The Mayor of London has praised new police technology which helps to visualise bruising in darker skin, unveiled as part of efforts to tackle violence against women and girls.
00:00The Mayor was shown the new technology and spoke with Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and officers who are piloting the devices.
00:13The handheld device is the first of its kind to be developed and uses a technique called cross-polarisation to make injuries clearer that may not appear to the naked eye.
00:28According to the Met Police, of 33 uses during a pilot in South London, 45% have resulted in charges, with several others still under investigation.
00:41This new technology is just one example of how we're day by day improving our response to victims of violence against women and girls.
00:49A very basic requirement is to be able to get great evidence of an assault. That might be a bruise or a scratch.
00:56It's not always easy to photograph it, it depends on the light, it depends on a whole range of factors.
01:01It also sometimes depends on the colour of skin, darker skin sometimes showing bruising less readily.
01:07Recognising this problem, our forensic experts have designed this special lighting technology and we've been testing it in the handfuls of officers on the front line.
01:15It's helping get better images of bruises and that's getting more prosecutions and even in this test we've seen it increasing the prosecution rate for these offences.
01:23So our next step is then to look at how we manufacture more of these and roll them out across London.
01:28It will help us protect women and girls better.
01:30If you come forward you will be believed our investigations are focused on supporting the victims and targeting the offenders.
01:38This helps us get the best evidence possible of the offence against you if you can come forward and report it and build the evidence as we target the offender and build all the right evidence around them.
01:48One of the things we've been talking about today and presenting to the Mayor and is part of our improvements has been our investment in digital technology.
01:54So we've got software now that helps us map the phone activity of offenders because offenders are often using phones for coercive control or for stalking.
02:03And again with better software there we're better able to map the evidence and we get more convictions.
02:09So we're taking multiple steps to do a better job to protect women and girls from the predators.
02:14The big 100 is inherently preventative by taking the most dangerous offenders off the street and we've charged over 150 of them so far and with over 800 offences.
02:26Most of them we get remanded in custody within three months.
02:29Last year we get a good deadline we get out ofED.
