THE annual reduction in Derbyshire's crime figures, which ran for nine years, simply could not last for ever.
The remarkable thing is that the statistic continued to drop for as long as it did.
Read the original story here.It was astonishing because, if you drew up a basic graphic, it would show that as police funding was going down annually, so was the crime rate.
All logic would indicate that those two should have been heading in opposite directions.
The fact that they did not do so for so long bears witness to the astute use of resources by successive police chiefs and the great work of uniformed, detectives and civilian staff throughout the Derbyshire force.
Now we have to face up to the fact that crime in the year ending March 2014 was up by 1,094 offences, compared with the previous 12 months.
It is an increase of 2% and, we would submit, can be largely put down to two factors.
One is what Chief Constable Mick Creedon describes as "the significant reduction in police and other agencies' budgets".
This, he says, "has meant hundreds fewer police officers, police staff and big reductions in partners' staff numbers".
The other factor must surely be the general decline in the country's economic state in the past decade.
That has impacted on people's incomes and so more people have turned to crime. It's an inevitable fact and nobody should pretend otherwise.
The decline in staff numbers has meant that while the Chief Constable and his colleagues have done their best to maintain the force's front-line presence in bobbies on the beat and in their patrol cars, fewer resources can be allocated to preventative work.
One figure which leaps out of the annual statistics is an increase of 25% in allegations of rape.
This would normally be the headline-grabber of the day – but Mr Creedon actually draws encouragement from it.
He believes it does not reflect a rise in the number of offences committed, but rather an increase in awareness of the need to report them.
For too long – decades and probably centuries – the numbers of court cases for serious sexual assaults has almost certainly represent only the tip of the iceberg of the number of incidents.
If that is changing, it has to be a good thing.
