London high in Europe's Safety League

41/01
21 June 2001

London has one of the lowest homicide rates of all the capital cities in Europe. Figures released in the Year End performance report at the Professional Standards and Performance Monitoring Committee showed that London is below average for homicides in Europe, with a rate of 2.4 homicides per 100,000 population, compared to Amsterdam at 5.4 per 100,000 population. Of all the major cities around the world, Washington recorded the highest level at 50.8 homicides per 100,000 in the same period.

Richard Sumray, Chair of the PSPM said:

"London remains one of the safest cities in Europe and this is in no small part due to the work of the Met. They are to be congratulated for their high rates of success in homicide investigations.

"Although street crime continues to rise, the scale of the rise is reducing. This still presents a major challenge and the Met is now concentrating on understanding the underlying factors behind this crime, and setting up partnerships with communities to develop anti street crime strategies.

"Overall the latest crime figures show that the Met has improved on their performance compared to last year, despite shortages of both officers and support staff."

During 2000/2001 there were 189 homicides in London, with clear ups running at 170. This clear up rate of 89.9 per cent exceeded the MPS performance target of 89 per cent and 47.6 per cent of these were solved within a month. Operation Trident investigated 16 of these homicides and all were recorded as shootings. This type of crime continues to be a source of major concern to the MPA whose Members, as part the Independent Advisory Group to Trident, are working with ethnic minority communities to develop long term preventative strategies to increase community confidence and trust in the MPS.

The Met has delivered improved performance against all but one of the Key Policing Plan indicators in comparison with last year. Burglary for example, has fallen by 9.5 per cent, as against the target decrease of 2 per cent and is now at its lowest level for 22 years. In total crime fell by more than 22,500 offences in the past year.

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