New report shows Paris police fiddled crime figures
A newly-released report outlines systematic fiddling of crime figures by Paris Police Chiefs dating back to 2008 and continuing until 2013, when an investigation was conducted by the French Inspectorate.
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The so-called Gagneron report details what it calls "deliberate, massive and organised" practices with the aim of "reducing the apparent seriousness of the delinquency problem and artificially decreasing the statistics".
According to the report, police began doctoring statistics in Paris in 2008, during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.
The report outlined some of the ways figures were altered.
Between 13,000 and 16,000 crimes reported in 2011 and 2012 have disappeared without trace from records.
Other crimes were deliberately misrepresented - some reported robberies were not registered as such, but as damage or vandalism in order to reduce the burglary figures for Paris.
Street hawker crimes have not been registered at all since February 2013 in some Paris police stations because they are too numerous.
Socialist Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who came to power in June 2012, was accused of trying to withold the Inspectorate's report when details began to emerge last month.
It was published online by his ministry on Monday afternoon.
Valls has promised surveys among victims of crime, in addition to the reported crime statistics but such details will not be available until 2015.
Despite the doctoring of statistics, figures show a 26 % increase in burglaries in Paris between 2012 and 2013.
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