Concern over violent crime records.

Summary: A police watchdog say it is concerned officers are failing to class all acts of violence as crimes.

A police watchdog say it is concerned officers are failing to class all acts of violence as crimes, after Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) reviewed the decisions made by police officers last year.

It found that more than a third of the cases from the sample of 479 incidents had been wrongly categorised as not warranting further investigation, with almost 180 decisions flawed because there had been a violent incident.

After conducting a small study last year, the HMIC lead by chief inspector Denis O'Connor will now be launching a major review next year into how serious violence is recorded.

Mr O'Connor was quick to stress that the study found that the majority of decisions made by police officers over the period of time had been correct saying:

"There was a mix, they over classified some (violent crimes) but they were getting 9 out of 10 decisions right. The bit we were left concerned about was a small sample we did that were no crimed and over 30 per cent of these looked problematic to us and we're going to follow up on it."

Overall crime levels are down across England and Wales by four per cent between April and June this year and in the same period in 2008 but figures show home burglaries have risen to three per cent.

Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.

Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.

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