GMP recording hundreds of extra crimes a week

Greater Manchester Police say they have been recording hundreds of extra crimes as they sought to reassure councillors about the blistering report by a watchdog, which found 80,000 crimes were not being put on the books.

In December, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services raised serious concerns about the force’s approach to domestic violence and child protection, as well as delayed, dropped and badly-planned investigations.

The HMICFRS report, which looked specifically at the experiences of victims dealing with GMP, covered the period from April to June last year.

Based on analysis of crime reports between those three months, the inspectorate found that more than a fifth of reported crimes were never recorded, rising to one in four where violent offences are concerned.

Averaged out over the course of the year the inspectorate calculated that more than 80,000 reported crimes were not being put on the books.

Crimes it particularly identified as slipping through the net include domestic violence and referrals from agencies concerned about children or vulnerable adults, as well as stalking and harassment.

A senior GMP officer told councillors there are now on average an extra 400 crimes being recorded a day across the region.

The force later clarified the officer meant 400 crimes a week – a total of around 4,500 additional crimes since December 21, 2020.

In April 2019 Chief Constable Ian Hopkins, who resigned in the aftermath of the highly critical report, said they were recording 1,000 daily crimes in Greater Manchester.

A report present to the Greater Manchester Police, Fire and Crime panel states that between January and June 2020 there were 130,820 crimes – a daily average of 727 crimes recorded.

Superintendent Rob Cousen, Divisional Commander at Tameside, said that from May onwards last year they had begun to record more domestic abuse, stalking, harassment and crimes of coercive behaviour.

This was increased further by ‘quality assurance processes’ over the past three months, he added.

A ‘Crime and Incident Recording Centre of Excellence’ was set up in 2020 to centralise elements of crime recording and control rooms in the force.

GMP’s deputy chief constable Ian Pilling had said that since June GMP had increased crime recording rates for domestic abuse by 18 per cent, stalking and harassment by 33 per cent and coercion and control by 30 per cent.

Supt Cousen told a meeting of Tameside’s place and external relations scrutiny panel that victim training had since been delivered to more than 4,500 members of staff and ‘think victim’ was the force’s new ‘mantra’.

“One missed victim for me is a failure,” he said. “So when we heard the 80,000 missed crimes, that was devastating and that’s why we’re doing everything we possibly can do to put that right.

“We do recognise the need for improvement in some areas, particularly in the recording of crimes and we’ve invested a huge amount of staff everyday who are reviewing every single incident that comes into GMP to make sure that we do record and investigate crimes as we should be doing and as the public of Greater Manchester expect.

“On average we’ve been recording an extra 400 crimes a day (later clarified as a week). The number is coming down.

“What we can see is our staff are learning quickly, they are picking up on the areas where perhaps we needed to improve some of our training, learning and knowledge in our staff.

“We’re recording a lot more crimes now that we weren’t recording previously, and domestic abuse features really highly in that, as does stalking and harassment, controlling and coercive behaviour.”

Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick told the meeting the findings of the report had been ‘quite damning’ of the force and raised the 80,000 missed crimes as a key concern.

Temporary Chief Superintendent for Oldham and Tameside, Rachael Harrison replied: “It’s terrible 80,000 crimes being missed. I share your sentiments around that, it is unacceptable.

“I can’t stress how much of a blow it [the report] was to all of us in GMP and I’d say as an organisation we’ve collectively been going through almost a grieving process really.

“But what I would say is we came to acceptance and action very very quickly. There’s a lot of great stuff we do but there’s clearly areas that we need to do better with.

“It’s motivating us to work very hard to get that situation put right and to address any cultural issues as well as training needs to make sure that isn’t going to be the case going forward.

“That every crime that might occur in an incident is properly recorded and investigated and dealt with the most appropriate outcomes achieved for that victim.”

She said the force had since put ‘a tremendous amount of effort’ into improvements, and officers had been coming in for 12 hour shifts and on rest days during the Christmas period.

“All the work that we’re undertaking now, it’s about getting it right for the victim,” Chief Supt Harrison added.

Main image:

Officers from Greater Manchester Police. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, credit Ilovetheeu