The latest crime figures for England and Wales which show violent crimes against the person surging have thrown the particular problems of the nation’s capital city into harsh light, as it reveals the city is now more dangerous than the once-notorious New York City.
Released Thursday, the new crime statistics showed plainly the astonishing rise of offences, with an overall rise of 19 per cent of violence against the person, and a 19 per cent rise of sexual offences.
Yet these numbers hide the even steeper ascent of particularly serious crimes, including a 22 per cent rise in rape, a 26 per cent rise in knife crime, and perhaps most amazingly of all — considering the United Kingdom’s draconian gun laws — a 27 per cent rise in gun crime. These increases compound another significant rise from the year before.
While these figures cover the whole of England and Wales, much of these crime surges are concentrated in the capital, London, which is experiencing an unprecedented surge in acid attacks, which comes on top of the more familiar stabbings and shootings.
Now an analysis of crime figures from London and New York by the Daily Telegraph show some parallels between the cities, as well as some shocking divergences which may leave British taxpayers asking what has gone so wrong in policing the capital.
While the sizes of population, numbers of police officers, and even police force budgets of the two cities are strikingly similar, the analysis reveals there are three times more reported rapes in London, and “you are almost six times more likely to be burgled in the British capital than in the US city, and one and a half times more likely to fall victim to a robbery”.
The revelation flies in the face of claims by London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, that “London is the safest global city in the world” — a remark made in an interview with CNN shortly after a vehicle and knife terror attack in Westminster.
The Telegraph report claims the significant difference in law and order outcomes for London and New York is rooted in divergent policing styles. While New York pursues a zero-tolerance approach to even petty crime as instituted in the 1990s by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in London police now claim that investigating shoplifters, vandals, and other perpetrators of “low level” crime is now “not practical”.
This policy of turning a blind eye to some crimes contrasts with New York’s so-called ‘broken windows’ theory, which works on the assumption that widespread low-level disorder creates an atmosphere of incivility that engenders more serious crime — and therefore an emphasis is placed on policing low-level misdemeanours relentlessly.
Meanwhile, British police forces pursue the posters of “offensive” comments online, with a reported 3,395 arrests for social media use in one year.
The results of the two approaches is marked — with murder levels in New York falling rapidly from their record high in 1990 before their change in policing style, to a record low in 2017 — and it is on course to fall even further.
Speaking to the Daily Mail on Britain’s crime surge, which has come as police forces across the country have become even more audacious to reach out to minority communities with stunts like vinyl-wrapping police patrol cars in LGBT flags and working with discredited Muslim groups like Tell MAMA, a retired Scotland Yard detective blasted the police for failing to be effective.
Mick Neville told the paper: “They have forgotten what their purpose is. Too many modern chief constables have got more degrees under their belts than arrests. The people in charge have simply not done the job.
“The reason they do not investigate crime is they have never done it themselves. They are looking for cheap wins.”