Pubdate: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Copyright: 2000 The Sydney Morning Herald Contact: GPO Box 3771, Sydney NSW 2001 Fax: +61-(0)2-9282 3492 Website: http://www.smh.com.au/ Forum: http://forums.fairfax.com.au/ Author: Cynthia Banham And Les Kennedy POLICE DEFEND DRUGS-FREE CRIME FIGURES The NSW Police Service defended itself yesterday against claims that its own rating of suburbs misrepresented the true state of crime by excluding murder and drug-related offences. The Deputy Commissioner, Mr Ken Moroney, said the crime index - revealed by the Heraldas reporting Roseville as more crime-ridden than Cabramatta - was an internal working document used by police to measure the accountability of 80 police command areas, and should be put into context. "They are figures which help us to determine the accountability and the performance of the command and they are used for no other purpose." Mr Moroney said there was no other internal police index which took into account murder and drugs. He denied claims the index compromised the public's faith in the Police Service. "Those statistics [are] a snapshot of a particular period in time. They are not a determinant as to the overall state of crime within that particular location." The Heraldobtained the index through a Freedom of Information request after a visit in March to Cabramatta by the Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, during which he declared to locals there were 50 other areas with worse crime problems. However, Mr Moroney said that when all crimes were considered, Cabramatta would rank as one of the most dangerous suburbs, rather than 51st. "In terms of our crime statistics, and our evaluation of crime, it's within the middle of the pecking order of the 80 local area commands. But whether it occupies position number one or position number 80 is not the question; the question is to focus on the strategies that are directed towards crime reduction. "Irrespective of the location, irrespective of the level of crime, every crime is important to this organisation." Asked why the index did not include murder or drug-related crime, Mr Moroney said the five categories of crime which were included - break-and-enter, stealing, assault, motor vehicle theft and robbery - were chosen because they represented 90 to 95 per cent of crimes across NSW. "Another variation of that is of course to identify that those statistics also represent between 90 to 95 per cent of victims of crime in this State." The Police Minister, Mr Whelan, said last night that the only crime statistics that he and the Government took notice of were those prepared independently by the official public auditor, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. But Mr Whelan backed the Police Service line that the crime index figures quoted were not for public use, but an in-house gauge by the police hierarchy to evaluate the operations of its 80 Local Area Commands. However, the Opposition police spokesman, Mr Andrew Tink, last night called on the service to scrap using figures that excluded crimes of violence to determine staffing and resourcing of patrols. "There have been more than 40 shootings since the beginning of the year in Cabramatta," Mr Tink said. "How many have there been in Roseville? "Any crime index that ranks Roseville ahead of Cabramatta for crime is a joke and should be scrapped. "Murder and attempted murder and drugs are crimes of reality out at Cabramatta, an area where, based on the index, its police command was downgraded from a category one patrol to a category two patrol last September." - --- MAP posted-by: Derek