Member

The problem with this approach is that the police are so worried that the inspectorates and others will accuse them of fraudulently not recording crime that they record crime even where they do not believe there to have been a crime. I am afraid that this attitude has affected the way non-crime hate is recorded. We have had overrecording of both, and even investigations of social disputes that have nothing to do with crime at all. The HMIC has even found that officers, knowing that something is not a crime, have recorded a non-crime hate incident on the crime system to cover their backs, for the reasons that I have already explained. Everybody is rushing around saying, “Why didn’t you record it? Why didn’t you do something about it?” The easiest way is to record it, and then de-record it should something prove that it did not happen. Really, they should have said in the first place, “We are doing nothing and are not going to record anything, other than the initial contact”, as I have mentioned already.