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."