Met chief hails 'extraordinary' progress in fight against killings in London
There were 97 homicides in the capital in 2025, down 11 per cent from 109 in 2024
Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has hailed the "extraordinary" progress in tackling homicides in London.
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The number of homicides recorded in London has dropped to its lowest level in more than a decade, new figures show.
Sir Mark told LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast the last figures are "fantastic news", but recognised "every homicide is one too many".
He said: "When people question the safety of London, where cities like Paris and Milan and Toronto are 50% higher than London in their homicide rates, cities like Brussels, Berlin and New York are nearly three times the amount.
"And then you could have Houston or Philadelphia that are ten times the amount. So it's quite remarkable."
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There were 97 homicides in the capital in 2025, down 11 per cent from 109 in 2024, according to data released by the Metropolitan Police.
This is also the lowest number recorded since 95 homicides 11 years ago, in 2014.
According to the Met, 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.
Sir Mark attributed the falling homicide rate to two things: targeting the most dangerous men and gangs, and bearing down on overall crime.
He told LBC: "We're now arresting a thousand people more a month than we were a couple of years ago, even in a smaller organisation, using clever technology like facial recognition to do that.
"So targeting the most dangerous, arresting more criminals overall, is generating this fantastic result for London and I'm really proud of what my men and women have done."
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.
Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan said: “Many people have been trying to talk London down, but the evidence tells a very different story.
“It’s clear that our sustained focus on being both tough on crime and tough on the complex causes of crime is working.”
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 standards.