It’s criminal that no-one

will be honest about

these figures

The Daily Mirror ruffled a few feathers on Friday when it told readers: “Boston in Lincolnshire is the most murderous place in England and Wales.”

Quoting the latest crime figures to the end of September 2015, the Mirror said: “In Boston there were two homicides and eight attempted murders, with the combined figure coming at a rate of 15 murderous crimes for every 100,000 people living in the area.”

Boston MP Matt Warman told our local “newspapers” the Mirror account was “crazy … scaremongering twaddle” which played “stupid games” with statistics.

The Mirror’s extrapolation that two murders and eight attempted murders represented 15 “murderous crimes” for every 100,000 people overlooks the fact that Boston’s population is around the 60,000 mark.

Whilst Mr Warman said he didn’t deny that there were problems to tackle and agreed the raw data was accurate, he called the Mirror’s use of the statistics “unhelpful.”

He added: “The danger … is they provide evidence to people who want to push a certain agenda ....”

Who these people are – and what their agenda is – he didn’t say.

Interestingly, on the same day that the Mirror published its own slant on the crime figures, Lincolnshire Police did the same thing.

“Crime Reduces in Lincolnshire Bucking the National Trend” trumpeted the headline on the force website.

“Detective Chief Superintendent Paul Gibson says he is pleased that overall recorded crime in Lincolnshire has continued to reduce.

"Overall crime is down by 1% in the year to September 2015, which bucks the general national trend of increases," he says. 

However …

“Our countywide Operation Nova (say NO to Violence and Abuse) is specifically targeting violent crime and we are confident that our multi-agency efforts in this area will result in returning to a reducing trend for the next period of reporting from the 9% increase reported today." However, it is important to emphasise that Lincolnshire has one of the lowest recorded rates of violent crime in the country."

So … picking and choosing:  Lincolnshire Police say crime is down overall – and the Mirror’s interpretation is one that they don’t want to hear.

The police attempt to make the figures look good is another example of the powers-that-be assuming that the people they “serve “are stupid and will believe what  they are told.

It is true that fear of crime is usual greater than the reality.

But in Boston, most of us are in no doubt that violent crime where we live is alive and well and frightening.

It matters not whether it is largely – as our MP claims – “a handful of serious incidents … (which) remain exceptionally rare and almost entirely domestic.”

When the road outside your door is closed by such offences … when armed police are deployed on the streets … the people of Boston are right to be concerned.

And the powers that be are wrong to try to fob us off.