Murder rate up 44%, with 23% increase in gun crime and 21% rise in knife crime in year to March

Serious crime soared in London in the past year, police figures have revealed, with the murder rate up by 44% and youth murder, personal robbery and home burglary all up by about a third.

The snapshot figures from the Metropolitan police, which show the number of crimes in the year to March, also showed a 23% increase in gun crime with discharges, a 21% rise in knife crime and an 18% increase in the number of rapes.

They were released to coincide with a hearing of the London assembly’s police and crime committee on Tuesday. Its chairman, Steve O’Connell, called the rise “unacceptable” and “deeply troubling”.

“Still the figures go the wrong way, and still we’re losing far too many of our young people,” O’Connell said.

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The Met assistant commissioner Helen Ball said the force’s new violent crime taskforce had so far recruited 113 of 158 officers. She also pointed to a large increase in the use of stop and search, with more than 12,000 carried out by Met officers in April – “a very high number,” she said.

“What we are very glad to see is that there is a really strong sense of purpose, that the taskforce themselves absolutely want to be doing the work they’re doing,” she said. “And they’re seeing some results; it’s early stages but it looks as if at the moment the increase in some of those crime types is stabilising.”

Later on, she explained that this meant “the increase [in knife crime] had stopped increasing”, while homicides in April and May were “considerably below” February and March. However, she was careful to note that it was too early to hail this as a success.

The rise in violent crime comes despite Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, publishing a knife crime strategy for the capital last June, as well as a number of other initiatives from both local and central government. So far in 2018, the Met has launched more than 60 murder investigations, and the increase in violent crime has been reflected in urban areas in many other parts of the country.

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Not all crimes were up. The Met recorded a 9.5% drop in antisocial behaviour calls, a 3.2% drop in incidents of domestic abuse and a 1.4% fall in shoplifting. Several categories of hate crime were down, including disability hate crime down a third, transgender hate crime down 13%, and antisemitism down 5%. Islamophobic hate crimes were up by almost a third, however.

Sophie Linden, the deputy mayor for policing and crime, defended her office’s record. “It’s very, very early days,” she said. “We’re talking about knife crime with injury and we’re seeing that stabilising.

“But in terms of the murders, every murder is so appalling on the streets of London that there is no complacency here whatsoever. And that’s why the violent crime taskforce is out there all the time focusing on really serious violence.”