Police admit catching burglars no longer a priority

CATCHING burglars is not a police priority, a senior officer has admitted, as figures show prosecutions have plummeted.

Insp Mark Andrews, chairman of Wiltshire Police Federation, said burglary teams had been closed as resources had been diverted to combat rising violence and organised gangs involved in county lines drug dealing.

This meant burglary was not “one of the priorities” listed by the force.

Across England, latest figures show fewer than one in 20 burglaries (4.8 per cent) resulted in a criminal being charged in the year to September 201920, almost half that in 2015-16.

In Wiltshire, it was just 3 per cent in the three months to September 2019. Mr Andrews said: “It’s essential that we have enough staff to investigate things properly. We want to deal with crimes such as burglaries as quickly as we can and deal with all the evidence available to us.

“But with the pressures of the job, it sometimes means we rush from one thing to another and it sometimes means we don’t have the opportunity to explore every angle.

“We used to have burglary teams, primarily focused on dealing with dwelling burglaries. Priorities change. It’s not one of the priorities listed by the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable.”

Amanda Pinto, QC, chairman of the Bar Council, said it was “shocking” that burglary was not a priority when it often left “householders feeling anxious and unsafe in their own homes for many months”. Caroline Goodwin, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, said it was concerned that the threshold for a “serious” crime appeared to be rising and was “out of kilter” with how victims perceived crime. Det Supt Chris Hanson, of Wiltshire Police, said the force remained committed to catching burglars and that there had been reductions in such offences in recent years.

“However, we recognise we want to get much better at catching criminals who target people’s homes,” he said.

“We are looking at ways to improve our investigation standards across the force which includes training our front-line response officers to secure and preserve vital evidence at crime scenes.” It also emerged yesterday that Wiltshire is among a number of forces where police stations are being closed and officers will be instead based in libraries despite concerns about how they might securely and confidentially deal with victims reporting crimes.

Angus Macpherson, the police and crime commissioner, said: “These new library touchdown points will mean officers can work out in the community where the public are, instead of tucked away out of sight in police stations which weren’t open to the public anyway.”