Monday, December 08, 2014

How relevant is this to NZ?

The opening statement certainly is. What about the second?

Some of it sounds eerily familiar - 'skewing' for instance.

From Civitas in the UK, note the author is ex-police:
Crime is going down – officially. The trouble is that most people don’t believe it: they feel that society is becoming more crime-ridden. So what could explain the discrepancy between the claims made by politicians and the everyday experience of citizens?

In this hard-hitting expos̩, Rodger Patrick, former Chief Inspector of West Midlands Police, shows how this has come about. He unpacks the gaming behaviours of police forces under pressure from central government to reduce crime rates and increase detection rates by any means Рincluding some that are unethical and even criminal.

A Tangled Web takes the reader into the arcane world of ‘cuffing’ – making crimes disappear by refusing to believe the victims; ‘nodding’ – inducing suspects to ‘nod’ at locations where they can claim to have committed crimes that will be ‘taken into consideration’, sometimes in return for sex, drugs and alcohol; ‘stitching’, or fabricating evidence, which allows police forces to obtain convictions without ever going to court; and ‘skewing’, or concentrating resources on offences that are used as performance indicators, at the expense of time-consuming investigations into more serious crime.

Rodger Patrick cites the now considerable number of official inquiries into police forces that have uncovered evidence of these practices on such a scale, and over such a wide area, that they cannot be put down to a few ‘rotten apples’. 

He argues that the problems are organisational, and result from making the career prospects of police officers dependent on performance management techniques originally devised for the commercial sector. HMIC has long taken a relaxed view of the problem, putting a generous interpretation on evidence uncovered in its investigations, although in a small number of cases officers have had to resign or even face criminal charges.

5 comments:

Jamie said...

Who you gonna believe Lindsay - the fudged stats or your lying eyes???

I would be lying if I said this information surprised me...

Please be aware...

Hawkes Bay under Eastern District Police Commander Sandra Venables; Counties Manakau, and one other district have the only honest Police Commanders in the Country...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=11335505

http://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/structure/districts

:(

The rest are plastic police commanders and deserve to be sacked!!!

The lads and ladies on the front lines are under the gun and getting pumped while their paper-pushing officers are selling them out for a promotion.

Appreciate the link and may use it myself.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

(Some glitch in the system means I had to paste this anonymous comment)

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "How relevant is this to NZ?":

I have a couple of aquaintances within the police and they would support the view that the official stats are rubbish.

I recall an email to the radio a few weeks ago from an ex policeman who claimed he was engaged in fudging the stats to make them look good and that had been the approach to stats for years.

3:16

Jamie said...

There was two burgs on the street over from me in the last month that I know of. One of the houses that got turned over was an ex coppa's house, while he was home. The crim(s) got away with 4 guns in working order with ammunition.

Didn't see it in the papers and I only found out about it through a buddy of mine.

:(

Jamie said...

http://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2014/12/11/rotherham-rape-victim-aged-just-13-was-told-not-to-report-attack-because-it-would-spoil-police-doctors-sunday-lunch/

Jamie said...

http://r1016132.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/nzs-shameful-connection-in-the-madelaine-mcann-case/

Rage doesn't even come close!!!