Do you believe the “crime is falling” lie?

You may remember that about a week ago this (IMHO) boot-faced, politically-correct, self-serving, incompetent nincompoop Ms (sorry I meant Chief Constable) Sara Thornton told us that with crime falling, police would no longer bother attending when burglaries and minor thefts were reported as they had much more important things to do.

Well, let’s take the police’s own (no doubt fiddled) figures to see how much crime has fallen.

Here’s robberies: (click to see more clearly)

Not much of a drop there. And vehicle crime:

Seems to be increasing. And violent crime:

Oooops! And burglaries:

Very marginally down on a year ago. And criminal damage and arson:

Wow – what a rise! And possession of weapons:

Going up too.

Not much sign of significantly falling crime rates, eh Ms Thornton? So what’s happening?

This may be the secret to Ms Thornton’s ‘falling crime rates’ – the number of anti-social behaviour crimes being recorded by the police seems to have plummeted, although it’s beginning to rise again:

There were many more anti-social behaviour crimes than any other type of crime. So, by recording fewer anti-social behaviour crimes, Ms Thornton and the other products of Bramhill Police College can blether on about “crime rates falling”. But if you take out anti-social behaviour crimes from Ms Thornton’s dodgy numbers, there’s no evidence at all of crime falling:

In fact, crime seems to be increasing quite significantly. A cynic might be tempted to call Ms Thornton a ‘blatant liar’. But I’m far to polite to suggest what other people might be thinking.