Better reporting needed to eradicate FGM in London
Posted by GLA Conservatives in News
– Mayor challenged to act after ‘appalling’ number of cases in capital
Social workers, medical professionals and teachers need to help identify young girls at risk of FGM after an ‘appalling’ number of the crimes were reported in London.
Assembly Member Andrew Boff will be challenging Boris Johnson to take decisive action after it was reported that London accounted for more than half the number of FGM cases nationwide.
Between July and September last year, 758 new incidents were reported to the Metropolitan Police, compared to 1,385 nationwide.
Phone companies 'should blacklist hoax 999 callers'
– Hoax calls to the Met police tripled last year and cost the fire brigade £1.6million
The Mayor of London should encourage mobile phone operators to consider blacklisting hoax emergency callers that are costing the taxpayer millions of pounds, says Conservative London Assembly member Tony Arbour.
Hoax calls to the Metropolitan Police tripled over the past three years and cost London Fire Brigade £1.6million in 2015, showed figures obtained by Assembly Member Arbour in a recent written question to the Mayor of London.
London Fire Brigade attended more than 1,257 malicious false alarms last year, wasting over 2,387 attendance hours.
The Met meanwhile received 3,671 hoax calls by October 2015, a near 300 per cent rise from the 1,259 it handled in 2012. The statistics also showed 811 hoax calls cost the London Ambulance Service £152,000 in 2014.
Reporting rape on cash machines could detect up to 28k sex crimes in London
More than 38 rape incidents are going unreported every day in London¹, according to a new report.
FOI data from the Met police shows 6,976 recorded rape incidents in the last two years (2012 and 2013) – 570 victims were male while 6,406 were female¹.
However, victims did not report a further estimated 27,904 serious sex crimes (80 per cent) to police in the same two year period².
More than one sex worker raped or attacked every day in the UK
– Nearly 1k victims in two years
– Digital ‘Ugly Mugs’ database of dangerous clients secures £85k police funding
There have been 922 reported crimes against sex workers in the UK in the past two years – a quarter of those (25%) were reported rapes, 39% were sexual assaults and 44% were violent attacks.
London has the highest number of reported incidents totaling two a week at 210. The North West region received 176 reports and the West Midlands 164.
The successful ‘Ugly Mugs’ scheme, which has been running for two years, has now secured £85k funding from UK police forces – £20k of which has come from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and the Met, thanks to persistent campaigning by GLA Conservative Andrew Boff. The scheme costs £120k a year to run.
30k criminals let off with cautions including robbers, drug traffickers and arsonists
· Hundreds of crooks avoid court on multiple occasions
· ‘Written explanation of decisions will answer to victims’
London: 29,560 cautions were handed out to criminals by the Met, the UK’s biggest police force, in 2013/14¹.
CCTV not recovered in over 100K crimes including murders, rapes and stabbings
‘Digital map of existing private surveillance cameras¹ could help police solve crimes overnight’
Police are not looking at available CCTV footage for the majority of their investigations in London. New FOI figures² reveal that police are recovering existing footage in just a fifth of crimes in the Capital.Officers retrieved CCTV for just 23,278 crimes, compared to 118,287 crimes where footage was not obtained.
Roger Evans, Conservative London Assembly Member, who uncovered the figures, says:
“CCTV is everywhere. In 2007 it was claimed that the UK had 1% of the world's population but 20% of its CCTV cameras. While it is meant to be there to protect us from crime, these figures demonstrate that they are rarely used. Instead, serious crooks such as murderers, rapists and robbers may be getting off scot free for one in five crimes because the available CCTV is not even recovered. Acquisitive crime such as theft and burglary may not be sexy, but it is serious and can have a devastating impact. Victims repeatedly tell me that too often in spite of existing CCTV of the crime, no investigation using this evidence seems to take place.”
Rapists and paedophiles lost in London whilst on supervision
‘With 159 serious sex offenders wanted or missing in London alone¹, how many crooks have been ‘lost’ across the UK?’
63 serious sex offenders have gone completely missing in London, whilst on supervision.
Under “Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements” (MAPPA)², the national probation service, HM prison service and the Met are responsible for managing serious sexual and violent criminals, once they complete their sentence. However, the Met only holds data for sex offenders such as rapists and paedophiles.
A further 96 serious sex criminals are ‘wanted’ by police, mainly for breaching their notification requirements – failing to inform the police of details such as home address and passport details. In an FOI response, police say they ‘believe’ these 96 wanted offenders are living abroad in countries where sex offender legislation is perhaps not as robust.
Authorities blind to the hidden crime of human trafficking in the Capital
- Just 36 of London’s 389 human trafficking cases have been identified by the Met this year
- Under-threat Met police human trafficking unit is ‘vital’ to clamp down on London’s hidden slavery cases
- Investigations could pay for themselves from recuperated proceeds of crime through specialist teams
There have been 1,057 potential victims of human trafficking* identified in the UK so far this year¹. London accounts for 39% of all cases (389) identified by local authorities, the Met and NGOs such as charities¹. Of London’s 389 cases, just 36 were picked up by the Met.
Peer Courts can slash youth reoffending and revolutionise the way we handle teen offenders
James Cleverly, London Assembly Member, is calling for dramatic change in the way we handle teenage criminals. He will ask the Met Police Commissioner to introduce ‘Peer Courts’ – a programme outside the formal criminal justice system where teenagers, including ex-offenders, sentence their peers for minor offences. Sitting just beneath the justice system arm, they offer first time offenders an alternative to the criminal justice system.
James Cleverly said:
“Peer Courts, when organised effectively, have been shown in the US to dramatically reduce reoffending, with some programmes cutting re-offending rates to less than 10% – for those that complete their program. As well as delivering solid results, Peer Courts help young people avoid the criminal justice system, and are significantly cheaper as they are largely run by volunteers. When budgets are tight and when the Mayor has ambitious aims to reduce youth re-offending by 20 per cent, we have to think radically about how we handle young offenders.”
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