Thefts on the iconic London Underground subway system have surged by more than 80 per cent since 2016/17, around the time Sadiq Khan became city major.
The British Transport Police (BTP) received 6,825 reports of theft on the subway system, which has been serving Londoners since the 1860s, in 2018/19 — a huge increase on the 3,730 reports it received in 2016/17, around the time Sadiq Khan was installed as Mayor of London.
“I don’t think we can deny that it is incredibly disappointing that the numbers have gone up but the London Underground is still an incredibly safe environment,” claimed Detective Inspector Bob Stokoe, head of theft of passenger property for the British Transport Police
“There are in excess of five million passenger journeys a day so it’s four crimes of theft for every million journeys,” he added, in an apparent effort to downplay the increase.
Speaking anonymously to the BBC, an undercover BTP officer conceded that his job has “got a lot busier lately, a lot busier. We’re arresting a lot more people.”
The officer added that, “In 14 years of doing pickpockets, I’ve never known it be this busy” — and intimated that some of the thieves he was arresting were criminals from Europe, taking an advantage of the European Union’s unlimited and effectively unvetted Free Movement migration regime to indulge in a “last chance saloon” pickpocketing spree ahead of Brexit, when it is expected that the United Kingdom might introduce meaningful border controls.
While mainstream media coverage of the new theft figures offered no information on the background of the thieves responsible, journalists have in the past indicated that immigration has been a major driver of such crimes, with Romanian nationals accounting for more than half of convicted pickpockets between 2012 and 2013.
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