Police chief warns it is ‘completely mad’ to record petty disputes as crime

‘It shouldn’t be crime, but it’s getting really close to how we’re recording it,’ West Midlands Police chief says

Sir David Thompson says recording petty disputes as crimes distorts figures (Getty Images)

It is “completely mad” that petty problems are being recorded as crimes, a police chief has said.

Sir David Thompson, the chief constable at West Midlands Police, told The Times that doing so was warping data and scaring members of the public.

He claimed rates of violence against a person were higher in rural areas such as Warwickshire, West Mercia, Norfolk and Cumbria than in London due to forces strictly following rules for recording crime.

“We are recording colossal amounts of stuff in this violence category that makes the public think violence is going through the roof. But their actual experience of violence is going down,” he told the newspaper.

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“Over the last couple of years, for the first time in history, the police recorded more crime and violence than the public say is happening in the official crime survey. They’re inverted and it’s not right.”

The West Midlands Police chief added: “We like to tell people to be polite and civil, but our job is about crime. Where somebody might wave a stick at you or come around and be rude about your children, that’s incivility.

“It shouldn’t be crime, but it’s getting really close to how we’re recording it.”

He claimed the 203 per cent increase in violence without injury incidents recorded by his force since 2018 was down to the crime recording system.

Last week, official data showed police-recorded crime in England and Wales had hit a new high, with 6.5 million offences recorded in the 12 months up until June.

This was driven by sharp increases in violent and sexual offences, according to the Office for National Statistics.

“The public have a right to expect that the police get the basics right and that genuine crimes that have been reported to the police should be treated seriously and investigated,” the Home Office is reported as saying by The Times.

“Everyone should have the security of a safe street and home, and it is promising to see that knife crime, burglaries and drug-related offences have fallen across the country.”

More than 15,000 additional officers have been recruited in England and Wales since the end of last month, the department reportedly said.

Additional reporting by Press Association