Statistics

I watched Sky News talking about stop and search.
The reporter going on about how unfair it would be as already 70% of stops were on non white subjects.
If you base anything on statistics be very wary.
A colleague of mine was on a on a Robbery Squad which was very successful reducing the number of Robberys in his area over a 6 month period by 50% and successfully prosecuting large number of Robbers.
The Majority in that area mirroring the population and Afro-Caribean.
He earnt a lot of money out of it, so did his colleagues.
His newly promoted Inspector however was taken to task about the low number of stop slips being completed by the team, even though they were successfully bringing down robberies.
She asked team members to put in a stop slip for every arrest, after all they were all searched.
A skipper (sergeant) pointed out that these were section 32 PACE 1984 searches
not Section 1 searches and therefore didn't require a stop slip.
The Inspector made her displeasure known.
The problem though is that this distorts the statistics.
Then later on a Chief Inspector was assigned to deal with Robbery.
He cut the Incidents of Robbery overnight, without any extra expenditure.
How did he do it?
He reviewed all crimes before they were classified and classed them on as thefts with an assault.
He drastically improved the figures but what did it do to the statistics!!!

What he probably has done is caused a reduction on the budget for next year, because they no longer have a Robbery problem.
Now multiply this by the 32 London Boroughs and of course London is the safest its been in years, just don't leave your house.

Don't base any arguement on statisitcs unless you compiled them and verified them yourself, if you care
that is unless you want the next Rank, election to parliament or edit a paper, then publish and be damned.