"Howard Neil" wrote in message
...
Lawrence Jenkins wrote:

The violent crime rate in London is atrocious, the last figures I
saw -taking into account the the police are reluctant to reveal the real
statistics for political reasons -

The figures that you read about are from the Home Office, not the police
themselves. Police don't reveal figures because the raw figures are
potentially misleading. It has nothing to do with politics, that is the
job of the Home Office. They are also *reported* crimes. In other words
they are only the crimes that someone has been bothered to report and they
*may* have reported the wrong crime (e.g. a number of allegations of theft
of motor vehicle should really be classified as an insurance fraud). Add
to that certain criteria that the Home Office impose (I don't know about
today but they used to only allow a murder to be classified as such
when/if a person was convicted of murder). The figures often only
represent the faith that the victim has that the crime will be solved.
Think of it like some of those dodgy weather forecasts we hear. To the
uninitiated, they probably sound quite plausible.

were showing one gang rape per week, at least several killings a week
topped up with plenty of stabbings, muggings and vandalism at an
unprecedented levels.

That sound very conservative. Crime was like that several years ago when I
was a serving Met Police officer. I'm sure it has got worse since then.

--
Howard Neil

Well Howard you sound like you may be a policeman. Now I hear about crime
generally every day in London. The most surprising source has been the local
papers. more so the South London Press which is published twice a week. If
you search their archives you'll find just how much we've know become almost
impervious to these events. as for the National press and the BBC they only
report crime if it's homophobic or deemed racist.
If you travel on London buses for a couple of weeks at various times during
the day you'll see just how intimidating it is for some sections of the
population.