Metropolitan Police failing to record 100,000 crimes each year

SCOTLAND Yard is failing to record almost 100,000 crimes each year – including violent offences and domestic abuse, a report has found.

While acknowledging that the country’s biggest force had made improvements in many areas, a watchdog said around 10 per cent of all crimes were still not being recorded properly.

Inspectors said problems had been identified in the areas of violent crime and domestic abuse, public order, theft and damage against property offences.

In some cases problems arose when call handlers wrongly categorised crimes when they were first reported. But elsewhere officers were failing to record additional offences that were uncovered during the course of their investigations.

Inspectors also found that some officers had a lack of understanding of common assaults where there was only a threat of violence rather than an actual injury.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire

& Rescue Services said the force must improve the recording accuracy of such reports.

But the Met was praised for its “concerted efforts” to improve crime recording, compared with 2014, when the last inspection was carried out.

HM Inspector Matt Parr said: “We found evidence that low-level assaults and public order crime were under recorded.

“Officers sometime had difficulty identifying and recording multiple crimes in one incident, particularly in complex cases like domestic abuse.”

A similar inspection carried out in Lincolnshire identified thousands of crimes including sexual offences, grievous bodily harm and rape going unrecorded.

The watchdog estimated that more than 9,400 reported crimes across the county went unrecorded each year, representing almost 20 per cent of the total.