Officers from across London joined forces to arrest over 1,500 people following enhanced activity to tackle domestic abuse and violence.
The Metropolitan Police Service ran a special targeted 16 Days of Action between Thursday, 25 November and Friday, 10 December.
The 16 Days of Action is an amplification of what goes on in the Met throughout the year to arrest perpetrators and protect victims of domestic abuse. It is also an extension of the work that officers do every day to ensure London is a safe place for women and girls to go about their daily lives without the fear of becoming victims of violent crime.
Extra engagement activity and enforcement took place on every borough, leading to 1,504 arrests and 560 charges for offences including domestic abuse, stalking, rape and harassment.
They have also issued 165 cautions, 87 Restrictive Orders and made 62 Clare’s Law applications.
In a huge surge of activity to keep people safe, officers from various teams from across the Met took part in the action. They included officers from the Prisons Intelligence Unit, Special Constabulary, Digital Operations and Predatory Offender Units.
It also gave officers the chance to raise awareness around the Domestic Violence Scheme known as Clare’s Law, give general safety advice and explain all the steps the Met is taking to tackle violence against women and girls.
Officers from Central South Basic Command Unit (BCU) and the Met’s Taskforce Team came together at London Bridge Station with partners, including Solace, Gaia and the Path Project. Here members of the public were able to speak about their concerns, reflections and obtain more information or simply network.
Additional activities included webinar’s to discuss domestic abuse with various communities and in West Area BCU officers deployed the Met’s Engagement Bus to the Hayes Muslim Centre to speak to women around the under-reporting and raising awareness of domestic abuse in the community.
Officers from the Met Intelligence Unit presented around Stalkerware/Spyware and gave advice to stalking victims with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which they gave good feedback on.
Detective Superintendent Matt Pilch, Lead Responsible Officer for Domestic Abuse, said: “We are fully committed in tackling domestic abuse and violence amongst women and girls and I hope the work our officers have carried out across London amplifies this.
“As we know though domestic abuse can also affect men and deeply impacts victims and families.
“Our work will continue with the added support of the Met’s Predatory Offender Units, which have thousands of suspects for domestic abuse, sex offences and child abuse since last November.
“We have also continued developing our response to domestic abuse adopted the Domestic Abuse Matters cultural change programme, in collaboration with the domestic abuse charity SafeLives. Former officers and domestic abuse practitioners have held training session for 6,800 officers cross the Met to ensure they can gather evidence of coercive controlling behaviour, recognise perpetrator tactics and understand the different dynamics of domestic abuse.”
The Met is investing over £11 million to develop digital forensic capability which will support frontline officers to recover valuable digital evidence to enable better outcomes at court for victims of abuse and violent crime. Over the next three years, new technology and specialist resources will be rolled out to assist officers with the digital aspects of their investigations – taking away complexity of digital evidence and saving time.
Domestic abuse is still an under-reported and largely hidden crime type and there is often an overlap between domestic abuse and violence in many forms.
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