Police are failing to attend so many crime scenes that the public are being forced to act as “do-it-yourself detectives”, a watchdog has said.
Community support officers are being sent to incidents of violent crime instead of warranted officers, and some offences are on the “verge of decriminalisation” because of the absence of proper investigation, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary concluded in a report.
It reveals a “postcode lottery” of how police deal with incidents, with the 43 forces in England and Wales failing to attend one in five crimes on average.
The findings in the report were underlined by new figures which show that more than 30,000 criminal suspects who police wish to arrest or interview are at large.
The inspectorate said that many crimes were being shelved within minutes of a victim calling police, while, in the case of vehicle crime and some burglaries, call handlers have asked victims to check if there was CCTV or fingerprint evidence available, interview their neighbours and check second-hand sales websites for their stolen property.
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Roger Baker, who compiled the report, said: “In a range of areas the public were then left to carry out their own investigation.”
The mindset, which relates to hundreds of thousands of crimes across the country, was one in which police had “almost given up”, he added.
“When a crime has been committed, it’s the job of the police to go out and find who’s done it. Unless you have got the powers of Mystic Meg, [if you are] not turning up and speaking to people, it’s going to be mightily difficult to bring people to justice.”
The report, published today, also reveals that forces are losing track of suspects on bail or wanted criminals. Nine forces were unable to say how many criminals had skipped bail, while the remaining 34 forces identified 9,500 suspects who had done so.
Only 32 forces were able to report the number of named suspects who were yet to be arrested or interviewed, which amounted to more than 30,000 people. They ranged from 29 suspects outstanding in one force to more than 6,000 in another.
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On average across all forces, 79 per cent of crimes were attended. However, Warwickshire constabulary attended only 38 per cent of criminal incidents in the 12 months to November 30 last year while City of London police and Dorset police attended just over half. Only one force, Cleveland constabulary, managed to attend 100 per cent of incidents during the same period.
Mr Baker said it was unacceptable that more than half of forces were unable to provide details of the crimes that they had managed to attend.
In 17 forces, the inspectorate found police community support officers were being asked to investigate crimes beyond their role profile and training, including violent incidents such as assault.
Inspectors were also concerned by the number of “desk-based investigations”, where forces deal with a crime over the telephone without any attendance at the scene — with 37 forces using call-handlers to decide whether officers should attend the scene of an incident.