Did you know Great Britain has a national network of investigators & Police, well it does.
In 2013 according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) there were 129,584 full time serving police officers in England and Wales.
The Telegraph published an interesting report yesterday about how the police are needing the public to support them in their investigations. This surprising fact was uncovered when the HMIC (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary) investigated 43 of the nation’s police services.
As more people are becoming victims, the police it seems are asking us, the general public, to carry out part of the investigation for them. Some victims are being asked to check websites that sell used items just in case their property pops up and in one case a woman was even asked to find the name of the company the perpetrator was using to provide the phone service he was using to harass her. Surely a job for real private investigators!
The report raised further alarming statistics:
- 30,000 identified suspects have not been questioned or arrested across 32 police services
- There were a large number of issues with the reporting system that meant some suspects, who had not returned o the station as required for conditions of bail, were not being adequately monitored.
- 25 out of 37 services that use call handlers to decide if an officer should attend the scene could consistently get that decision right, that means 12 services didn’t.
- There is a massive difference in the chance of a crime being attended by an officer depending where you live.
A spokesperson from the Police Superintendents Association said the report made “uncomfortable reading”.
claims that there seems to be an underlying feeling amongst the police that they are fighting a losing battle. He went on to suggest that there is too much emphasis on desk bound investigators and because of this vital details are being missed.
Putting all this into perspective, as we said earlier there are 129,584 serving police officers and there was 3.7 million reported crimes in 2013 according to the ONS. That doesn’t take into account the unreported incidents either, so it’s hardly surprising then that the police don’t attend the scene of every reported crime.
Here at Alpha 1 Legal Services we know the value of on the scene investigation in conjunction with desk bound work.
