Lies, damned lies and police crime figures.

[Workingman]

Yesterday evening the BBC broke the news that the police were "fixing" crime statistics to meet targets. Sky carried a similar story, but said the figures were "massaged". Today it turns out that the data is "manipulated".

You know what, I do not care how these crimes are described? Anyone found manipulating the figures should be locked up, along with their Chief Constables and PCCs, and the keys thrown away.

How can we trust that we are being policed effectively when the information we are given are works of fiction?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25002927
http://news.sky.com/story/1170793/polic ... me-figures
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25022680

[TheOstrich]

It's not exactly a new phenonemum ... fennonymum .....phinonymen ....... thing

A number of years ago, Mrs O and I went to a City Council funded lecture day regarding how to plan for and cope with retirement. There we met a person who was involved with the judicial process (being deliberately vague here, GCHQ are probably watching). That person told us in conversation that suppression of crimes, both statistically and by virtue of "let offs", had been deliberate policy for ages.

[KateLMead]

I have been saying this for yonk's crime figures down??? What a laugh ... The . NHS.... Schools...Government. All parties fiddle figures. Banks. Immigration. Every one who is responsible for these departments lie through their teeth.. And the good old British public whose backbone has crumbled due to apathy accepts these lies and "Just carries on.
My friend a pensioner returned around 5 p.m. she had spent the afternoon at the police station, in Leominster she went to the bank and a well dressed young man accompanied by a well dressed young lady approached her and asked whether she could give them £1.00 for a £2.00 piece. She obliged, they then offered to place her shopping in her car, the man carried her bags and she thought how kind! until later she discovered £250.00 had ben filched from her account. Crime down? don't make me laugh..

[cromwell]

It's been going on since the dawn of time. In the old, pre-computer days a sergeant would keep a few solved crime reports / files in the bottom drawer of his desk. Then if the detection rate needed a boost one month, out they'd come.

Then there was the tale about the Inspector in a northern city a couple of decades ago; he was new to his patch and advised his superiors that he would reduce the crime rate by 30% in 18 months; and he did.
Because he knew what his superiors didn't - that the estate housing some of the division's most outstanding wrong un's was scheduled for demolition and redevelopment, and whilst it was the crims housed therein would be relocated - out of the division!
With all the political pressure on police to reduce crime so that the politicians can boast about it, of course a bit of fiddling is going to go on.

[Workingman]

My uncle H was was a DS in the old Leeds City police and he was no angel, by any means.

I guess that most of us have always suspected the police of being "inventive" in their policing methods in order to get the job done. I was brought up next to the Gipton and we all knew some lads who were given an easy ride because they were a conduit to the bigger fish.

But these latest admissions are of a different order. They are being done purely and simply to make the police look better than they are. The false figures are being used to tell us that crime is falling, when we all know that it is not. With an increasing population, and ever more laws, it is impossible for crime to fall. If its rate per capita stayed the same it would still rise.

[cromwell]

Unfortunately the upper ranks of the police are pretty politicised these days, like ACPO for instance, and the politicisation has got worse with the election of Police and Crime Commissioners - most of whom are politicians.

So no surprise then that out and out figure fiddling is in full force, because it's what politicians of every party do; much more than the coppers of old did.

I never take these figures very seriously and for good reason.

ps - there is also the placing of crimes which should be recorded into the category of a non-recordable offence, so they don't show up.

[Workingman]

Couldn't agree more.