Police forces dumped more than 1,000 crimes a day during the pandemic within 24 hours of receiving reports from victims.
Despite crime levels plunging as the public were largely confined to their homes, one in seven crimes reported to police last year were dropped within 24 hours.
Shocking figures show that during the lockdown some forces even doubled the number of crimes it ‘screened out’, which means investigations were abandoned within 24 hours.
Thousands of crimes as serious as threats to kill, kidnap, rape, violent assaults and arson were ditched as many overstretched forces struggled to prioritise their resources due to pressure to enforce Covid restrictions and with large numbers of officers ill or self-isolating.
When Giles Coren reported his £70,000 Jaguar stolen last week, detectives waited 47 minutes before closing the case
Data from 17 police forces show that 432,634 crimes were written off within 24 hours last year, which is 1,185 a day.
But the true figure is likely to be at least double that as fewer than half of forces were able to provide figures.
On average, 15 per cent of cases were closed without an officer meeting the victim. Even though residential burglaries fell by 22 per cent in England and Wales last year, some forces failed to investigate more than half of them. A staggering 29,730 residential burglaries were shelved within 24 hours, figures show.
According to a monthly breakdown, as many as 63 per cent of reported burglaries were ditched by one force.
Ordinarily, crimes are more likely to be dropped if they are judged as ‘lower harm’ or evidence is scant.
But the figures released under freedom of information rules show that during the pandemic there was a worrying rise in the numbers of more serious offences going uninvestigated.
Last year 71 rapes and other 429 sexual offences were screened out within 24 hours, even though there was a 7 per cent drop in sex offences overall in England and Wales.
Other crimes written off include 1,137 muggings, and 423 drugs possession and 171 weapons possession cases
Bedfordshire Police provided a monthly breakdown which showed that at times as many as 63 per cent of residential burglaries, 73 per cent of vehicle offences and 80 per cent of shoplifting cases were abandoned
There was also a substantial rise in robberies being screened out compared to 2019, with 6,350 offences abandoned even though overall robbery rates plunged by a quarter.
There were increases in the numbers of violent incidents and arsons being written off, with around 42,073 offences of violence screened out – a 6 per cent rise on 2019. There was a 4 per cent increase in reports of arson cases being dropped, with 6,753 reports shelved last year compared to 6,483 in 2019. A breakdown of crime types shows that 18,751 thefts went unpunished despite offences falling by more than a quarter (26 per cent) in the period. Police also screened out 20,809
