Police risk losing public trust, says minister
THE police risk losing public trust unless they explain to victims why officers are failing to investigate crimes, the policing minister warns today.
Nick Hurd’s intervention comes as it emerges that some forces are now using algorithms to help screen out crimes that are hard to solve.
Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, Mr Hurd says that British policing is facing a “watershed moment”.
He says: “Trust has always been integral to this country’s model of policing and the police need to recognise that a key part of their relationship with the public is explaining themselves clearly and credibly.
“The British public know our police are under pressure. We expect the police to take all reports of crime seriously and for each case to receive an initial investigation. But when all is said and done, any decision not to investigate further must be properly communicated to the victims.”
Mr Hurd’s comments come as figures show that police are now solving fewer than one in 10 crimes. Earlier this year it emerged that Britain’s biggest force, the Metropolitan Police, dropped 30,000 cases within 24 hours of them being reported.
Now The Telegraph has found some forces are using algorithms or “solvability” matrices to help identify thousands of crimes such as burglaries, assaults and public order offences that they will not investigate further. The most sophisticated computer algorithms have
been developed by Cambridge University. Based on 29 different factors, the higher the score, the lower the probability a burglary will be solved.
Factors such as no witnesses, no CCTV, a delay in reporting or theft from a shed count as positives, while a witness, DNA or prompt report count as negatives. In Norfolk, where the system was piloted, documents suggest this would mean up to 2,200 potentially “unsolvable” burglary investigations being halted.
Hugh Zabel, head of strategic services, said it could be overridden by officers who would still respond to a 999 burglary call or vulnerable victim.
He said the pilot was now being assessed: “The principle is something that everyone is exploring to some degree or another.”
Kent police are trialling EBIT (Evidence Based Investigation Tool), an algorithm that determines if public order offences and some assaults have “small or no chance” of being solved. It could reduce the number of crimes it investigates from 6,000 a month to 1,800. A spokesman said it did not override human decision-making.
Nationally more than 450,000 reported bank frauds out of 810,000 cases over the past three years have been automatically dismissed by a “computer says no” system.
The Metropolitan Police, which aims to reduce crimes assessed for secondary investigation from 850,000 to 180,000 a year, set out criteria for shelving an inquiry, including a victim refusing to prosecute, CCTV where officers had to spend more than 20 minutes reviewing it and theft worth less than £50 and with no known suspect.
The National Police Chiefs Council said: “We are concerned that forces are unable to cope with the basic demands for policing and we agree there is a need to be clear with the public about priorities in order to give them realistic expectations.”