POLICE in Glasgow are to be given handheld metal detectors in an attempt to turn the city into a blade-free zone and make the streets safer.

The devices will allow police officers to search people for lethal weapons without coming into physical contact with them.

When the crackdown is introduced at the end of the month, Strathclyde Police will become the first force to introduce such a scheme in Scotland and only the second in the UK.

Chief Superintendent Louis Munn, Glasgow city centre divisional commander, yes-

terday criticised some shopkeepers who sell knives subsequently used in attacks saying: ''I think that social responsibility is required.''

He said retailers may have ''blood on their hands'' through the legal sale of hunting and other knives which he said were ''obviously intended to cause injury''.

Mr Munn added: ''One thing that annoys me considerably is that there are retailers in the city centre that are quite prepared to sell these things.

''They sell them legally and I cannot say anything about that.

''But surely to God they can ask, as these things are going across the counter, what is this going to be used for.

''I am talking about the kind of knives that are obviously intended to cause injury.

''If they don't ask that question and it is used to cause injury to someone else, then they have blood on their hands. It is as simple as that.''

Duncan Tannahill, chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, said the police initiative would help enforce the image that the city is

safe.

He added: ''Retailers should look at what they sell and act socially and responsibly in terms of whether they should continue to sell what the general public would deem to be a weapon.''

The scheme follows the recent Take the Glass out of Glasgow campaign, which encouraged nightclubs to switch from glass to plastic bottles and tumblers. The Glasgow Nightclub Forum has provided the funding for the mini-detectors.

Mr Munn said that he was sure the majority of people would not resist use of the detector, but those that did faced an enforced police search.

''There will be the odd individual who will say they do not want to be scanned but you then have to say to yourself, well, why?'' he said.

''That in itself arouses suspicion. That suspicion might be sufficient for an officer to proceed to search that person because they might well be carrying something that they want to conceal.

''It would be up to the officers to deal with that as diplomatically as possible at the time,''he said.

The Scottish Executive said 68 people were stabbed to death in Scotland in 2002 - the highest number of fatal stabbings in the past decade.

But Strathclyde Police said two thirds of injuries dealt with in Glasgow Royal Infirmary alone, caused by violent crime, were never reported to the police.