Over the summer months, 5 million people will visit London, with its free museums and galleries, massive events featuring the biggest names in music and sport, and everything Britain’s capital city has to offer. And, as new figures released today show, they’ll be able to do so knowing London is one of the safest cities of its size in the world.On social media, a dark blizzard of disinformation – much of it coordinated and amplified by extreme groups and hostile foreign actors – has seen bots and trolls depict London as a “lawless” city where crime goes unpunished and basic social decency has all but disappeared. But let’s deal in facts: data published by the Metropolitan police this morning shows that nothing could be further from the truth. Across the capital, there were 35,000 fewer “neighbourhood crimes” – a category which includes burglaries, thefts, robberies and vehicle crime offences – in the past 12 months than in the year before.
This has not happened by accident. As mayor I have provided a record £1.26bn in funding for the capital’s police force, more than double the amount under my predecessor. That funding has enabled it to invest in cutting-edge technology to keep pace with criminals, including ebikes and drones to pursue phone snatchers down London’s busy streets, but it has also boosted neighbourhood policing in communities across our city.
