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Parts of the Met are deliberately preventing Londoners from reporting crime to keep the figures down, an official report has found.
Published crime statistics are "inaccurate" and sometimes "dishonest" and police have been "pressured" to massage the numbers for political reasons, it claims.
It comes a day after Scotland Yard released statistics showing a six per cent fall in crime in a year and an eight per cent fall in violent crime.
The study, written in February by the Metropolitan Police Authority, warns that the safety of the public and police officers could be "compromised" and says potentially violent young people "slip through the net".
It also throws into question claims by Mayor Ken Livingstone that there has been a "dramatic" fall in crime - a key plank of his campaign for re-election.
Today, his rivals seized on the report. Brian Paddick, the Lib-Dem mayoral candidate and a former senior Met officer-said: "This report is clear evidence of what I have been saying all along - that police-recorded crime statistics don't reflect the true picture."
Tory mayoral candidate Boris Johnson called the report "seriously worrying" and "a damning indication of how this city is policed". He said: "It is unacceptable that our honest officers are made to effectively shove reported crime under the carpet. When I am mayor I will end this fiddling of the figures."
The report says that although the Met's "central policies" are to count crime honestly, "borough commanders and senior management team members are constantly dealing with the tension between recording crimes accurately [and] the ongoing pressure from central government to meet crime reduction targets".
As a result, some parts of the force have adopted "local policies" to create "obstacles stopping victims reporting certain crime types". For example, some police stations refuse to allow victims of mobile phone theft to report the crime unless they can quote the phone's IMEI serial number, 15 digits which can only be found by typing a special code into the handset.
"Almost nobody will have written down their IMEI number before their phone gets nicked," said one senior police officer. "Most people probably don't even know what it is, let alone how to get it. This is the kind of thing that gets done to make the figures look better."
Mobile phone theft, which accounts for 28 per cent of all thefts and is a particular problem for children and teenagers, was the subject of a government crackdown last year. Then home secretary John Reid said: "Being robbed for your mobile is a harrowing and distressing experience that has happened to far too many of us and our children. We are determined to stamp this out." Phone crime has fallen since then but it is not clear how much of this is due to statistical manipulation.
The report says officers and staff in the Met's "crime management units", who are responsible for recording crime, "have confided... that they have been pressured to make decisions that they felt were dishonest". It found "specific incidents where pressure was applied... that affected the accuracy of the crime-recording process".
Government crackdowns on crimes that cause most public concern, such as robbery, are blamed. "The focus on priority crime... can create a perverse incentive to record crime inaccurately, eg for robbery and pickpocketing to be recorded as theft," says the report.
Some Scotland Yard policy makers viewed this misrecording as "deliberate and intentional". "Crime recording seems to be focused more on meeting Home Office counting rules than the needs of policing," says the report.
Last year, ministers announced a crackdown on robbery, defined as stealing using violence or the threat of violence. Theft, a less serious crime, is stealing that does not involve violence.
The official figures show that robberies in London have plummeted more than 20 per cent in the last year, while thefts have fallen by much less.
The report also says that "detection targets can lead to [police] concentrating on 'quick wins', eg cannabis warnings or criminalising behaviour such as urinating on the street".
It says the Met itself has warned the target culture "may lead the police service to unnecessarily criminalise individuals and behaviours to achieve performance targets. This may impact on neighbourhood policing, as individuals may be less willing to engage with and support the police".
It is scathing about the quality of the crime statistics, saying the MPA and the Met "need to prioritise their focus on the improvement of basic data quality".
It adds: "The current system requires officers to spend more time administrating than investigating." Data is stored on a variety of often obsolete and incompatible computer systems and "often has to be entered several times on different systems, increasing the likelihood of mistakes".
Referring to the teenage violence outbreak which has claimed 13 lives this year, the study says that "poor" data recording "inhibited the identification of young people at risk of escalating criminality". As a result, youngsters "can slip through the net when committing lowlevel offences, only coming to the attention of the police when their offending has reached more serious levels".
It says "inaccurate crime recording" could lead to "compromised officer and public safety" because police do not have a complete picture of crime: "The Met cannot tackle crime properly if they do not know what is happening and where."
The report, called Crime Data Recording Scrutiny, is based on Met documents, interviews with the force's management, including Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson, and questioning officers who compile crime figures.
The Met said today: "There is nothing in the report that changes the over-arching picture of crime in London, and the significant success achieved in reducing crime in recent years, that the crime figures demonstrate. We remain committed to tackling the issues raised in the report, which recognises the work already done to improve data quality."
Mr Livingstone declined to comment.
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Reader views (18)
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Under-recording of crime has always existed - and to some extent it is inevitable in the policing environment - but the police should actively seek not to under-record & not to dissuade the public from having their crimes recorded.
The evidence in the MPA report and from comments in reply to this article suggests the Met has a problem in both these areas.
Hardly a glowing indictment for an organisation that puts Citizen Focus on its list of priorities - so what do those words actually mean?
The Met claim they are tackling the MPA report issues - but don't explain how they are doing this or how the public might independently assess how good they are at recording crime. Why?
Is it always going to be okay to under record crime in the Met and if so; to what extent and why?
Ironically False accounting is a crime: remember the Enron fiasco - but inaccurate crime figures are apparently politically acceptable?
I am sure Victims of crime don't think so.
- Toby, London
There is some truth to this - last year my car was subject to criminal damage - when I went to the Police Station to report it, they refused to give me a crime reference number, stating it wasn't necessary. I don't necessarily blame the Police - they are just the enforcers of some crazy ideas dreamt up by the Mayor and Mr Clunking Fist - no spin indeed. Lets hope the elections bring some relief from the madness we have been subjected to over the past few years.
Time for a change, in London and at a national level!
- Phillip Walker, London
Labour need a good kicking at the polls roll on May the first.
- Pete, London
