This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

London’s homicide rate has reached its highest level in a decade as police chiefs brace themselves for a government announcement about whether they will get the extra funding they believe is vital to tackle rising violent crime.

The Metropolitan police said they were called to the fatal stabbing of a teenager in south-east London on Tuesday night, taking the tally to 131 deaths, the highest level since 2008, with three weeks left of this calendar year.

London’s total this year includes at least 75 stabbings and 13 shootings.

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On Thursday, the government is expected to announce it will allow increases in local taxes to fund policing, but offer less money from central government than forces had hoped for.

In the latest violent death in the capital, an 18-year-old man was stabbed to death in a fight in Alwold Crescent, Lee, in south-east London, shortly before 10pm on Tuesday. The victim has been named by police as Jay Sewell, from Bromley in Kent.

Police said they were called to “reports of armed youths in the street”. A second man, also 18, was taken to hospital with stab injuries but has since been discharged.

Five people were arrested and taken to police stations in south London for questioning, aged between 22 and 56.

The Met said Tuesday’s fatal stabbing took the number of murders and other killings in 2018 to 131. Last year, the London mayor’s office for policing and crime said there were 122 homicides, excluding deaths from terrorism.

Tuesday’s death took this year’s total above that for 2009, when there were 130 homicides.

From 2003 to 2014 the number of homicides in the Met area fell dramatically, from a peak of 216 deaths in a single year to 94 killings in 2014.

Since then it has risen to the current level, with debate raging about the causes and cures, but declining police funding cuts since the Conservatives took power in 2010 and a link to drug-fuelled youth homicides areamong a plethora of cited factors.

According to analysis by the Press Association, in 2018 just over a third of victims, 44, were aged 16 to 24, of whom 10 were shot, 32 were stabbed and one was killed in an attack involving a knife and gun.

Twenty-five of the victims were aged 19 and under, six of whom were shot and 16 stabbed.

Earlier this month, the Met police commissioner, Cressida Dick, said the tide was turning against knife and gun offences, although she admitted it would take more time to tackle the estimated 180 violent gangs in London who drag children into crime, and the root causes.

The force released figures that showed in September, October and November this year there were 176 fewer victims of knife crime resulting in injury aged under 25 than in the same three months in 2017, a 31% reduction.

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A spokesperson for the mayor of London said: “The rise in the number of violent deaths both in London and across our country is shameful. This scourge leaves families and communities devastated.

“The causes of violent crime are deeply complex and made far worse by huge government cuts over the last eight years to the police, youth services, councils and charities.

“This year, we have seen police numbers fall to below 30,000 for the first time in more than a decade and we risk seeing them drop even further with ministers forcing further cuts on the Met police.”

On Thursday, the government will try to frame its funding settlement to policing as being generous.

Police chiefs have warned they are being stretched to breaking point and the home secretary, Sajid Javid, has said he will try and get them more resources from the Treasury.