Going for a Massage.

I read a lot on other blogs and in PC Copperfield's book about the state of the nation's crime figures. Nothing makes me madder than to suggest that we police are dishonest in recording crime with the ultimate aim of showing how it is decreasing.

I do not know about other forces, but in Blandshire it has been made clear to us on numerous occasions that we are to record as much crime as possible, whether detectable or not. We even have a whole department of civilians dedicated to creating crime reports at the mere sniff of a complaint from a Member of Public.

This is how the process goes:

1. MoP calls the police to report an incident.
2. Call-taker creates a "job" and if urgent enough, dispatches officers to it. Meanwhile, the Mop is put through to the civilian enquiry centre.
3. The Civilian creats a crime report. This can take some creativity as not all callers will actually specify an offence and, believe it or not, some Members of Public don't even have training in law! Moreover, the options on the drop-down menu for "offence" do not appear to relate to UK law.
   
4. PC Bloggs arrives on scene and establishes that although there has been some kind of argument/incident, there are no actual offences.
5. PC Bloggs leaves the scene with a job well done and everyone happy.
6. Two days later PC Bloggs is scanning through crime reports in her name when she discovers an assault/criminal damage/theft appearing on the system in relation to that incident. Baffled, she informs the crime desk that no actual offences took place.
7. The crime desk know that PC Bloggs is lying. This is because PC Bloggs is a malevolent shift bobby and therefore always lies to avoid work. The crime desk will not get rid of this crime report without proof that the offence did not happen.
8. "But," says PC Bloggs, "There was never any proof it DID happen, just someone shouting down the phone and then changing their story when the police actually arrived."
9. But it is too late. The crime report will now exist forever Undetected. On limited occasions, where absolute proof is obtained that the offence never happened such as secret CCTV and/or phone-tapping evidence, it might be possible to remove the blight from PC Bloggs' name, but this should take at least six weeks in the hope that she will forget all about it in the meantime. In those six weeks, it will also have been counted as a negative statistic and even if it is removed later, nothing can un-etch it from the Daily Bulletin.
   

The classic example of the above is the Domestic. We all know that the police do not care about women being beaten up and want them all to die.

The only way to prevent this is to create a crime report of assault as soon as the word "He" is mentioned by a caller. The aim is to make it easier for the police officer to just arrest somebody than try to explain that no actual assault took place.

This successful system is now pushing the honest coppers underground where they belong: whereas before they used to be able to say there had been a bit of a scuffle but both parties were equally to blame, now it is better just to lie and say that no phsyical contact took place whatsoever. I think you will all agree that this is the best outcome for society and the victims of crime.

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