The antiques crime wave - a plague on historic homes

"David Lowsley-Williams and his wife Rona outside Chavenage House, which features as the manor in Lark Rise to Candleford, from which paintings and clocks and David’s uncle’s war medals were stolen " itemprop

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Chief Constable: police manipulate crime figures because of pressure from senior figures

The head of the Derbyshire force, said "inadvertent" pressure from senior officers meant statistics did not depict the true level of crime in Britain

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Crime figures fiddled by police to make offences 'disappear'

19 Nov 2013 21:01Retired and serving police have said serious offences are being downgraded while victims are persuaded not to make a complaint

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Police officers routinely fiddle crime figures, MPs are told

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Police forces are routinely massaging crime figures to make hundreds of offences “disappear in a puff of smoke”, MPs have been told.

Official crime statistics are regularly skewed to make a police force’s performance appear far better than it is in reality, the House of Commons Public Administration Committee heard.

Retired and serving police officers gave evidence about techniques used to manipulate the figures - which they said were sanctioned by senior officers - such as downgrading offences to less serious crimes or persuading victims not to make a complaint.

In some cases crimes were only recorded if they were solved, and others were kept completely off the books if an offender could not be traced, the committee heard.

The disclosures will further undermine confidence in official Home Office statistics which claim crime is at its lowest level for more than 30 years.

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Bernard Jenkin, the committee chairman, said: “I think what we have heard is basically how there is a system of incentives in the police that has become inherently corrupting and I think that is a very shocking thing to hear.

“This is a really savage thing to say, that we can’t trust the leadership of our constabularies to measure their own performance.”

Peter Barron, a former Met detective chief superintendent, said: “Performance culture takes its toll and some boroughs have their performance capped.

“They can only afford to have X number of burglaries per day and X number of robberies per week.

“At the daily meeting, they will discuss individual crimes with a view to see what opportunities there are to count them as something other than a priority crime.”

He suggested some chief police officers were guilty of “fraud” for making sure their force met performance targets.

James Patrick - a Metropolitan Police constable who is currently awaiting disciplinary proceedings over a whistleblowing book - said he became concerned after joining the force in 2009 and finding robberies being logged as “snatch theft”, a less serious crime, in order to massage the figures.

“Burglary is an area where crimes are downgraded or moved into other brackets, such as criminal damage for attempted burglaries, or other types of thefts,” he said.

“Things were clearly being reported as burglaries and you would then re-run the same report after there had been a human intervention - a management intervention - and these burglaries effectively disappeared in a puff of smoke.”

Mr Patrick said he analysed the recording of serious sexual offences and found that in 80 per cent of cases recorded as “no crime”, the designation was “incorrect”.

He added that massaging statistics to hit performance targets had become “an engrained part of policing culture”.

Dr Rodger Patrick, a former West Midlands chief inspector, said: “This is my experience as well. You can see that in the investigations that are being carried out, victims are being pressurised.”

Senior officers would “marginalise” junior ranks who tried to record crimes accurately, he added.

Other police techniques revealed in the evidence session included:

• Multiple crimes in the same area being recorded as a single incident.

• Thefts being noted as “lost property”, burglaries as “theft from property” and attempted burglaries as “criminal damage”.

• Victims of street robbery being telephoned by officers in a bid to persuade them they were mistaken about violence was used, and stolen items “merely just slipped from their bag”.

• Collusion between offenders and police officers to improve detection rates, with criminals admitting offences they did not commit in exchange for inducements such as lower charges, or even “sex, alcohol or access to meals,” said Dr Patrick.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said in a statement: “The Metropolitan Police Service is committed to ensuring crimes are accurately recorded and has put in place robust processes to ensure crimes are neither over- nor under-recorded.”

 CrimeNews »Politics »Conservative »UK News »David Barrett »

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Scotland Yard cyber crime unit to dramatically expand

Scotland Yard cyber crime unit to expand Photo: Alamy By Martin Evans, Crime Correspondent

7:00AM GMT 09 Nov 2013

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Scotland Yard is to dramatically expand its specialist E-Crime unit which could see 500 dedicated officers drafted in to tackle the ever growing problem of cyber attacks and internet fraud, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

With MPs warning that cybercrime is now a Tier One threat to the country – on a par with international terrorism – resources are to be directed away from more traditional crime fighting areas to the specialist unit.

Terrorists, rogue states and fraudsters are thought to be increasingly targeting computer systems in Britain and law enforcement agencies are desperate to ensure they have the resources available to meet the challenge head on.

Scotland Yard set up its first computer crime team in the 1980s in order to support the fraud squad.

But in 2008 with the threat ever increasing, the Home Office funded the setting up of a specialist unit with its focus on investigating and tackling serious cyber crime across England and Wales.

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Until recently Scotland Yard held responsibility for the whole of England and Wales.

But when the National Crime Agency (NCA) – dubbed Britain’s FBI – was launched last month, it picked up the overall lead, leaving the Met to concentrate on London alone.

Around 70 per cent of the unit’s 80 officers transferred across to the new NCA team leaving a core of around 30 at Scotland Yard.

However the Daily Telegraph has learned that there are plans to massively expand the unit in the coming years, eventually boosting the number to around 500.

Cyber crime can range from low level phishing, where con men use the internet to target credit cards and back accounts, to large scale plots aimed at disabling the national infrastructure.

In the summer the Home Affairs Select Committee heard evidence that organised gangs in at least 25 countries, mostly in Eastern Europe, were increasingly targeting their efforts on the UK.

The official estimate puts on the cost of cybercrime to the British economy at around £27 billion.

But experts claim that figure is conservative and the true cost could be more than double.

Globally the cost is thought to exceed £300 billion, outstripping the annual value in the international drugs trade.

While financial cybercrime is a growing problem, the main concern is the threat posed by attacks from hostile states or terrorist organisations.

Plots against power stations, electricity suppliers or air traffic control systems could lead to a huge catastrophe and the loss of hundreds if not thousands of lives.

Scotland Yard refused to discuss specific plans, but Commander Steve Rodhouse, who is the force’s lead on Organised Crime said: “There is a great track record of significant results but we of course recognise that cyber is a growing area of criminality.

“Increasingly fraud and cyber crime are crossing over, and we are continually looking at how we can do more and use sophisticated techniques to beat these fraudsters.

“We will continue to look at how this area of our crime fighting is resourced particularly since the recent reorganisation of the national remit going to the National Crime Agency.

“It is a growing area of criminality and fraud and the threat of fraud through cyber crime impacts on people across London.”

 CrimeNews »UK News »Technology »Mobile »Martin Evans »

In politics

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Failing to report child abuse should be a crime, says Keir Starmer

The former Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC calls for a change in the law to force doctors, social workers and priests to report all allegations of child sexual abuse

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Make failing to report child sex abuse a crime says former DPP

The former director of public prosecutions says he thinks it is time to 'change the law' on child sex abuse in Britain, so reporting allegations becomes 'mandatory'

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Thief who burgled children's hospital hands himself in to police after having flashbacks to the crime

0shares Kieron Hampson was admitted to hospital after falling down stairs
After discharging himself the 23-year-old broke into the children's unit
Hampson, who had been drinking heavily, turned himself in after remembering breaking in to a 'nursery'

By Jennifer Smith

PUBLISHED:19:38, 20 October 2013

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