You'll find this note about the increase in 'headline crime' in 2025 vs 2024:
>the latest rise in CSEW headline crime was because of a 31% increase in fraud (to around 4.2 million incidents); this is the highest estimated number of incidents since fraud was first collected on the CSEW in YE March 2017
Surely you can't argue that fraud makes people feel unsafe when walking the streets. Fraud is a serious problem and the increase in fraud is concerning, but it's not a personal safety issue.
If you think about it, there are a lot of different categories of crime, numbers are bound to fluctuate, and so some of the categories will naturally show increases between one year and the next (just as others will show decreases). You can easily cherry pick one or two individual categories to paint whatever picture you want. I could equally point out that knife offenses, firearm offenses and robbery have gone down compared to 2024. Really, as many posters have pointed out, it makes more sense to look at longer-term trends rather than reading too much into year-on-year increases or decreases in specific crime categories.
The overall picture is that London is neither unusually safe nor unusually unsafe for a large European or American city. This has been the case for decades.
>I can communicate with Londoners
Well, can you? You're communicating with one now, but you seem quite determined to convince me not to believe either the official statistics or my own experiences.
Let's remove fraud entirely since you're right it doesn't affect street safety.
Theft from the person - which absolutely does - increased 15% to 151,220 offences (highest since records began).
Shoplifting hit 530,643 offences (also highest since records began). These are the crimes people encounter walking around London.
Since you're a Londoner, the Met data is key: London saw a 54% shoplifting increase vs 20% nationally, and 41% increase in theft from person while the rest of England saw it decrease by 14%. London isn't following national patterns - it's bucking them badly.
On cherry-picking: Homicides fell by 32 incidents across 9 million Londoners. Meanwhile, London alone saw over 30,000 additional shoplifting incidents. The volume difference matters.
The ONS explicitly states there have been "increases across some crime types in the latest reporting period." The current trajectory on street-level property crime is objectively concerning, regardless of longer-term trends.
Your personal experience is valid, but the data suggests it may not reflect what's happening across London more broadly. The statistics and your lived experience can both be true simultaneously.
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Just to reiterate: these aren't abstract statistics - fraud, shoplifting, and theft from the person are exactly the crimes that make London feel unsafe day-to-day. Your own data source proves crime is rising in the categories that matter most for everyday safety.