Police ‘Screen out’ Nearly Half of Crime

Police have been accused of “ignoring crimes which aren’t easy to solve” but investigated ALL allegations of "hate crime."

Freedom of Information requests found that police across ten UK forces gave up investigating 431,000 reported crimes within a day, the Sunday Telegraph revealed.

While most of the reported offences dropped related to thefts, the number of violent crime cases shut within 24 hours quadrupled from 11,927 to 44,548 since 2014.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said: “Preventing and investigating violence and sexual offences is a priority for police forces. While there is an increase in sexual offences closed after initial investigation, it is less than one per cent of the total.”

“With more crimes and fewer officers on patrol it is taking longer to respond to incidents and there is increasing evidence that these delays hinder evidence collection, making it less likely that crimes will be solved,” it said.

Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, chief constable Ian Hopkins from Greater Manchester Police (GMP) admitted the force was failing to properly investigate around 430 reported offences a day — 43 per cent of the total number.

Insufficient officer numbers and budget cuts have made “screening out” crimes on the basis of factors such as threat level and the likelihood of being able to solve the case a “necessary evil”, according to the UK force.

“If your life is in danger, you’ve been seriously hurt, we will still turn up,” Hopkins told BBC Radio Manchester.

David Spencer, of the Centre for Crime Prevention think tank, slammed the figures, commenting: “The term screening out is clearly a PR phrase for ignoring any crimes that aren’t easy to solve, It is high time that the GMP and other forces gave a lot more focus to tackling these everyday crimes.”