President Trump’s yearslong denunciation of London has reached a fresh intensity lately, abetting a torrent of social media hate directed at the city, mostly from the populist right, suggesting that its 9 million inhabitants live in a dangerous, crime-ridden cesspool.
Mr. Trump claimed in November that no one wanted to go to parts of the British capital because people were “being stabbed in the ass or worse.” On his flight home from a state visit to Britain in September, he told reporters that crime in London “is through the roof.”
Data released on Monday contradict that narrative. In 2025, London’s homicide rate fell to the lowest level since records began in 1997. The 97 people killed in the city last year translates to a rate of 1.1 homicides per 100,000 people — lower than in Berlin, Paris and Toronto, according to the most recent figures.
London officials were quick to point out that it is also below the homicide rate in nearly every large U.S. city, according to data compiled by the FBI. In New York, one of the safest American cities, the police reported 305 homicides in 2025, a rate of 3.6 per 100,000; in Los Angeles, the rate was almost 6 and in Chicago it was over 15.
“The evidence is pretty overwhelming about relative safety and the downward trajectory” of crime in London, Mark Rowley, the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police said in an interview with The New York Times. “I do recognize we’re in an ever more polarized world and online rhetoric is pretty wide-ranging, and often highly untrue.”
While Mr. Rowley was careful not to name Mr. Trump directly, it is clear that both he and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, are fed up with the outlandish claims about violent crime in the city, which have also been made by British right-wing politicians including Nigel Farage.
Mr. Khan said in a separate interview that the British capital had become the victim of “endless streams of distortions and untruths” that “paint a dystopian picture of a lawless place where violent criminals run rampant.”
A Labour Party politician who for years has publicly challenged Mr. Trump over his beliefs and politics, Mr. Khan said he believed that London was being targeted because “we are a progressive, liberal, diverse city, but we’re also incredibly successful, and that’s why these guys talk us down.”
It is true, however, that the city has experienced a significant rise in some highly visible types of street crime, including phone theft and shoplifting, over the past decade. The surge in those offenses followed government cuts to police budgets in the 2010s, which prompted the Metropolitan Police to stop investigating “lower level” crimes in order to prioritize serious violence and sexual offenses.
Mr. Rowley said that the Met’s more aggressive approach in the past two years to some of the most common crimes had begun to show results.
“We’re arresting about 1,000 people more a month” for less serious crimes like theft, Mr. Rowley said. “Our cases solved rates have all gone up significantly” in the last two years, he added. “So the focus on serious violence is one of the things we’re doing, but it’s not the only one.”
Asked to comment on the contrast between the president’s repeated claims about London and the new homicide data, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman said: “President Trump is right,” and insisted that crime had increased in London, referring to data that includes online fraud. “These are the consequences of a radical left agenda that embraces unfettered, unvetted migration from third world countries,” she said.
Mr. Rowley said that the Metropolitan Police enforced the law “without fear or favor” and were “arresting people from every demographic.” He said that the victims and perpetrators of crime in London were “broadly reflective” of its population and “don’t reflect a simplistic characterization” of nationality, religion or race.
Still, London officials acknowledge that there are parts of the city where public concern is well-founded.
Harlesden, a district in northwest London, was shaken by three murders in three weeks in December. On Dec. 1, a 22-year-old local man was stabbed to death in nearby Wembley, and two days later a man was fatally run over outside a courthouse. On Dec. 19, a 55-year-old man was shot dead on a residential street a mile away.
Last Thursday, the police began an operation targeting violent crime and drug dealing in the district, using live facial recognition cameras to search for wanted offenders in a busy shopping area, sending out mounted police on patrol and searching for hidden weapons and drugs.
Speaking as officers combed through bushes in a residential area, Sergeant David Sarney said they had previously found knives in trees and machetes on the roof of a nearby church, as well as samurai swords, so-called zombie knives and “anything with a sharp point that people can use to inflict injury” stashed in unlikely places.
“It might be that people committed crime in the town center, made their escape and decided to ditch a knife,” he said, “but there’s also the people that put them there to pick up when needed.”
British laws make it illegal to carry weapons in public and allow the police to stop and search people on suspicion of possessing knives, Mr. Sarney noted, so offenders sometimes store weapons in public spaces to avoid arrest.
Banned drugs are also sometimes concealed in public trash cans by dealers, Mr. Sarney said. Thursday’s operation included police raids on several homes targeting a high-profile local criminal. Mr. Sarney said he had known the man since he was 8 years old, when he had started carrying drugs for a local gang.
“They get to them that early,” the officer said. “They stay within the business and then they go up — there’s a hierarchical structure.”
A significant portion of serious violent crime in London is associated with drug supply and resulting “disputes,” Metropolitan Police commander Paul Brogden told a news conference on Wednesday. He said the police were “relentlessly targeting” the networks behind the trade, as well as working to reduce the availability of guns in London.
But the most recent official statistics show that common crimes, such as theft and shoplifting, are still less likely to result in prosecutions in the capital than in England and Wales as a whole.
Mr. Rowley said the police were making more arrests and “putting more downward pressure on crime overall,” but he expects London to remain a subject of international focus and debate.
“We’re in more polarized times — that is very obvious across the world and in the U.K.,” he said. “Being at the center of contention is a consequence of our job in a more polarized world.”
Michael D. Shear is a senior Times correspondent covering British politics and culture, and diplomacy around the world.
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