Met Police to track London gun injuries with A&E data
The scale of knife and gun crime in London is set to be tracked by police using pooled data from hospital A&E units.
The Met Police said it and the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland plan to form a central data hub for officers to use.
Hospital admissions data will not name victims but give details of their injuries and when they were admitted.
Currently, hospitals are not obliged to provide information to police.
This proposal was revealed at the launch of a new Met DVD on knife crime, which features doctors, victims and their families talking about the issue.
The DVD will be shown in schools, including to school children as young as 11, by charity Growing Against Gangs and Violence.
"The Met and ASGBI [Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland] are keen to see a comprehensive detailed protocol that would enable more consistent, effective data sharing to be carried out across the capital," Scotland Yard said.
The plan is to make it obligatory for all London hospitals to feed information about A&E cases to a central hub on a regular basis.
Police and ASGBI will discuss the proposals with hospitals, doctors and statutory stake-holders in a meeting at the end of April.
Figures from the Met show that between April 2011 and Jan 2012 there were 3,388 stabbings in the capital and 5,861 young people in London were victims of violence during the same period, a 5% on the previous year.