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The chancellor has said police forces in England and Wales must use their existing budgets to tackle knife crime.
Senior officers and police and crime commissioners had called for more money to pay for additional officers following a spate of fatal stabbings.
But Philip Hammond said police must use money and officers from other parts of their forces to deal with the problem.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbot said the suggestion was "monstrous" and "an insult to grieving families".
The chancellor told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there had to be a "surging of resources from other areas of policing activity into dealing with this spike in knife crime".
"That's what you do in any organisation when you get a specific problem occurring in one area of the operation, you move resources to deal with that," he added.
Earlier, he told LBC: "If your house is on fire, you stop painting it and you go and get a bucket and start pouring water on the fire."
He said police commissioners and chief constables across the country needed to divert resources from "lower priority areas of policing".
Asked what he defined as "lower priority", he said there will be "all sorts of things that the police are doing".
But he said "it's not my job to define the operational priorities of individual police forces".
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who held talks with police chiefs on Wednesday, said after the meeting it was important to "always make sure the police have the resources they need"
The Home Office said it would not comment on Mr Hammond's comments.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47481301
Senior officers and police and crime commissioners had called for more money to pay for additional officers following a spate of fatal stabbings.
But Philip Hammond said police must use money and officers from other parts of their forces to deal with the problem.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbot said the suggestion was "monstrous" and "an insult to grieving families".
The chancellor told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there had to be a "surging of resources from other areas of policing activity into dealing with this spike in knife crime".
"That's what you do in any organisation when you get a specific problem occurring in one area of the operation, you move resources to deal with that," he added.
Earlier, he told LBC: "If your house is on fire, you stop painting it and you go and get a bucket and start pouring water on the fire."
He said police commissioners and chief constables across the country needed to divert resources from "lower priority areas of policing".
Asked what he defined as "lower priority", he said there will be "all sorts of things that the police are doing".
But he said "it's not my job to define the operational priorities of individual police forces".
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who held talks with police chiefs on Wednesday, said after the meeting it was important to "always make sure the police have the resources they need"
The Home Office said it would not comment on Mr Hammond's comments.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47481301
