Superintendent Fraser of Wolverhampton Police has written to me stating that “On Tuesday 18th August 2015 The Express and Star released an article on the front page of the newspaper entitled “855 GUN CRIMES IN PAST 10 YEARS”.
We would like to address this article and whilst one crime is one too many, the figures are really clear. Gun crime across the whole of Wolverhampton is down significantly from 78 in 2002 when modern crime recording standards were introduced to just 40 in 2014.
We have been working hard to reduce the number of crimes in Wolverhampton and have been targeting individuals and organised gangs for a number of years. We have worked to arrest and convict offenders whilst at the same time working with third sector groups in the city to divert people away from a criminal lifestyle. These statistics also include crimes where there was no gun but where a ‘threat’ to use a firearm against someone was used. They even include crimes where there was no weapon seen, but the victim believed there may have been one involved.
The figures provided are listed against local policing neighbourhood areas, which are effectively artificial boundaries used to define areas of operational responsibility. I feel it would be misleading to label some areas as worse than others as the number of crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors including the re-shaping of police boundaries.
We feel strongly that our community have a right to know what reported crime levels are like in their area so that they can hold local officers to account and as such, more information can be seen at: www.police.uk
So you can see the Police are unhappy with the article in the Express and Star, I thought that you would like to see the police’s full response. Have you any comments to make as constituents?
