Hello, hello, hello! The Bitch Explores the Policeman's Top - and Bottom!
Well darlings,
From statistics released by the Home Office each year, a league table ranking the performance our 43 police forces is compiled by the Press Association. The Government's Police Performance Assessments rate the constabularies for seven different categories and they are: Reducing Crime; Investigating Crime; Promoting Safety; Providing Assistance; Citizen Focus; Resource Use; and Local Policing. For each of those categories a police force is rated as being either: "excellent", "good", "fair", or "poor", and from that assessment marks are allocated to each category which are, in the same order, worth 3 points, 2 points, and 1 point - with a "poor" result having a negative value of minus 1 point. The league table that results, although the Home Office doesn't agree with it, is widely accepted to show the official performance ranking for each individual police force from the worst to the best.
Humberside comes out as our worst police force over the last period (2005-2006), whilst our best is Staffordshire. All the national newspapers I've seen appear to be in agreement with that and have published the top and bottom of the league similarly, whilst the regional newspapers I've visited online have too reported the same statistics, along with those relevant for their own location, all seemingly accurately, and have then either given praise or had a moan about their local force.
All that being so, you can imagine my confusion when I discovered in my local newspaper the headlines to a sizeable article proclaiming: "It's official