A letter from Chief Constable Mark Polin to the Flintshire Chronicle over last week's cover story " Secret Police"

Letter from Chief Constable to Flintshire Chronicle
01/09/2011

I was extremely disappointed by the sensational and misleading cover story – “Secret Police”, Flintshire Chronicle.

To say that 99% of crime is not revealed to the public is not just grossly inaccurate, it is misleading. North Wales Police is now more open and transparent than ever with up to date crime statistics readily available on the website. Information is also regularly disseminated at local council and public meetings, on Facebook, Twitter and through local newsletters.

The Force has never sought to suggest that crime is lower than it is and to suggest otherwise is to attack the integrity of an organisation, the members of which strive hard to tackle crime where it does occur rather than become embroiled in cosmetic and distracting debates about how figures should be interpreted or not. To the contrary, the crime statistics we regularly issue to the public are full, accurate and audited nationally. I can assure local people that North Wales, including Flintshire, remains a safe place to live, work and visit.

I understand that local newspapers are under extreme commercial pressure, given that residents may choose to get their news from the many other more reliable sources available, including the North Wales Police website, which has on average 100,000 hits a month.

However, the paper and the wider public need to understand that we are not a news agency and we will only issue news releases when there is a policing need to do so and not to assist the paper in boosting circulation figures and income.

The basis of the Chronicle article appears to be that the editorial team are not happy because they do not always get what they want from North Wales Police.

Their apparent frustration is mirrored by our own regular disappointment at the quality of some reports which seem bent on unnecessarily scaring and unsettling local communities. It therefore came as no surprise to us that this misleading, no doubt attention grabbing headline appeared on the front page when the more thoughtful and insightful piece about how the Force is coping with the budget cuts was consigned to page 14.

I would also ask them to consider that in many cases the issues we deal with involve human trauma and tragedy and our first concern is always for the victim and not the demands of a local newspaper.

I would suggest that the editorial team needs to take time to think about their approach and to appreciate that what they may consider to be of interest to the public may not, from a police operational point of view, be in the public interest.

My final suggestion is that rather than waiting to be spoon fed by North Wales Police, reporters could, if they so wished view local crime statistics at street level through Crimemapper, an electronic database which is regularly used by members of the public. The information that was obtained through a Freedom of Information request, requiring a member of staff to reply, was after all freely available by reference to the website and arguably in a more useful form to a member of the public who might be interested.

I would encourage your readers to explore Crimemapper as I believe it is an important tool in assisting our officers and communities to understand where crime is occurring and to tackle it.

Yours sincerely,

Chief Constable Mark Polin

* published with NWP permission