Figures from the
Office for National Statistics showed that in 2007 an estimated 10.6 percent of
London's population of 7,556,900 were black.
[25] Evidence shows that the black population in
London boroughs increases with the level of deprivation, and that the level of crime also increases with deprivation, such that "It is clear that ethnicity, deprivation, victimisation and offending are closely and intricately inter-related".
[26] In June 2010, through a
Freedom of Information Act request,
The Sunday Telegraph obtained statistics on accusations of crime broken down by race from the
Metropolitan Police Service.
[n 2] The figures showed that the majority of males who were accused of violent crimes in 2009–10 were black. Of the recorded 18,091 such accusations against males, 54 percent accused of street crimes were black; for robbery, 59 percent; and for gun crimes, 67 percent.
[27] Robbery, drug use, and gang violence have been associated with black people since the 1960s.
[28] In the 1980s and 1990s, the police associated robbery with black people. In 1995, the Metropolitan Police commissioner
Paul Condon said that the majority of robberies in London were committed by black people.
[29] Street crimes include muggings, assault with intent to rob, and snatching property. Black males accounted for 29 percent of the male victims of gun crime and 24 percent of the male victims of
knife crime.
[27] On sex offences, black men made up 32 per cent of male suspects. Similar statistics were recorded for females. On knife crime, 45 percent of suspected female perpetrators were black; for gun crime, 58 percent; and for robberies, 52 percent.
[30] Operation Trident was set up in March 1998 by the
Metropolitan Police to investigate gun crime in London's black community after black-on-black shootings in
Lambeth and
Brent.
[31] Between April 2005 and January 2006, figures from the Metropolitan Police Service showed that black people accounted for 46 percent of car-crime arrests generated by
automatic number plate recognition cameras.
[32]