Operation gang busters

Forty organised gangs from more than 25 countries have been smashed by the Met in a year.

The gangs came from Africa, eastern Europe, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia, South America and the Far East, as well as Britain.

They were involved in crimes including drug trafficking, people smuggling, vice, firearms offences, money laundering and fraud.

In total, 187 organised criminal networks were disrupted by officers from the Met's Specialist Crime Directorate, resulting in hundreds of arrests and convictions.

Of those, there were 60 white British gangs involved in murder, vice, drug trafficking, financial crime and firearms offences.

Another 40 were made up of immigrants, some of them illegal. The nationality of the remainder either could not be identified or involved a number of criminals from different countries.

The countries with the most gangs operating in London included Algeria and Nigeria, with five networks each. All were involved in drug trafficking, fraud, gun crime and people smuggling. These were followed by Jamaica (four) and Pakistan (three).

The Met has been forced to adopt new tactics to crack down on the gangs, which are so organised they have the hallmarks of big businesses, with layers of "managers" and assets spread across the world.

Many operate legitimate businesses alongside their criminal enterprises, with one providing cash for the other.

This is the first time that Scotland Yard has collected data on international involvement in organised crime in such detail.

The Criminal Networks Prioritisation Matrix is designed to identify which gangs are the most dangerous, based on intelligence from different police squads.

Previously, detectives from specialist units such as vice or people trafficking didn't have access to so much information about the gangs and their links, meaning the scale of their activities and size of their criminal assets were not known.

A team of analysts at Scotland Yard examines the information and their findings are given to the frontline police units. Intelligence is also swapped with police forces in other countries in order to trap gangs operating across international borders.

Acting Assistant Commissioner Janet Williams said: "Our policing response is always evolving in order to keep ahead of the changing nature of London's criminal communities.

"International crime links with London mean we continue to build closer working relationships and intelligence sharing with a wide array of national and international law enforcement agencies, so that all communities can be protected from these often dangerous individuals.

"The Met's success in disrupting criminal networks operating out of, or through, London has been significant over the last year. London is not a safe place for criminals. Those who have tried to operate their criminal enterprises by travelling to London to commit crime, or are living within London's communities, have seen us strip them of assets, seize their drugs and take their weapons."