Police are failing to properly record crimes as serious as rape to hit performance targets, a damning report has revealed.

A target culture within policing has created ‘perverse incentives’ and driven officers up to the most senior level to ‘misrecord’ crime, MPs said.

The Public Administration select committee called for local Police and Crime Commissioners to abolish all targets to  help restore public trust in  crime figures.

They also called for an investigation into treatment of a police officer who blew the whistle on corrupt recording practices.

Former Metropolitan Police officer James Patrick described how massaging numbers to hit targets had become ‘an ingrained part of policing culture’.

He exposed how crimes were routinely downgraded, with robberies logged as theft and burglary reclassified as criminal damage – or even ‘no-crimed’ – to make them ‘disappear in a puff of smoke’.

He resigned last month after an investigation into misconduct was launched.

The report was published as a new YouGov poll for Channel 5 found 40 per cent of Britons think crime has gone up in the last decade. This is despite police figures and the national crime survey showing sharp falls in crime levels.

Bernard Jenkin, the committee chairman, said it was ‘depressing’ how the officer was treated by the Met and claimed most forces were ‘still in denial about the damage targets cause, both to data integrity and to standards of behaviour’.

The report found crime figures recorded by the police vastly exaggerated the extent of genuine decreases in recent years.

National targets for crime figures have been abolished by the Home Office. But the report found targets, and a target culture, remained at a local level, set by Police and Crime Commissioners or senior officers.

Read More

Two ‘petite’ firearms officers are set to receive a pay-out of £70,000 after winning a sex discrimination case over the size of their big guns.

Victoria Wheatley and Rachael Giles said their weapons were too big for their small hands and as a result they could not reach the trigger, a tribunal has heard.

The two women struggled with the grip of the pistols they were using – a Glock 17 – and they also claimed their heads and legs were too small for their protective gear.

The case, held at the Central London Employment Tribunal last week, found the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) guilty of discrimination against both officers in the provision of suitable firearms and safety equipment.

It is understood the officers are set to receive £35,000 each after winning the case against the force – but there is expected to be an appeal.

The decision comes after a number of extraordinary cases where police forces across the country have had to pay out thousands in compensation to officers due to injuries at work – including £8,000 to a policeman bitten by fleas.

The two officers were based at different stations in the north west, with Miss Wheatley part of the armed unit which protects the Sellafield atomic complex in Cumbria and Miss Giles based at Chapelcross, near Annan.

Both females, who were described as being ‘petite in stature’ and with ‘small hands’, asked on several occasions for a smaller and suitable grip on the weapon when they could not reach the trigger, but this did not happen, the tribunal heard.

They also said their trainers failed to adjust their pistols while carrying out a test shoot.

They both complained separately about their problems, after it is understood they did not receive as high a test marks as their male colleagues which put them at a disadvantage.

Their solicitor, Binder Bansel, of Pattinson & Brewer, said that every officer joining at the rank of constable or sergeant is required to train to recognised standards as an authorised firearms officer and maintain the standard.

A cycle of annual training shoots tests their ability which they must undertake as part of their job.

Mr Bansel said: ‘Continued failure at these shoot days results in an unsatisfactory assessment, which could lead to the officer being dismissed.’ Miss Wheatley, 39, and Miss Giles, 32, also said there were other problems during the tests, including protection equipment which did not fit.

They argued the helmets and kneepads were too large for their legs and heads which hindered their performance.

They also argued they were too short for a wooden barricade, which was used as a resting place for the firearm.

Read More

Police who patrol Redbridge’s top outdoor sex spots have seen an increase in reports of homophobically aggravated crimes.

A record number of crimes against the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community were reported in Redbridge in 2013, which police attribute to an increase in victim confidence in the police.

Police began the patrols to encourage victims of homophobic crimes to report them in the knowledge they would be fully investigated.

Last year, 22 crimes identified as being homophobically aggravated, such as blackmail, assault, harassment and criminal damage, were committed, up from 17 in 2012 and 11 in 2011.

To combat this, police have been visiting sites across the borough identified as PSEs, or Public Sex Environments, to warn people frequenting these places for sex, that they are vulnerable to crime.

Along with outreach workers from HIV charity Positive East, plain clothes and uniformed officers patrol sites known to be PSEs, including Barley Lane recreation ground; Goodmayes Park; South Park; Melbourne Fields in Valentines Park; Fairlop Waters and Eastwood Close in South Woodford.

Pc Anton Brown, an LGBT liaison officer for Redbridge, said: “Thefts, robberies, rape and other violent assaults take place at these locations and victims are scared to report them as they do not want to be ‘outed’. They are often men who have sex with men but don’t necessarily identify as being gay.”

While sex in a public place is illegal, in most cases police do not arrest the men as long as they have not engaged in sexual activity in public view.

“We approach people loitering, not engaging in sex, unless they are doing it in a very open area or we have received reports from disturbed members of public,” Mr Brown added.

“A lot of people deny why they’re there which is tragic, but they do engage with us and listen to our advice, which is good.

“Our ultimate goal is to encourage our LGBT community in Redbridge to have more confidence in the police and to report LGBT crimes in the knowledge they will get investigated properly by specially trained investigators such as myself.”

Any reader of this column is usually several years ahead of the crowd. Here, we grasped from the start that the Blair creature was a menace; that the Iraq and Afghan wars were wrong; that joining the euro would be a terrible mistake; that the Tories are both useless and doomed.

We already know that the return of grammar schools –once derided, now increasingly demanded – is the key to education reform.

But perhaps above all we understand that all important Government statistics are fiddled, and that the crime figures are so violently massaged that they bear no relation to reality at all.

Yet fashionable opinion has until recently denied this truth, accusing doubters of ‘moral panic’. Lofty commentators and social scientists have proclaimed a new era of social peace and order.

When normal people, living in the real Britain, complain that this does not seem to be true where they live, they are sneered at as if they were deluded.

But last week, we learned the truth. At an astonishing hearing of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, experts and former police officers lined up to reveal the myriad methods by which the police make crime and disorder disappear from the figures.

At the heart of the trick is this simple aim – to pretend that large numbers of incidents that would once have been crimes are now reclassified so that they don’t appear in the official returns as such.

In short, crime has ‘fallen’ because we have now redefined millions of crimes as non-crimes.

You may still be attacked or robbed. But  it doesn’t count. And this barely touches on another issue, which I plan to deal with shortly, of the vast amount of internet crime that goes entirely unpunished and unrecorded.

The MPs were plainly astonished (for as usual they have not been paying attention). It was clear that the police are under heavy political pressure, from all major parties, to deliver lower crime figures.

This is one of two things our country is good at. Our most successful and fastest-growing branch of agriculture is cannabis farming.

Our most successful industry is the manufacture of lying statistics, showing that everything is fine.

Meanwhile, half the containers leaving British ports are empty, because we make so little and the world does not want it. How long can this go on? Official figures will not be a good guide.

Read More