Perception
Perception explorer
How do we know what the country thinks of its police? We can read. Every year the press writes about the police hundreds of thousands of times — and the words it chooses are a record of perception in their own right. This tool reads a quarter-century of that record at once: which words recur, whether the tone leans favourable or hostile, how five themes surface, and which forces and figures get named — for every year from 2000 to 2025.
For the full narrative and method, read the data story: The Perception of the Police in Online Media.
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A quarter-century of UK news language about the police — words, sentiment, themes and who gets named, year by year.
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Every word this year — scroll for more
- met86.9
- arrest58
- palestine42.8
- protest40
- inquiry38.6
- family37.3
- suspect35.9
- action35.9
- happen33.1
- england30.4
- kill29
- victim29
- london26.2
- wale26.2
- attack24.8
- gang24.8
- crime23.5
- abuse22.1
- murder20.7
- maccabi20.7
- facial20.7
- review20.7
- find19.3
- recognition19.3
- black19.3
- sexual17.9
- southport17.9
- women17.9
- killer16.6
- case16.6
- ethnicity16.6
- right16.6
- death15.2
- court15.2
- sex15.2
- investigation15.2
- jail15.2
- pro15.2
- children15.2
- claim15.2
The share of negative words (riot, murder, corruption…) and positive words (trust, praised, award…) in UK police headlines each year, based on Guardian coverage.
Elon Musk, Nigel Farage and others paint London as a "dystopian hell hole." The figures don't match. Here the social-media "London is unsafe" narrative (a rising illustrative index) is set against the real Met/London crime figures — homicide at its lowest since 2014, with phone theft, robbery and burglary all falling. Two metrics are shown honestly against the trend: knife crime and recorded sexual offences.
The wider picture — key London crime metrics
Homicide
97 in 2025 — the fewest since 2014, and down ~16% year on year
Metropolitan Police / City Hall; AP (Jul 2025)Phone & personal theft
Phone theft down ~50% in the West End; theft from person down 23% across London (23,311 fewer, year to June 2025)
Metropolitan Police; City Hall (2025)Personal robbery
Down ~11–13% — 2,943 fewer personal robberies in the year to June 2025
City Hall / Metropolitan Police (2025)Residential burglary
Down 10% year on year; down ~28% since 2016
City Hall / Metropolitan Police (2025)Knife crime
Rose to a record ~16,344 offences in 2024/25, then fell ~7% (1,154 fewer) in the 12 months to Aug 2025
Metropolitan Police; Statista (2025)Sexual offences
≈25,000 recorded in 2023/24 and holding — a post-pandemic rise that partly reflects more victims reporting, not a fall
Metropolitan Police / ONS (2024/25)What's driving the narrative
- 2024-08 · Elon Musk (X)
“Civil war is inevitable.”
Posted under a video of UK unrest after the Southport attack; reported at ~9.6m views. Downing Street said there was 'no justification' for it.source
- 2024-08 · Elon Musk (X)
“#TwoTierKier”
Amplifying the 'two-tier policing' claim — that protests are policed unequally — which fact-checkers and the government rejected.source
- 2025-03 · Elon Musk (X)
“Sadiq Khan is a 'stone-cold loser' and a 'terrible, terrible mayor'.”
Part of a run of attacks on London's mayor; researchers reported a surge in Islamophobic abuse toward Khan on X.source
- 2024-08 · Nigel Farage (X / broadcast)
“Britain has a problem of 'two-tier policing'.”
The 'two-tier policing' framing that Musk amplified; the Mayor names Musk and Farage as 'captains of online disinformation'.source
Show the figures & method
London: narrative vs reality. The rising line is an illustrative index of the social-media 'London is unsafe / in decline' narrative — not scraped analytics. Its one measured anchor is City Hall's finding that stories on social media calling London dangerous or in decline rose about 200% in the two years to 2025; earlier years are an illustrative baseline, and the dated posts below are what pin the shape. The falling line and the metric cards are real published figures from the Metropolitan Police, City Hall and the ONS, each carrying its source. Homicide is the headline reality metric (the figure Mayor Khan led with on LBC): 97 in 2025, the fewest since 2014, and a lower rate per head than Paris, Berlin or New York. Two metrics are shown honestly against the trend — knife crime rose to a record in 2024/25 before a recent turn, and recorded sexual offences remain high, a post-pandemic rise that partly reflects more victims coming forward.
| Year | Narrative index | Homicides |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 60 | 109 |
| 2017 | 70 | 137 |
| 2018 | 80 | 135 |
| 2019 | 100 | 149 |
| 2020 | 120 | 132 |
| 2021 | 150 | 128 |
| 2022 | 220 | 109 |
| 2023 | 300 | 111 |
| 2024 | 620 | 105 |
| 2025 | 900 | 97 |
Homicide: Metropolitan Police / City Hall; AP (Jul 2025). The narrative index is illustrative — its one measured anchor is City Hall's finding that social-media stories calling London unsafe or in decline rose ~200% in the two years to 2025.
Headlines analysed
2471
Negative words
18%
Method: hybrid. Tone and counts are derived aggregates over the sampled headlines; no article text is stored.