Crime in London
The Office for National Statistics data between June 2016 and March 2020 showed per person crime had increased by 31% in England and by a lower margin of 18% in London since 2016.
Theft offences account for 50% of the Metropolitan Police's recorded crimes and increased by 4% last year.
His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) independently assess the effectiveness and efficiency of police forces.
[8] The misinformation is credited to Dan Wootton in The Sun on 1 October 2020,[7] who may have misinterpreted an article in the Evening Standard on 17 July 2020[9] claiming the "over-arching figure for the total number of offences recorded by Metropolitan Police in the last financial year rose by five per cent in 2018".
It was announced in September 2018 that the city planned to emulate Scotland's public health approach, inspired by Cure Violence in Chicago, to violent crime.
[29] Of the 126 cases looked into by the Met:[30] The distribution of homicide offences in London can vary significantly by borough.
[35] Assault with injury, currently comprising assault occasioning actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm by the Metropolitan Police, accounts for on average 40% of all violence against the person offences within the Metropolitan Police area and 45% of all violence against the person nationally.
[36] In England and Wales, 'assault without injury' and harassment account for a further 38% of crimes recorded within the violence against the person category.
These changes were not reflected in the Metropolitan Police performance figures until 2004/05, when the rate almost doubled to 9.4 per 1,000 residents compared to 5.8 the previous year.
The British Crime Survey or BCS is a systematic victim study, currently carried out by BMRB Limited on behalf of the Home Office.
Crime in England and Wales 2008/09,[40] shows BCS violence with injury to have peaked in 1995 and declined steadily since then.
The lowest number of offences recorded was potentially in 2008, where there were just 1,980 gun-enabled crimes between December 2007 and November 2008, an unusually low figure in comparison to other years.
Since then, however, gun-enabled crime has increased 67% across London with 3,309 offences being recorded in the twelve months to November 2009.
They include Operation Trident and Trafalgar which deal with fatal and non-fatal shootings across London, Operation Blunt which was initially launched across 12 boroughs in 2004 to tackle knife crime and subsequently rolled out across the forces 32 boroughs in 2005 after early successes.
The increases in robbery were largely attributed to the rise in youth on youth robberies across London with particular focus around schools and transport interchanges and increased usage and ownership of items such as mobile phones, one of the most commonly stolen items.
[59] In the year to March 2020, there were 563,837 stop and searches in England and Wales (these figures include the British Transport Police).
[63] Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Bas Javid, admitted that the Metropolitan Police has a problem with racism.
[64] In 2023, a 363-page report written by Baroness Casey found the organisation to be institutionally racist, misogynistic, homophobic and corrupt.
[65] Street crimes include muggings, assault with intent to rob, and snatching property.
[66] A study by the Home Office published in 2003 found that 70 per cent of mugging victims on commuter railways around London identified their muggers as black.
[67] The study also reported that 87 per cent of victims in Lambeth, South London, told the police that their attackers were black.
[68]Operation Trident was set up in March 1998 by the Metropolitan Police to investigate gun crime in London's black community after black-on-black shootings in Lambeth and Brent.
[72] Regarding Human trafficking and modern slavery, Eastern Europeans and Chinese gangs are the main perpetrators.
[73] Between April 2005 and January 2006, figures from the Metropolitan Police Service showed that black people accounted for 46 percent of car-crime arrests generated by automatic number plate recognition cameras.
[74] In June 2010, The Sunday Telegraph, through a Freedom of Information Act request, obtained statistics on accusations (as opposed to actual convictions) of crime broken down by race from the Metropolitan Police Service.
[77] In 2019, The Guardian reported on statistics obtained from the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) for the year 2018.
[72] According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), human trafficking in the UK is a rapidly growing issue with criminal, labour and sexual as the most common forms of exploitation.
[73] As of 2004, vice squad officers estimated Albanian operations in London's Soho were worth more than £15 million a year.
[80] According to a 2020 Home Office report, the UK cocaine market is now largely dominated by Albanian Organised Crime Groups.
[87] Below are crime rate comparisons for London and the metropolitan districts of England in 2007/08 financial year.
