Wasting police time warning following false allegations

Bedfordshire Police is reminding people not to waste police time.

During November and December detectives investigated a number of incidents of robbery which turned out to be false claims. Each of the incidents required officers to take statements, undertake door-to-door enquiries and view hours of CCTV footage before the truth was discovered.

On Saturday November 24, the police received a report that an 18-year-old new mother had been robbed and assaulted by a gang of youths wearing hooded tops in High Street North, Dunstable.

The incident received a huge amount of media coverage as the ‘victim’ had claimed her mobile phone containing photos of her newly born child had been taken. Officers attended the scene and carried out an area search for the ‘offenders’ but when detectives later questioned the woman, she revealed that she had made the allegation up to hide a domestic altercation.

Detective Sergeant Simon Hancock of the South Robbery Team at Bedfordshire Police said: “We always take any report of robbery extremely seriously and will do all that we can to capture the offenders as quickly as possible.

“Unfortunately we have seen a number of incidents over the past few weeks where people have purposefully made up claims and wasted quite a considerable amount of police time.

“In some cases, such as this one, a report of violent crime can have a serious impact on the wider community with residents having an increased fear that they could come to harm by a gang of violent criminals when it simply wasn’t true.

“These sorts of actions can undermine the hard work being put in by officers and our partners to reduce crime throughout Bedfordshire.

“I’d like to remind residents that making false allegations – whether they be robbery or any other crimes - and wasting police time is a serious offence which could result in the person making the claims being prosecuted. In this case we quickly established that the story just wasn’t adding up and were able to warn the claimant about her actions.”