A Day in the Life of a Robbery Report

At a local level, police management have developed an obsession with street crime, ie mugging. Their performance is measured on the amount of offences committed compared with the previous week, month and year. They are set a maximum numbers of offences allowed, sweating blood when the figures exceed expectations. This affects promotion prospects. Let no man stand between the Superintendent and his robbery graphs...

If you have the misfortune to be mugged, the following will happen:

1) You will call 999 (unless they took your mobile) A BT operator will answer and refer you to a police operator. They will create a computer message and pass it to the local police.

2) Two police officers will attend. Others may search the local area.

3) A crime report will be created. The nature of this report will depend on whether anyone gets arrested. If arrested, they will put on an allegation of robbery - if someone gets charged, this counts as a 'detection'. Bosses very happy indeed. If no-one is caught, it remains undetected - bosses tantrum and make all efforts to change the allegation to another offence, ie assault, public order offence etc etc. The investigating officers will also make determined efforts to establish if you are making the whole thing up. If you have had a drink they will not take a report at the time - go home and sober up! (Hopefully you won't come back - one less robbery allegation)

For a robbery report to be completed, the reporting officer must seek authority from a detective officer. The report is then checked by the reporting officer's supervisor, and passed to the Crime Desk. It is then checked again and passed to a Detective Inspector. He / she checks it again and passes it to a Detective Sergeant. They identify leads, and allocate it to a constable for further investigation. All the above parties are checking to see if the crime can be classified as anything other than robbery.

While all this is going on, the Crime Integrity Team are checking what all the above persons are doing. Alongside this, each morning a meeting is held where the management sit down and go over all the robbery allegations with a fine tooth comb - again trying to alter the figures in their favour. Any doubts about the veracity of the victim will be pounced on.

Should an allegation be suspected to be false, it may be marked as 'No Crime' This can only be done when evidence is found to prove this. The bosses can get round this by noting that the crime will be marked as No Crime whilst being investigated, and can be restored to robbery if no evidence is found that the report is false. The reports are never changed back.

Who actually investigates the robbery? One person with a workload of about twenty other offences.

UPDATE 30/11/2005 - Punters are now required to sign a form each time they report a robbery stating that they are aware that if they are found to be lying they will be prosecuted.