Why we

won’t be

calling the

police

There are opposing schools of thought about crime in Boston and Lincolnshire as a whole.

On one hand we have seen the town branded as the UK’s “murder capital” – whilst another set of figures says that 90% of burglaries across the county went unsolved.

Deniers of the first charge say that the statistics have been manipulated to “smear” Boston – though why anyone would want to do that escapes us.

The burglary figures have been dismissed as out of date as they cover 2013-14 – and Lincolnshire Police claim the force is now meeting the national average which shows that 12% of these crimes are solved.

So, they scowl at a 10% detection rate and brag about one of 12% – scarcely any improvement.

What it shows is that crime really does pay in Lincolnshire.

And of course they trot out their favourite mantra: “Lincolnshire remains one of the safest places to live and visit in the country.”

We would be more inclined to believe this had we not caught the police red handed being “economical” with the most recent figures.

The headline the force chose was that overall crime was down by 1% in the year to September 2015 – bucking the general national trend of increases.

However, this was somewhat marred by the next sentence, which confessed that violent crime had increased by 9%.

All of this is a roundabout way of explaining why we are not involving Lincolnshire Police after the latest break-in at our property – the fourth of its kind.

It happened last week, when all the recommended crime prevention precautions we had taken were bypassed by the simple expedient of using tools to prise the boards off at the back.

As has happened before, little was taken – but the damage caused in the search for booty was considerable.

The same thing happened 18 months ago. A wooden garage which we then used for storage was broken into and trashed – and as it was primarily asbestos,  it was beyond repair had to be demolished and removed by an approved contractor at considerable cost.

On that occasion we called the police. We rang at 10am on a Sunday and were offered an appointment at 9pm.

Eventually someone came earlier, did not even want to inspect the scene  – "we don’t do forensics unless there’s blood" – and eventually,  rang ten days later to say that the crime was being classified as “undetected.”

Somewhat unkindly our response was to say that we were not surprised – as no effort had been made to detect it.

All in all, involving the police made a bad thing worse, which is why we aren’t going to wake them up this time.

Incidentally, we do not live in what might be considered a “rough” part of town – and our neighbours have been similarly targeted.

There is no police presence in the area – and the much vaunted PCSOs swan around in sponsored cars rather than walk the streets.

So far our visitors have confined their activities to buildings in the garden. But should they venture any nearer they may well be introduced to granddad’s World War 1 souvenir officer’s Luger.

  

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