A Home Office minster has admitted “there’s more we can do” to follow up on reported crimes and said the bureaucracy involved in recording certain incidents is “wasting” police time.
Chris Philp insisted Government plans to cut “unnecessary red tape” will see the police focusing less on rude but non-threatening messages and more on investigating other offences.
The move is part of a wider set of rule changes to how forces record reported incidents, aimed at slashing their “bureaucratic burden”.
Touring broadcast studios on Thursday, Philp said the shake-up will see officers dedicating less time to incidents in which people had merely been offended, such as those dealt with under the Malicious Communications Act.
Speaking to Sky News, Philp said we are on track to have more police officers than we have ever had at any time in the history of England and Wales, which is quite an extraordinary misrepresentation of data.
Thankfully, Peter Stefanovic was on hand to correct the record:
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