New Website Shows Helston’s Crime Hotspots

A new website which tells you how many crimes have been reported in your local area has just been launched. www.police.uk lets you enter the name of your town or postcode and shows you the offences that have taken place in your street. The site is already proving popular; according to the Home Office it’s been getting up to 75,000 hits a minute. So, understandably it’s slow going trying to get on there but I persevered and finally managed to take a look at the figures for Helston.

The figures on the site at the moment are the number of crimes reported in December 2010 and overall the number of offences in Helston is as I would expect – low. In total there were 57 reported crimes in the town. These are then broken down into six categories:

Burglary – 6 reported cases

Anti-social Behaviour – 26 reported cases

Robbery – 0 reported cases

Vehicle Crime – 0 reported cases

Violent Crime – 4 reported cases

Other – 21 reported cases

Any other information about the nature of the crimes isn’t offered. The ‘Other’ category for example includes sex crimes, theft and shoplifting but from looking at the website there is no way of telling whether the 21 cases in Helston were a mixture of those or whether they were perhaps all shoplifting offences.

And the street with the most reported crimes is.......

So now we know how many crimes were reported, what about where they took place. Meneage Street had the second highest number of offences in December and appeared in four of the categories with two counts of burglary, two reports of anti-social behaviour, one of violent crime and three ‘other’ crimes.  It was however beaten to the top spot as bizarrely the street in Helston with the highest number of reported crimes was Five Wells Lane. The quiet side street topped the list with seven reported cases of anti-social behaviour and two ‘other’ crimes.

The website also features contact details for the local police and has information about any upcoming meetings and events in Helston should you wish to go and speak to any of them.

The Home Secretary Theresa May has said that this new site will give us real facts on crime and anti-social behaviour and will make the police more accountable. I’m not yet convinced.

Is Five Wells Lane really Helston’s anti-social behaviour hotspot? Does looking at the site leave you with more questions than answers? Let us know your thoughts below.