London 'turns corner' on crime

Street robbery in the capital has fallen to its lowest level for 13 months, Scotland Yard chief Sir John Stevens reveals today, insisting: "London has turned the corner".

Figures for May show a fall of 164 a day from a peak of 230 last November and a daily average of 200 throughout last year.

The figures are a welcome relief for Scotland Yard because they provide clear evidence that the mugging epidemic has levelled off after two years of increases, driven mostly by juveniles snatching mobile phones.

In February, Home Secretary David Blunkett used an interview with the Evening Standard to give the Commissioner six months to "clamp down on the visible signs of violence and street robbery" and warned that he would intervene in failing boroughs if the Met did not make progress.

Now Sir John has spoken for the first time of his optimism that his frontline officers are beginning to bring street crime under control - and he gave credit to the Evening Standard for putting on pressure to get something done.

He admits the soaring street crime figures were "dreadful" at the end of last year when offences almost topped 7,000. Now, with 5,089 offences in May, street crime is at its lowest level since April 2001 and has dropped by 25per cent since January, when concerns reached new levels after a teenage girl was shot in the head by a robber who stole her mobile.

"Based on these figures, London has turned the corner but we have got to make sure we continue to drive into street crime," Sir John said.

The Met's success comes after Operation Safer Streets saw 250 traffic officers diverted to the 600-strong anti-robbery squads in 15 boroughs.

An eight-week blitz from the beginning of February appears to have been sustained even though the traffic officers have gone back to normal duties - 900 people were arrested and charged for street crime in April and May.

Senior figures at Scotland Yard were outraged when the Home Secretary made his unprecedented ultimatum in February, sparking a Parliamentary backlash - orchestrated behind the scenes by police chiefs - against plans in the Police Reform Bill which would give the Government power to take over in failing police divisions.

Speaking to the Standard, Sir John pointedly said: "David Blunkett knows that police are independent in terms of their operational capability and how we deliver. He accepts that and that's how the law is at the moment."

However, the Commissioner went on to praise the efforts of the Government to persuade mobile phone companies to take action to make handsets less desirable targets for muggers. From next month, the big service providers will bar stolen handsets from being reactivated on other phone networks.

Sir John said the Prime Minister's direct intervention, by setting up and chairing a street robbery task force, had injected a sense of urgency across the criminal justice system.

"The upside is we are being listened to. A lot of the issues that we are dealing with now have been as a result of the pressure that has been put on us by your newspaper. You didn't expect me to say that, but I will say it and also there has been a public awareness which the police and Government have listened to," he said.

Street robbery began to rise inexorably alongside the phenomenal spread of mobile phones at the beginning of 2000. But Sir John traces the overwhelming surge in street robbery last autumn, to the aftermath of 11 September, when up to 1,500 officers were taken from the boroughs to patrol central London against a terrorist threat. Street robbery jumped 20 per cent in October and kept climbing.

He said: "The low point for me was about November; suddenly the figures just shot up. We were concentrating on protecting London in terms of the general threat of terrorism, reassuring the people of London, whether it be in the City and Canary Wharf or the Muslim community. We got real plaudits, but the worrying thing was then we watched street crime go through the roof and we had that horrible business of the woman being shot in the head for her mobile phone. I knew we had to take radical steps."

Operation Safer Streets had already begun when Mr Blunkett fired his warning shot, but Sir John says the blunt intervention helped because it created a sense of urgency which unlocked extra money and inspired real change.

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