Crime Stats Give Encouraging Picture

Violent crime falls. Detection rates up.

Recently released crime statistics for Ealing Borough have provided encouraging news for the local police. The statistics indicate sustained falls in violence, burglary, car theft, gun crime and the borough’s most active criminals being targeted or already in custody.

Currently one in five crimes in Ealing are being solved. By the end of June 2006, with the exception of Westminster, which consists of a number of separate divisions, Ealing borough has had the highest number of sanction detections in the Metropolitan Police area.

Chief Superintendent Colette Paul, the Borough Commander said, “Burglary, motor vehicle theft, assaults and violent crime are all down with the borough’s most active criminals being targeted or already in custody. Violence, of course, is the crime everybody fears most and to see these positive trends now continuing month after month is really good news for us all. I would like to pay tribute to the police officers, police staff, the local authority, our partner agencies from the Safer Ealing Partnership and the wider community who have worked tirelessly to help us achieve these successes.”

Crime is also falling across London and the number of people being prosecuted for criminal offences has risen to nearly 20% for the first time in many years.

The police are claiming great success with their proactive operations such as targetingpriority offenders, the closure of local crack houses and Operation Doddery, the motor vehicle decoy initiative.

Twenty four of the Priority Crime (Burglary, Motor Vehicle and Street Crime) Prolific Offenders have been arrested and are currently in custody. Ealing Borough has raided the highest numbers of crack houses (22) in London, 30 people are on currently on Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and they have arrested 18 suspects for Theft from MV and Handling Stolen goods through our Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention initiative - Operation Doddery.

They continue to work very closely with Local Authority and have joint two-day operations run by more than 50 police and council street enforcement officers every week, in priority crime and anti-social behaviour hotspots across the borough. These have led to a number of arrests, fines for illegal street traders and fly-tippers and the instant removal of scores of abandoned vehicles.

All of the 23 Safer Neighbourhoods Teams have now launched their focus groups so that can develop very close working relationship with the community to help solve crime.

Since April 2006 until 31st July 2006 Ealing Borough has achieved the following results:

• 21% reduction in Burglary with a 36% detection rate
• 11% reduction in theft of Vehicles
• 13.5% reduction in Gun Enabled Crime
• 14% reduction in Assaults and overall 2.6% reduction in violent crime
• 5.6% reduction in Domestic Violence with 34.4% detection rate
• 16.5% reduction in homophobic crime with a 25% detection rate
• 8.8% reduction in Rape
• Solve 20% of overall crime 1 in 5 crimes

The figures cover the April to July period and are compared with the same months last year.

August 30, 2006