The Metropolitan Police unit responsible for investigating murders* in London was cut by nearly 40 per cent between 2004 and 2017 (see table below). Figures obtained via a Freedom of Information request show the Homicide and Serious Crime Command (HSCC) reduced in total strength almost every year over that period. The sharpest fall was from […]
Tag Archives: Metropolitan Police
Off The Map: Oluwadamilola Odeyingbo
The case of 18 year-old Oluwadamilola Odeyingbo has been removed from the database after the Metropolitan Police concluded it was not a homicide. Their decision was taken after a special post-mortem gave a cause of death as multiple organ failure from a pre-existing medical condition. The police statement reads: The cause of death has been […]
Sanction Detection Rates
The ‘murder rate’ is one way of measuring the effectiveness of the justice system. Another is the percentage of homicides that are ‘cleared up’ – otherwise known as the Sanction Detection Rate. This means cases where a suspect has been identified but not necessarily convicted of the crime, perhaps because they have been acquitted on […]
The London Homicide Manual
How do detectives investigate a murder? Books, TV programmes and documentaries give us some idea – even if their focus is on a single grizzled cop who solves a homicide single-handed. But what exactly is the ‘procedure’ when that call first comes in about a dead body? As it happens the Metropolitan Police have what […]
Unsolved / Undetected Homicides
The Metropolitan Police have issued a list of 290 ‘undetected homicides’ going back to January 1999, following a Freedom of Information request. When people talk of unsolved murders we tend to think of classic fictional mysteries or the crimes of fiendish killers like ‘Jack the Ripper’. Deep down, of course, we realise that cases go […]
The Met’s Five Year List of Murders
The Metropolitan Police recently agreed to release details of all ‘murders’ in the last five years following a Freedom of Information request. There are a few discrepancies with our own list of murders but these actually illuminate how the Met records each homicide. The Met already releases monthly totals and a breakdown for each borough […]