London crime at lowest level for five years
Published: April 21, 2006
Crime in the capital is at its lowest level for five years, according to new police figures published today.
The total number of crimes in London fell by more than 3% in the 12 months to the end of March, to just under one million offences.
Homicide fell by 10% to its lowest level since 1998, while racist, homophobic and domestic crime were also down, the Metropolitan Police statistics showed.
The force is also solving more crimes.
The so-called “sanction detection” rate - the proportion of offences that result in either a charge, summons, caution or penalty notice or those taken into consideration at court - rose to 18%, the highest for several years.
The figures are a boost for Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Ian Blair as they coincide with his first 12 months as head of the force.
It was not all good news, though.
Robbery soared by 16.1%, fuelled by a rise in the number schoolchildren robbing each other for their mobile phones, while burglary was up by 2%.
Gun crime increased by 4.2% on the previous year and there was a small rise in knife crime, amounting to an additional 82 offences.
Sir Ian has made it a priority to tackle the increase in robbery among young people and is working with the mobile phone industry on a new charter to ensure stolen handsets are blocked across all networks.
The National Mobile Phone Crime Unit estimates that phones were stolen in more than 27,000 robberies.
Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said: “Through the hard work of our dedicated police officers and support staff, we are seeing some promising results.
“With overall crime falling and more crimes solved, we are making London a safer place to live and work for everyone, except criminals.
“Add to this recent surveys indicating an increased satisfaction with police visibility and feelings of safety, then I believe we are seeing something quite important happening.
“However, we are far from complacent and we know there is more to do to meet the aspirations of Londoners, particularly in relation to tackling violent crime, and we will strive to bring crime down further.”
The total number of crimes fell by 3.1% in the 12 months to the end of March this year - from 1,015,121 offences in the previous year to 984,125.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: