Victoria Police has today responded to media reports that it is not recording all assaults reported to police.

In addressing the media this morning, Acting Assistant Commissioner Andrew Crisp said:

I am concerned by today's article as I believe it to be misleading and may have caused unnecessary community concern about the accuracy of our crime statistics.

To be clear we emphatically reject any notion that we are deliberately underreporting crime statistics.

We take our responsibility to provide accurate statistics to the community very seriously.

We have been very open in discussing the issue of assaults. Only last week we released our latest quarterly statistics which showed that whilst overall crime has dropped by 6.3 percent, assaults increased by 2.30 per cent.

There are a myriad of reasons why a reported crime does not match CAD data.

Victoria Police has other far more reliable and accurate systems to record assaults which then form our official crime statistics.

CAD data and crime statistics are two very different things. CAD is purely a capture of customer service demand for police services.

Its primary purpose is to receive calls and dispatch police units. It is common for there to be multiple calls for the same event.
For example, five people may witness an altercation outside a licensed venue. All contact police and this is recorded as five separate incidents in CAD.

Other common examples are where police receive a report of a crime but attend the location and there is no victim or apparent criminal offence.

CAD data shows us our peak times and peak areas so we can allocate resources.

CAD data is very subjective. It's based on a victim's view of what they have seen - they may be stressed or in a crisis situation. What they report may not be validated when police arrive and investigate.

We may find that there is no offence or a different offence has been committed.

Our police use their professional judgements when attending incidents, conducting investigations and determining if offences have occurred.

If our police determine that an assault or any other crime has been committed it will be added to LEAP and contributes to our overall crime statistics.

Share This Page