Copyright © 2010, ‘Our Exeter’, all rights reserved.
Statistics
Meaningless Numbers
Crime Reduction – The Solution and Its Implementation? You Decide
It is critical to always refer to recorded crime and not reported crime. Reported crime bad, recorded crime good (from a policing PR perspective).
1. Employ a Neighbourhood Beat Manager (NBM) that is more interested in promotion than serving the community. Communities have no problem with an officer being ambitious, but do not accept that this should be at the cost of inadequate policing and a catalogue of other broken promises of community involvement and support that were never fulfilled.
2. Promises, over a 2-3 year period, of Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs) being enforced against regular troublemakers should never be implemented (it creates negative statistics). Apparently, a ‘word in the ear’ of offenders is the preferred action, or no action at all. Additional promises of support must be made to the community by the NBM and immediately discarded by him; plenty ‘talk’ but no ‘walk’, both metaphorically and literally.
3. Employ Police Community Support Officer(s) (PCSOs) in a supporting role for the NBM. This forms a Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT). PCSOs become the ‘police presence in our community’. We use the term ‘presence’ in its ethereal sense. We have not seen any of our NPT for months but have been informed that they do patrol the area in the evening.
4. Community representatives arrange appointments to meet NBM to discuss numerous concerns. NBM never arrives or makes contact to apologise and reschedule. Non-attendance of NBM is presumably based upon the principle of, ‘No information = No Action = Lower Statistics’. NBM himself makes appointments and repeats the ‘no show’ procedure previously detailed.
5. NBM overheard commenting to a local ne’er do well, “If you’re going to cause trouble, do it the other side of the river because it’s bad for my crime figures”.
6. PCSOs have very limited powers, you may be surprised. NBM is responsible for where and when PCSOs patrol. The possibility of NBM patrolling doesn’t seem to figure in the equation.
7. Move your NPT’s office away from within walking distance of the community to a police station 2-3 miles away.
8. Issue the community with a direct telephone number and email address to the NBM’s office, “to enable better communications between the police and community”.
9. All directly reported incidents (8) via phone and email must be filtered and NBM decides which will be included/recorded on the police database that is used to create the statistics so beloved by authority.
10.When a police officer with a conscience informs a community rep of 9 above, raise the matter with the NBM and express your dissatisfaction at this process during a public meeting. The level of community policing is, theoretically, linked directly to the amount of recorded crime. At a public meeting the NBM will devote some time hotly denying that filtering of reported incidents occurs but will finally, and grudgingly, admit it. NBM immediately moves into ‘attack mode’ to try and regain some credibility and accuses community rep of sexism against the two diminutive female PCSOs and demands a ‘full and public apology’ for ‘sexist’ comments. To elaborate – A local pub was the centre of frequent drugs and drink related fighting that invariably spilled out into the street. The community rep had merely expressed concerns for the welfare of the two PCSOs should they become involved in these incidents without the support of other officers. As a NBM he has responsibility for the safety of his PCSOs and stating this obvious fact to him shouldn’t be necessary, or used as an excuse for personal attacks on the community rep’s motives. No apology was given by the community rep.
11.By this time the ‘word is on the street’ and so use of direct contact with the NBM office falls sharply. From a police perspective this would be viewed by our NBM as a good result, if only statistically.
12.Replace 8 with greater encouragement to use the police’s 08452 777 444 general enquiries number to report incidents. Theoretically, using this number is a preferred option because all reported incidents are recorded on the system (or should be) and allocated a ‘Log No.’. The Log number should always be requested by the caller whenever the 0845 number is used to report any incident for two reasons, a)It confirms that the incident is officially logged and, b) it facilitates any ‘follow up’ calls that may be made.
13.Whilst 12 appears to provide the ideal solution for reporting problems, the reality is that the 0845 number is frequently busy and callers can be kept on hold for lengthy periods at their own expense and frequently hang up. Many members of the public have given up using the 0845 number because of unacceptable delays that result in many incidents not being reported (better from a statistical aspect). Why should citizens have to bear any costs involved when assisting the police in the fulfilment of their role?
14.Where the police 0845 number is based is anyone’s guess, but certainly not ‘local’. This invariably means that when you do speak to someone they have no local knowledge and their response relies solely on the information available, presumably, on the police IT system. For example – A recent report of drunken youths in a children’s play area, using the 0845 number, elicited the response, “You live in a very quiet neighbourhood, there has been nothing reported in your area for months”. Apparently, the closure of two drug dens and other incidents of anti-social behaviour in the previous few months didn’t warrant inclusion!
15.Police statements made in the local media must always minimise the time-scale of offences, particularly when drugs related. The two drug dens (14) had been operating for 2 and 3 years respectively but, despite this, the police always refer to them as having been a problem for a ‘few months’. Drug related crime has been an issue for many years in our community.
16.Part of the NBM’s role is to engage with the community on their patch and participate in local events, “building trust and mutual respect”. Once again, the PR bears no relationship to the reality in the community. It is difficult to build respect with an officer that shows only contempt and complete disinterest in the community that he is supposed to be policing and in which he is never seen.
17.To further enhance the statistics, change the statistical border of an area so that some of the issues, whilst continuing, become another police officer’s problem.
18.Of course, implementation of 17 may create an element of ill-feeling between police staff because a NBM has effectively dumped a lot of his problems onto a different area. But not to worry, that’s their problem and ours, certainly not his.
19.The results are in! A drop in recorded crime within the community of 74%, or was it 59%, it depends on which report you read. An impressive reduction, whichever one you believe, assuming you choose to believe either.
20.To add insult to injury, our NBM is awarded the accolade of ‘Neighbourhood Beat Manager of the Year’! Presumably based upon the incredible reduction of recorded incidents.
21.A recent press release stated that, “Recorded crime in the UK is at its lowest level for 30 years”. Presumably, if this is repeated long enough and loud enough someone will believe it, won’t they? It will certainly not be anyone in our community.
22.Just because the police say something is so, it isn’t necessarily true, and the fact that increasing numbers of citizens do question police activities, or lack of them, and express their dissatisfaction, is perhaps a better indication of police performance than any amount of meaningless statistics.