A man was caught carrying a samurai sword onto a bus after he failed to present a valid ticket.
The offender, who has not been identified, was travelling on the 149 bus, which runs from Edmonton Green to London Bridge in the capital, when a team of inspectors boarded for a routine check.
The man was told to get off the bus after he failed to provide his ID when inspector Thomas and Yaw gave him a ticket.
He shouted back: "I've got my zip card everyday."
The team from the upper deck noticed the man running away with what they believed to be a full-size Japanese sword and quickly alerted the Met Police for assistance.
Video showed on the Channel 5 programme, Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law, the man flees the scene and attempts to escape through the busy street.
He is soon caught and handcuffed by the plain clothes police, who also find a stab-proof vest on him.
The man yelled: "I ain't got no f****** knife man. I always wear that stab vest but it's too hot because I've been stabbed eight f****** times before and I don't want to f****** do that again, that's why I don't roll with a knife.
"I don't roll with a knife that's why I roll with a stab vest and every single f****** time I get searched I have the stab vest you can't f****** say s***."
The officers searched around the area and found the weapon at a nearby garden.
The man has been charged with possession of an offensive weapon, and received a six-month concurrent detention and training order.
Inspector Yaw said in the programme as he remembered the event: "We have the opportunity, if we see something like that we don't have to let it slip I couldn't just ignore it."
His partner Thomas added: "Knife crime is an epidemic right now, it just takes that one person whose got that weapon on him, whose not in the right state of mind or thinks he's being disrespected.
'And we can be not going home. We don't go into work with our eyes closed, we have to have our eyes open at all time.
Yaw agrees: 'We have to have our eyes open to get back home to the family.'
