Statistics show that a total of 8,147 violent incidents involving a sharp instrument went “undetected” in the capital last year - nearly 80 per cent of the total 10,238 cases.
The figures also show that the rate of unsolved cases of knife crime has increased by six per cent in the past two years.
Last month Ziggy Worrell-Owusu, 19, from Hackney became the tenth teenager to be stabbed to death in London this year.
Today Tom Isaac, manager of Oasis Youth Support, a service that offers youth support to victims of violence in the emergency department of St Thomas’s Hospital in Southwark, said young victims were often unwilling to speak to police.
Mr Isaac said: “You think it’s always the obvious thing to tell the police, but it’s often more complicated than that.
"Young people who have been stabbed when they come in here often won’t give full statements or press charges, because they know it could put them in more danger of revenge and retaliation when they leave the hospital. It happens all the time.”
The figures - obtained by a Freedom of Information request - show the overall number of knife crimes recorded has risen from 9,544 in the 12 months to August 2014 to 10,238 in the same period to 2016, a seven per cent rise.
While the rate of unsolved cases is rising, the number of people being charged has fallen by 4 per cent, from 24.8 per cent of the total in the year to August 2014 to 21.2 per cent in the year to August 2016.
Young people in Islington, the borough that saw one of the highest number of teenage knife murders in the capital last year, said there is a stigma against speaking to the police about violent crime.
One 17-year-old, from the Barnsbury estate, who declined to be named, said: “Snitches get stitches. You learn it from a young age.
“It’s a thing people say on the street. You can’t say anything to the police. You’ll lose friends and people will hurt you because you’re one of the police’s snitches.”
Another Islington teenager, age 16, said: “People would rather handle it themselves because of the fear that if you say something you’re going to get stabbed again.”
Chief Superintendent John Sutherland, a London police officer for 24 years, said there was a common unwillingness among young people to speak to officers.
He said: “My experience is that the more vulnerable the victim of crime is the less likely they will report it to the police. It is certainly the case with violent crime involving young people.
“Often by the time we get to knife crime scenes the people we’d like to have spoken to have disappeared, fearful they might be treated as suspects. Victims and witnesses are also fearful. The most obvious reasons for this are underlying mistrust of police, and fear.”
He described knife crime as “one of the most urgent issues of our time” saying if the victims were the “children of the establishment” it would be a national scandal.
Ch Supt Sutherland added: “Police have got a challenge in terms of building trust. We need to help build trust that might not be there by engaging as much as possible with organisations, local communities and families. ”
Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Stokley, the head of the Trident gangs unit, said: ”The difficulty is people do not wish to give a statement or engage with police and it is very hard to build a case when there is no other evidence.
“But we urge people to try and support a prosecution because my officers will do everything they can to try and bring an offender to justice. These people will inevitably go on to to stab someone else.
“We have had some successful prosecutions for knife crime when the victim did not support the prosecution.”
He added: “We need to get the message out that it is not the norm to carry a knife and that if you do carry a knife, you or someone with you, are more likely to be stabbed.”
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