How to manipulate the crime figures
Mon 8:43 am +00:00, 24 Feb 2014 2The door knocked last night and a neighbour from a few houses away came to the door. He had a printed piece of paper in his hand, which informed me that my car aerial had been stolen, along with 21 others in our street. As crimes go, it was curious. What possible advantage could there be to a criminal in collecting car aerials from numerous different makes of car?
The story was even harder to understand when he informed me that the ‘criminal’ had walked into the very next street and dropped the bag of aerials collected onto the ground, where it had been found by ‘a member of the public’ and handed to the Police.
In his printed circular, he informed us that the Police were now in possession of the 21 aerials, and if we rang them to report the crime on the given phone number of the one stolen from our car ( we park on the street), they would then permit us to go the police station to claim our aerial back. No doubt needing a check to see which one fitted.
It then dawned on me that this would potentially grant the Police a fantastic crime statistic. 21 aerials stolen means 21 individual crimes, if each was reported separately as requested in the circular. Using the good neighbour to go around all the houses in the street – he even knew which cars were involved, and where all their owners lived – the Police could get 100% resolution of 21 crimes.
With my mind already programmed to think of what lies behind things from editing this blog, it just occurred to me that the only gainer from this unusual activity would be Police statistics. Now they wouldn’t be resorting to such tactics, would they. If they are not doing so, you can see how easy it would be to do something along these lines.
Back to the blog.
This kind of thing comes next –
I know that cops are under a lot of pressure to make x amount of arrests for financial purposes, and will no doubt fabricate false crimes to make up those numbers, but this?
KNOCKOUT DROP GANG CALLED THE BLACK BASTARDS IN NEW ATTACK
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/21/thugs-picked-the-wrong-dad-to-target-for-shameful-knockout-game-hes-a-concealed-carry-permit-holder-and-he-used-it/
At one time the theft of 21 aerials would have been recorded as 21 crimes but in an effort to reduce crime the theft of 21 aerials from your street will be recorded as one crime. If you don’t ask for a crime number, there’s a chance they won’t be recorded at all.
Please remember the statistics are intended to report a fall in ‘recorded’ crime.
We suffered two broken windscreens (vandalised)a couple of months apart – apparently neither were the result of criminal activity.
There, see how easy it is to reduce crime.