Violent attacks leap 10% despite Met investment

Violent attacks in London, including shootings and stabbings, have leapt by more than 10 per cent during the past year, the Metropolitan Police said yesterday.

Although the capital recorded falls in burglaries, muggings and car thefts, its overall crime rate increased by 2 per cent. There were 178,802 cases of violence against people in the year ending in March, compared with 161,359 in the previous 12 months. Firearms offences rose by 3 per cent.

Reported sexual offences went up by nearly 5 per cent, with alleged rapes up by 9 per cent. Meanwhile, the number of drug offences, including trafficking and possession, soared by 27 per cent.

Police chiefs blamed many of the rises on new methods of collecting crime statistics, which they argued encouraged alleged offences to be recorded. They also said the sharp rise in violent crime was accounted for by the inclusion of less serious offences, such as common assault and harassment, rather than grievous bodily harm. Scotland Yard said the rape figures reflected that more victims were willing to report attacks and the drugs statistics proved the police were catching traffickers more successfully.

Ian Blair, the Met's deputy commissioner, welcomed a 16 per cent fall in muggings across London, with large drops in the street-crime blackspots of Westminster (down 33 per cent) and Lambeth (36 per cent).

In the West End, a mixture of high-visibility policing and undercover operations meant that, on average, three street crimes were recorded in one day. In Lambeth, where a similar strategy had been adopted, street crime fell to just seven or eight offences on some days.

Mr Blair said: "There is a simple message here. This is payback for the additional resources that have been invested in the Metropolitan Police Service."

He also said that uniformed policing had reduced crime. "What we need to do is deny criminals their habitat. The way of doing that is by having a uniformed presence," he said.

The use of closed-circuit television cameras and work with British Transport Police to improve transport safety and drive offenders off the streets was proving effective, he said.

The numbers of crimes that were solved increased slightly, but the Met scored a spectacular success with Operation Trident, its campaign against black-on-black gun crime, with a leap in its clear-up rate from 25 per cent to 70 per cent. Mr Blair also said that 1,300 weapons and 27,000 rounds of ammunition had been surrendered in the capital as part of the national gun amnesty, which still has a week to run.

A pilot scheme in Croydon, under which fixed-penalty notices were handed out for antisocial behaviour, including public drunkenness, is likely to be extended across the capital later this year.

The deputy commissioner insisted that the force was delivering on offences that worried the public the most. "As police numbers continue to grow, we look forward to building on our success by using more advanced forensic techniques, developing targeted initiatives and working closer with our partners," he said.

* Trials by 10 police forces using CCTV to track down people who are driving cars without tax discs have proved highly successful, it was revealed yesterday. The number of arrests using CCTV in this way has increased 10-fold. Every car that passes the cameras is scanned for irregularities and any vehicle without tax or insurance or listed as stolen, is stopped shortly afterwards.