400 extra crimes being recorded each week by GMP

Greater Manchester Police say they have been recording an extra 400 crimes a week as they sought to reassure councillors about the blistering report by a watchdog, which found 80,000 were not being put on the books.

In December, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) 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.
 

Read more: GMP 'fails to record 80,000 crimes in a year' report findsPublished: 12 December 2020

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.

But, in a meeting with the Tameside place and external relations scrutiny panel this week, a senior GMP officer revealed that there are now on average an extra 400 crimes being recorded a week across the entire Greater Manchester region.

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.

Supt Cousen told the meeting  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 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.”

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

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

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 2020 GMP had increased crime recording rates for domestic abuse by 18%, stalking and harassment by 33% and coercion and control by 30%.

Charlotte Green, Local Democracy Reporter