‘Wall of silence’ by gangs blamed for fall in murder detection rate

MURDERS are becoming harder to solve, the chief of Scotland Yard has said as she defended a falling conviction rate.

As the number of murder investigations opened in London so far this year reaches 57 amid a surge in knife violence, Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, said that officers were finding cases “very challenging” as they increasingly saw younger victims targeted in group attacks.

Officers were often met with a “wall of silence” and struggled to meet stand- ards of proof required to bring charges, the commissioner admitted.

When asked whether she was concerned that the murder detection rate fell to 72 per cent in London last year from its normal levels of around 90 per cent, she said that officers faced a “challenging environment”.

“Not only in terms of the volume,” she said. “In fact a bigger issue is the complexity. These cases are not a classic whodunnit where somebody is deceased and we have no idea who has done that. More often than not we have a very good idea very early about who was involved in that fight on the street.

“Proving which one of those people did it, that is hard when we are met very frequently by a complete wall of silence, where very often nobody wants to tell us anything initially. Proving to a standard where the CPS will charge is a very big challenge.

“Also, you have got a group on group, that’s complex. You have got less cooperation and less intelligence than we would like, that’s complex, and very frequently I am sorry to say that the person who has died was armed as well and that leads to claims of self-defence. There may not be other evidence to suggest what has happened. These are hard cases to prove, tragic for the families if we cannot.” She argued that a detection rate above 70 per cent was still “strong and good and great”.

Commander Jim Stokley, head of the Met’s Gangs and Organised Crime Command, added that the “age demographic is changing”, pointing out: “The victims are getting younger and younger and the suspects are getting younger.”

The commissioner admitted that weapons were “too freely available on the streets of London” and that there was an onus on officers to get “better and better” at monitoring and reacting to events on social media.