Turns Out Manchester Police Are Rubbish at Recording Crimes

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

According to a recent report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), Greater Manchester Police (GMP) fails to record more than 38,000 crimes every year. The offences that went unrecorded from the 1st of September, 2015 to the 29th of February, when HMIC was carrying out its examination, included serious violent and sexual offences. Five-hundred sex crimes were not recordedin that time period, while 11 out of 111 reports of rape went unrecorded.

Despite GMP being branded as "inadequate" for only recording 85 percent of reported crimes, it's at least up from 2014, a year in which just 68 percent of crimes were recorded.

In the wake of these figures, GMP Deputy Chief Constable Ian Piling said in an interview with ITV: "In many cases, we are recording the crime, it's just simply not being recorded in time or making errors as regards to the type of crime, or indeed the number of crimes that are actually being recorded. So it's not a case of us not recording the crime – ignoring them – in many cases we are recording the crime and we are giving a good service to the victim. We're just not abiding by the rules."

Not sure what he's saying here exactly. That they're not following the rules? Probably not the best thing to tell a room full of journalists. But anyway: the findings also established that officers lacked understanding of their responsibilities for crime-recording – which might be what he was getting it. They also found that there was "limited" support for officers and staff to make quick crime-recording decisions. However, the report did acknowledge the force have made some "good progress" in putting the victim at the centre of its crime-making decisions.

GMP has now introduced a new IT system so officers can record crime instantly. Tom Lloyd, Greater Manchester's police and crime commissioner, previously attributed GMP's poor performance to "inadequate IT systems".

Piling says: "A significant amount of activity has taken place to address these administrative problems and we will continue to work hard to address this. It is important to recognise that there is nothing in the report to suggest that the integrity of officers and staff is in question."