Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdote is not data. It is both true that the police absolutely suck at handling petty crime, and the Met have a fairly terrible reputation; and that more serious violent crime is much, much less of a problem in London than it used to be (and less than US cities, of course).
from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/world/europe/london-polic... A record 80,000 phones were stolen in the city last year [inferred to be 2024], according to the police, giving London an undesirable reputation as a European capital for the crime. Overall crime in London has fallen in recent years, but phone theft is disproportionately high, representing about 70 percent of thefts last year. And it has risen sharp…
Turns out it wasn’t just random street crime. It was being run by organised crime networks, and it went down significantly after they managed to disrupt a few major rings.
These waves do happen from time to time when criminal networks discover a new tactic, before the police figure out an effective method to deal with it. It was youth stabbings a few years ago and acid attacks before that, both are much reduced now.
Those criminals will move onto something else now, undoubtedly. Perhaps shoplifting, which it’s now reported is being also increasingly run by gangs. Point is, you can’t necessarily look at an individual type of crime as an indicator of criminality as a whole, could just be exploiting an opportunity.