Police officers will have to visit hundreds of burglary victims each day - after the force committed to attend all home break-ins. Last year there were a total of 148,764 burglaries of residential properties in England and Wales, plus 3,561 aggravated burglaries, which is a more serious crime because it means the offenders were armed with some kind of weapon.
That would mean police would need to go out to see the victim of a home invasion 417 times per day, or once every 3.5 minutes. According to the latest available figures some 135,573 officers were available for duty as of March across England and Wales. That means - spread evenly across the workforce - each officer would need to attend at least one burglary.
But that does not take into account the 37,961 attempted burglaries, or the 1,542 distraction burglaries and 232 attempted distraction burglaries that took place in England and Wales last year. If police attended all of those crimes as well, that would mean an officer visiting crime victims once every 2.7 minutes.
