Cops abandoned four unsolved crimes every minute last year – as Labour accuse Tories of gutting neighbourhood policing [Video]

POLICE abandoned four unsolved crimes every minute last year.

Officers failed to identify a suspect in more than half of robberies, six in ten criminal damage and arson cases and seven in ten thefts and burglaries, figures from the Home Office show.

More than 2.2million criminal investigations were closed without a culprit in the first half of 2024.

That is 41.3 per cent of all cases and 4.2 crimes a minute.

Labour blamed the alarming stats on previous Conservative governments cutting the number of community support officers by half since 2010 – which they claim is 9,000 staff.

Policing Minister Dame Diana Johnson said: “The last Government carried out a demolition job on neighbourhood policing, decimating numbers across England and Wales.

“It’s no wonder that more than half of the public now say they never see a bobby on the beat.”

Labour has pledged to recruit an extra 13,000 neighborhood police officers, while cracking down on anti-social behaviour.

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