Police reveal Agar Place ‘crime hotspot’ all down to a single hoax caller - Quiet street wrongly labelled on website map

Published: 24 February 2011
by JAMIE WELHAM

A QUIET street was wrongly labelled one of Britain’s worst crime hotspots because of a hoax caller repeatedly ringing police, the New Journal can reveal.

The revelation that Agar Place, in Camden Town, was unfairly branded for anti-social behaviour has led to renewed criticism of the accuracy and value of Home Office crime maps displayed online for the first time earlier this month.

Police received upwards of six 999 calls a day from a woman living near Agar Place, but recorded them as bonafide crimes because officers did not know at the time she was a time-wasting hoax caller.

This anomaly was not spotted before the Home Office uploaded its data to the www.police.co.uk website, designed to show residents exactly where crime occurs in their neighbourhoods.

Residents expressed disbelief when the street of just five houses was named number seven in the top 10 worst streets in the entire country for anti-social behaviour incidents.

According to the site the 50-metre cobbled street off Agar Grove recorded 59 incidents of anti-social behaviour in December.

Police sources said the caller was often “very frightened” and suffered from mental illness. 

It is understood she is now being treated at hospital and is no longer living at the address near Agar Place.

The mistake could seriously undermine public confidence in the reliability of the high-profile website, which has already been hampered by  crashes since its fanfare launch earlier this month.

Following an investigation into the figures, police said there was no evidence of any crime taking place in Agar Place.

A Camden Police spokeswoman said: “A woman called 999 around six times a day. The incidents were recorded as crimes because officers in the control room didn’t always know who it was making the calls. 

“At this stage we don’t know why they were recorded as anti-social behaviour.” 

It is expected Agar Place will feature highly yet again when the monthly figures for January are published.

Town Hall crime chief Abdul Hai said the problem showed the police maps could not be trusted.

He added: “These crime maps cannot possibly be accurate without context. Do people know they log every call as a crime? This is a classic example. I’m sure there are more incidents like this. 

“Although I’m cautiously supportive of the principle of street-based crime data, we really need to be sure the data is accurate, otherwise it is dangerously misleading.”

The trouble spot tag was branded “unfair” and “ridiculous” by Agar Place residents, who suspected it was down to a police miscalculation.

It sparked fears of soaring insurance costs and even a knock-on effect on house prices. Would-be buyers of homes could look on the website to see if they were moving into a high-crime area.

The government claimed the site would usher in a “new era of transparency” by allowing people to enter their postcode and get a record of all the burglaries, robberies and serious crime in their neighbourhood.

Town Hall politicians are divided over the merits of the site. Cllr Hai said it was potentially “dangerous” because it risked accentuating problems in poor communities by intimidating people and thwarting investment opportunities. 

But Liberal Democrat councillor Matt Sanders said the council should use the statistics to target resources in the worst-hit streets.