The homicide rate in London this year is on course to surpass that of 2018, which had seen the highest level of violent killings in a decade.
The number of violent killings in London has risen to 110, following two separate fatal stabbings on Tuesday, higher than the 108 the city had experienced by September 25th, 2018, according to The Telegraph.
Last year, London saw 132 homicides, marking a ten-year high for the capital, a statistic to join others revealing the rising crime in the city since Labour’s Sadiq Khan became mayor of London.
Released by the London Assembly Conservatives to coincide with the third anniversary of Mr Khan’s mayoralty, the London Tories said their analysis showed a 52 per cent rise in knife crime, 30 per cent rise in gun crime, and a 24 per cent increase in homicide since 2016.
A spate of fatal stabbings and stabbing assaults in London resulted in Mr Khan being sharply criticised by U.S. President Donald J. Trump, who called the mayor a “disaster”. In November 2018, the mayor acknowledged the severity of the knife crime epidemic, but said it could take up to ten years to solve.
London’s Police Fails to Record 100,000 Crimes Including Sex Offences https://t.co/8jcC8JjmK5
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 18, 2018
Shortly before 4 p.m. on Tuesday, 20-year-old Tashan Daniel was fatally stabbed in an “unprovoked attack” on a underground station platform in Hillingdon, Greater London. Tashan had been waiting to catch a train to see a football match at the time of the attack. Just hours later, 22-year-old Osvaldo Carvalho was stabbed to death near Ealing Common, West London.
The homicides will put increased pressure on London’s Metropolitan Police Service to tackle knife crime. Both the London mayor and Theresa May, in her time as home secretary, were opposed to the police tactic of stop-and-search — which allows police to search a suspect if they have “reasonable grounds” to suspect they are carrying a weapon — claiming it was disproportionately used on young, black men.
However, Mr Khan had to perform a u-turn on ending stop-and-search in January 2018 to crack down on surging knife crime, with the Home Office calling for expansion of the use in November 2018.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced measures to crack down on crime in Britain, after the nation saw a rising homicide rate and knife crime. The prime minister said in August he would expand police’s power to use stop-and-search, hire 20,000 new officers, and make available 10,000 more prison places.
Khan's London: Average of 40 Knife Crimes Every Day https://t.co/xl4qZOjJfq
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 7, 2019
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