100 violent crimes a day are shelved by officers

MORE than 100 reports of violent crime are being screened out by police every day, a damning investigation has found.

It comes as forces face a mental health crisis that accounted for 571,000 days off work last year.

More than half a million reports were dropped overall last year following an initial assessment, data shows.

And concerning more serious crimes, 8 per cent of claims of violence against the person or violence with injury were screened out.

This amounts to an average of 111 violent crimes being shelved per day based on the analysis of 17 forces.

Their difficulties are laid bare in Channel 4’s Cops in Crisis: Dispatches, which will be shown at 10pm on Wednesday.

Officers ‘screen out’ reports based on factors such as the severity of the crime and the prospect of a conviction. A National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman said in some cases there was simply not enough evidence for police to act on, but that screening a report out did not mean the investigation was closed indefinitely.