Government cuts to policing have led officer numbers in London to drop to their lowest level per head in 20 years, City Hall data shows.
The number of police officers in London has fallen from 4.1 per thousand Londoners in 2010 to 3.3 per thousand this year.
At a time when violent crime is rising across the country, chronic underfunding has hit the Metropolitan Police hard, with the amount spent on policing per person falling 20 per cent in London between 2013 and 2017, compared to an average drop of 6 per cent across the country.
The Met has already been forced to make more than £700 million in cuts since 2010 and must cut a further £325 million by 2021.
The Mayor is calling on the government to halt planned cuts to the Met immediately and invest properly in public services to combat the rise in violent crime:
“These figures released show the true scale of government cuts to police funding that have hit our city harder than anywhere else in the UK,” the Mayor said.
“I make no apologies for relentlessly pushing the government to understand that cuts have consequences and that our police service desperately need more funding right now,” he added.