Police fail to find suspect in 8 out of 10 car thefts
CAR thieves in Greater Manchester get off scot free 80 per cent of the time, new figures reveal.
Last year, Greater Manchester Police investigated 7,095 cases of vehicle theft, according to Home Office crime data.
But in 5,708 of them, police closed their enquiries without even identifying a suspect.
In other words, police could not find a suspect in eight out of 10 car thefts in the region - the sixthhighest proportion of unsolved cases in England and Wales for 2017/18.
Only 316 of the 7,095 cases resulted in a suspect being charged or summoned to court.
And another 841 cases had to be stopped because of problems with evidence.
Vehicle theft is among the crimes with the highest unsolved rates.
Nationally, police closed 79.4 per cent of cases without finding a suspect.
Stealing property from cars, bike theft and domestic burglary were some of the few crimes nationally with a higher unsolved rate.
Earlier this month the Observer examined if falling police numbers - GMP now has about 6,000 frontline coppers, a fall of 25 per cent - meant officers were not investigating crime like they used to.
Speaking at the time, Deputy Chief Constable Ian Pilling told how while policing for emergencies had been ‘ring-fenced’, the public would have to change their expectations of policing.
He said: “We have to try and prioritise and that means on occasion that someone who rings up and reports a crime won’t get a police officer.
“And it also means that if someone rings and reports a crime, and we don’t believe we will be able to solve it, we are saying that.
“That is a difficult message for people to understand because traditionally in this country we expect a police officer to come and see us if we have been the victim of a crime.
“It is really difficult for the public to accept.
“What the evidence shows is that sending an officer to every crime does not produce more of a chance of catching the culprit.
“What it does do is reassure the public. So though we are doing an investigation on the telephone, the public view that is us not doing an investigation.
“We need to get better at explaining that to them.
“We have lost a quarter of our force. No matter how efficient we are that’s going to have an impact.”