Stabbings raise London murder rate above New York
LONDON’S monthly murder rate has overtaken that of New York City for the first time, after the worrying surge of stabbings continued across the capital.
The death of a 20-year-old man in Wandsworth yesterday took to 31 the number of people stabbed to death in the London since the start of 2018.
Soaring levels of knife crime have helped the capital outstrip New York in terms of murders for the last two months running.
In February, London recorded 15 homicides in total, including stabbings and other fatal crimes, compared with New York’s 14, while in March there were 22, as opposed to 21 in the US city. Eight Londoners, most of them under 30, were murdered in the six days between March 14 and 20. The latest victim was stabbed to death after leaving a bar in the Earlsfield area of south-west London in the early hours of yesterday.
When police and paramedics arrived at the scene they discovered a 20-yearold man suffering from a stab wound.
Despite their efforts they were unable to save his life and he was declared dead at the scene shortly before 2am.
It is believed the victim had been drinking in nearby bar and was attacked after leaving. A 21-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and is currently in custody at a west London police station.
While the populations of London and New York are similar with around eight million people living in each, the number of murders in the US city is still around twice that here. But the gap has been narrowing in recent years with the experts crediting the NYPD’S zerotolerance neighbourhood policing model with driving down the homicide rate from a high of around 2,000 in 1990 to 230 last year.
Statistics also suggest you are almost six times more likely to be burgled in the British capital, and one and a half times more likely to fall victim to a robbery. London also has almost three times the number of reported rapes, although differences in the way the figures are recorded is thought to impact on the overall statistics.