Ipswich Borough Council has passed a motion to build on the existing strategy to tackle knife crime across Suffolk amid a debate on how to combat the problem.
At Wednesday's council executive meeting, Conservative councillor Ian Fisher had initially proposed a motion to put IBC at the heart of an initiative that would focus on solving the issue in Ipswich.
However, an amendment put forward by Labour councillor Alasdair Ross sought to "beef up" the existing county-wide framework that priorities fighting county line gangs.
This change also called for an acknowledgement that the existing problem with knife crime was the result of successive Conservative cutbacks to police.
Despite significant pushback from some Tory councillors, the motion was passed with the amendment.
Speaking on the decision, Cllr Fisher said he felt "deflated" as the change "watered down the motion and led to no real knife crime strategy".
"The existing framework is obviously not working," he added.
"We need to keep tackling county lines and, of course, knife crime is a nationwide issue - not just one in our town.
"But we wanted to separate the two because there are plenty of people in Ipswich walking around with knives that aren't involved in county lines.
"Unfortunately, Labour made this very political. But we're not interested in proportioning blame. We just want to have an action plan focussing on what can be done from this point."
Cllr Ross defended the amendment, saying: "Knife crime is not just an Ipswich problem, it's a UK one. So it needs to be dealt with on a wider scale.
"Borough Council doesn't have the power to do this on its own. We need our partners.
"Police say the vast majority of knife crime in Suffolk and Ipswich is related to county lines. Quite often, people in gangs will hop on a train and come to Ipswich.
"I'm not saying other people don't carry knives but the majority are targeted attacks involving the drug trade.
"So we have decided to beef up the existing cross-authority strategy that is working really well and is a success story."
Cllr Ross also defended the decision to portion blame on the Conservatives.
"We want to put the politics to one side," he said.
"But we felt it was important to mention police cuts.
"If you have more police on the streets, then this becomes and easier problem to tackle."
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