Homicides on the Rise in London

Homicides in London rose for a third successive calendar year - to the highest level since 2008.

It comes a week after the home secretary gave 18 police forces £35m to combat violence.

Throughout 2019, the BBC recorded details of murder and manslaughter investigations launched by the 46 UK police forces.

Homicide figures fell for 26 of those forces while five recorded the same figure as in 2018.

London has seen a significant increase with the number of killings was at the highest in any part of the country. The Metropolitan Police launched 149 homicide investigations in 2019 along with the British Transport Police (BTP) leading three murder investigations on the London Underground network.

The Met Police said tackling violence remained a top priority, adding that it had anti-knife crime plans specific to boroughs and aimed to have more than 32,000 officers by summer 2020 - which would represent a 7% increase on the 29,924 officers the Met had in April 2018.

Nothing to see here, folks. London's finest Mayor Sadiq Khan has it all under control.