was shaken from his ordeal. We are keen to identify the man in the CCTV footage so we can speak to him about the incident. We would also urge anyone who witnessed the robbery to contact us.”

The search comes only a month after the Evening Standard reported: “three people killed or seriously injured by knives every day last year in London”.  Other data from a Police and Crime Committee report released last year placed Tower Hamlets as the second worse for knife crime with 106 victims of knife crime from 2015 to 2016.

Steve O’Connell, a member of the Police and Crime Committee, commented on the data in an article with the Evening Standard saying: “This is significant because not many people realise that if you only look at gang violence you won’t make much difference to what is happening with knife crime.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan spoke last year about the dangers of knife crime in a speech at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.  He pledged £400,000 to the tackling of knife crime saying: “We need to send a strong message that carrying a knife is completely unacceptable, and is more likely to ruin your life than to save it.”