Talk about manipulating statistics! If you want to go down the futile route of comparing crime statistics let’s take your example of 'Violence against the person', 'Robbery offences' and 'sexual offenses' (per 1,000 population) respectively for the following London boroughs:
Croydon (20.5), (4.1), (1.2)
Ealing (25.0), (4.4), (1)
Lambeth (28.6), (8.0), (1.8)
Hammersmith and Fulham (28.6), (3.9), (1.3)
Southwark (32.6), (7.2), (1.5)
Croydon is not without its problems but statistically does not suffer worse crime rates than other COMPARABLE boroughs. It really depends on which part of Croydon we are talking about - it is a large place.