London crime figures show gun problem remains
Wednesday, 16 Apr 2008 12:00
Gun crime on the rise in London
Metropolitan police figures reveal an increase in gun crime incidents across London of nearly nine per cent.
The Met's statistics show 246 incidents of 'Trident gun crime' were recorded between April 2007 and March 2008, 8.8 per cent above the 226 incidents seen in the preceding 12 months.
Operation Trident is the Met's effort to tackle black-on-black gun violence in the capital, where highly-publicised cases have sparked fear of gun crime across the UK.
In London gun-enabled crime fell by 1.4 per cent while all other forms of crime in the city experienced falls in the last year.
The number of homicides dropped from 168 to 160 while violent crime saw an eight per cent fall, checking the 31.9 per cent leap in 2006/07.
Other types of crime seeing especially large falls were racist crime (13.3 per cent), homophobic crime (17.1 per cent) and rape (16.7 per cent).
The Tories' London mayoral challenger, Boris Johnson, yesterday unveiled his four-point plan helping the victims of crime, saying more needs to be done to help those who were affected by the 862,032 total notifiable offences seen in the city in 2007/08.
Incumbent Ken Livingstone, who campaigned against gun crime in south London yesterday, said Mr Johnson's voting record showed he could not be trusted to deal with these issues.