We were contacted recently by a number of residents alarmed at what they’ve been led to believe is a significant increase in crime in our area. We’ve taken a closer look at the figures published on Facebook and they are clearly misleading in that they refer to “crime” statistics at an individual street level when in actual fact they relate merely to police reported and recording figures over an extended period of time within a 500m radius of a particular location. In other words they are not crimes at all, they are simply reports to the police of local incidents. As police officers reported at last month’s PACT meeting these figures can be somewhat misleading, especially when calls are repeatedly made about a single incident or when misdirected calls to the police are still recorded even though no actual crime has been committed.
This has the effect of distorting figures to make it appear that an individual street or neighbourhood has been swamped by crime and disorder when this simply isn’t the case. The image it portrays of our village is misleading and potentially damaging, but perhaps more concerning is the fact that many of our our older and more vulnerable residents have been unnecessarily alarmed and distressed by one or two people out to cause mischief by knowingly promoting distorted information.
A much more accurate picture of crime and anti-social behaviour levels in our villages is represented on a link used by our local PACT and Neighbourhood Policing team. This can be found at:
UKCrimeStats.com
Recorded crime rate statistics on this site give a clear and more accurate picture of a marked decrease in the reported crime rate in our village over the past six months, mainly as a direct result of police and community-led interventions through the PACT process. This has resulted in the Blackhall PACT area having the second lowest crime rate figure of all the other PACTs within a five mile radius.
While we are not suggesting that we are home and dry as far as the fight against crime and disorder is concerned, we do feel that the use of accurate and verifiable crime rate figures is essential if we are to tackle crime effectively and at the same time give reassurance to our residents that we are heading in the right direction.
In addition we are quite sure that the overwhelming majority of our residents and businesses would agree that this approach is much better than using false and misleading crime statistics to alarm our residents, and at the same time risk damaging the good reputation and positive image of our village and its people.
