Festus Akinbusoye is former Police and Crime Commissioner, and local election candidate for Abbey Road Ward on Westminster Council.
The seams of London’s social contract are slowly unravelling. A city once defined by high social trust is fracturing, and that fracture is creating fertile ground for division, antagonism – pure rage.
I believe all is not lost. London can be a far better place to live, do business, and raise a family. But restoring it means restoring something specific: law and order on the streets. Visible, efficient, and consistent.
That cannot happen while those in charge send mixed signals and refuse to invest in the people needed to deliver it – the officers and staff of the Metropolitan Police.
The business investor who flew into London and got robbed in broad daylight. The family I know of has been burgled so repeatedly that they are considering leaving. Me, watching open drug dealing on the street and asking one simple question: how? These are not edge cases. They are the daily texture of a city where the lines have become blurred.
The officer crisis is a leadership crisis
The Metropolitan Police had 33,766 officers in May 2024. By February 2026, that number had fallen to 31,778, with further cuts projected. In just two years, the city has lost nearly 2,000 officers. The Mayor of London has presided over this without serious public acknowledgement that it represents a direct threat to public safety.
For context, losing 2,000 officers is the equivalent of losing around 20 full emergency response teams or up to 200 neighbourhood policing teams across London. That means slower response times, fewer officers on our streets, and weaker local policing presence in our communities.
When experienced officers leave and are not replaced, institutional knowledge evaporates. When junior officers are overextended, judgment suffers. The list of victims grows. The next Mayor must be unequivocal: the Met needs to reach at least 35,000 officers, with retention rates to match.
What New York got right
In the early 1990s, New York City was losing the argument with crime. Mayor Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bratton made a clear decision: enforce the law, starting with the small things. In the subway, that meant fare-dodging. The broken windows principle – that visible disorder in one domain licenses disorder everywhere – was applied with consistency and political will. Enforce at the margins, and you signal to everyone that the rules apply to everyone. Violent crime fell dramatically. The city was transformed.
The lesson was not only operational. It was ideological. And it was only possible because the elected Mayor and his operational chief were on the same page. No caveats. No community relations strategy substituting for a crime reduction strategy.
In London today, the orthodoxy sometimes runs the other way. Community engagement has become the starting point for policing, when community safety should be. The distinction matters more than it sounds. A police force shaped primarily around being liked rather than being effective operates with one hand tied behind its back. Trust and confidence in the police are the results of maintaining law and order.
The tools exist
Technology is not the constraint. AI-enabled stand-off and passive weapon detection, already being piloted across UK venues – can identify concealed weapons in crowded spaces without mass stop and search.
Predictive analytics can direct resources before incidents occur rather than after. Police forces across England and Wales spend around £2 billion a year on technology, 97% of it maintaining legacy systems. That is a choice, not an inevitability.
The next Mayor must drive technology adoption with the same urgency that New York brought to its subway enforcement. The tools exist. The question is whether London has a Mayor prepared to use them.
I served as Police and Crime Commissioner with strategic responsibilities for the least well-funded police force per thousand in England and Wales. Nevertheless, we grew officer numbers each of my three years to record levels, reduced residential burglaries by 58%, and earned the first-ever Outstanding rating from His Majesty’s Inspectorate for managing repeat offenders. We backed officers in the lawful exercise of their duties. Stop and search, done legitimately, nearly tripled and the force was recognised as national best practice by His Majesty’s Inspectorate for two consecutive years.
Overall, officer retention rose, and crime fell.
It happened because leadership was unambiguous about what the force was for.
The home, not the hotel
Every person who moves to London, starts a business, raises a family, is making a bet that the city will hold up its end of the bargain. Safety. Ownership. Opportunity. That is what a home means.
Continuing as we are produces a city that becomes a hotel rather than a home. A hotel, however grand, is a place you pass through. A home is where you belong, where you are safe, where your children’s futures are genuinely open.
London can be that home again. It simply needs leadership with the clarity to say what a city is for, and the resolve to mean it.