Britain’s most senior police officer has hit back at critics who “promote narratives that suit them” about crime levels in London, after homicides in the capital fell to their lowest level for more than a decade.
It comes after Donald Trump claimed there are no-go areas for Met Police officers, while Nigel Farage has described the city as being “in the grip of a crime wave”.
But Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley pointed to new figures which show that 2025 was one of the safest in terms of serious violent crime, criticising “commentators” for sharing false claims online.
Meanwhile, London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan accused critics of “painting a dystopian picture of a lawless place where criminals run rampant” – arguing they “couldn’t be more wrong”.
It comes after new figures showed that there were 97 homicides in the capital in 2025, down 11 per cent from 109 in 2024. This is also the lowest number recorded since 95 homicides 11 years ago, in 2014.
And despite London’s growing population in the last decade, last year had the lowest homicide rate per capita on record – 1.1 per 100,000 – the Metropolitan Police figures show.
This is lower than other major cities worldwide such as New York at 2.8, Berlin at 3.2 and Paris at 1.6 per 100,000, the force said.
Writing in The Times, Sir Mark said: “Today, London has its lowest homicide levels in a decade, and the lowest ever per capita.
“Despite claims circulated online, including AI‑generated videos creating fictional violent scenarios, some commentators promote a narrative that suits them, regardless that the facts tell a very different story.
“London is safer, and the progress we are making is saving lives, is measurable and independently evidenced. This is not a matter of opinion or messaging; it is what the data shows.”
He added: “We are proud to represent Londoners, and we will speak up for the truth — something that matters more than ever in an age of misinformation and disinformation.”
Meanwhile, writing in the Guardian, Sir Sadiq said: “In recent years, politicians and commentators have sought to spam our social media feeds with an endless stream of distortions and untruths – painting a dystopian picture of a lawless place where criminals run rampant.
“Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has inexplicably veered between describing London as a city moving towards sharia law, and a place with hospitals like “warzones” and areas where police don’t want to go.
“Here in Britain, Nigel Farage is dancing to his tune. Reform UK’s leader claimed last week that London was ‘in the grip of a crime wave’. Meanwhile, the party’s new candidate for mayor of London claimed that people pitied Londoners for living in a city that was ‘no longer safe’.
“This latest startling statistic shows that those who talk down the capital at every opportunity couldn’t be more wrong: in London, the evidence is clear, we’re winning the battle against violent crime.”
The figures released by the Met come as the latest crime figures for England and Wales also show a fall in the number of homicides to their lowest level since current methods of reporting began in 2003.
Some 518 homicides were recorded by police in the year to June 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics, a drop of 6% from 552 in the previous year and 27 per cent below the pre-pandemic total of 710 in 2019/20.
The Met said its work tackling homicide has been particularly strong in curbing violence among young people, with the fewest number of victims aged under 25 this century, and a 73 per cent decrease in the number of teenage victims since 2021, dropping from 30 to eight in 2025.
The mayor of London’s violence reduction unit, set up in 2019, is believed to have been part of such efforts, by delivering 550,000 interventions to stop young people being drawn into gangs.
The Met also said public confidence in policing was rising, with 81 per cent of Londoners rating the force as doing a good or fair job locally.
But it follows a vetting review published on Thursday that showed 131 officers and staff at the Met, including two serial rapists, committed crimes or misconduct after they were not properly vetted.
It found that thousands of police officers and staff were not properly checked, amid pressure during a national recruitment drive from July 2019 to March 2023.
The Met said it has taken action to clean up the workforce and tighten vetting standards, and was being open and transparent about some historical practices that do not meet current standard.
Source: UK Politics - www.independent.co.uk
