Number of emergency calls to police raises in 2018

The number of urgent calls received by the police increased last year, said a press release issued by National Police Board.

The police received a total of 1,062,930 urgent calls, which constitutes an increase of slightly more than 7,600 calls over 2017.

A total of 795,055 crimes were reported to the police last year, a decrease of slightly over 27,000 crimes from the previous year.

“In the end, society decides the duties and resources assigned to public officials. This evaluation process is presently under way in Parliament and the Ministry of the Interior, among other places. In addition to combating crime, response times to urgent calls have been the subject of discussion. Investments in preventive work and surveillance are also needed”, National Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehmainen said, adding that the police did a good job in 2018, taking into account the discrepancy between the police’s duties and appropriations.

The total number of criminal offences increased slightly from 2017. Most of this growth is explained by an increase in traffic offences.

The police received fewer reports of criminal offences (with the exception of traffic), a trend that has continued for several years now. Reports of criminal offences (excl. traffic) have decreased by nearly 20 percent from 2008.

However, this does not necessarily reflect a genuine decrease in crime, as the threshold for reporting crimes may have risen. This can be partly due to citizens feeling that the police do not have time to investigate every crime, prompting them to leave crimes unreported.

According to Kolehmainen, it must be acknowledged that the lack of resources available to the police forces them to prioritise, sometimes quite drastically.

“The police are focusing their resources on serious crimes against life and health and on urgent calls. Those resources have to be taken from somewhere, which manifests as longer investigations, fewer pairs of eyes on detection, criminal intelligence and analysis, and less police vehicles seen by people in their everyday lives”, said Seppo Kolehmainen.

The total number of violent crimes reported decreased slightly from 2017. More than half of assaults occurred on private properties. Assaults in public places have decreased by approximately three percent. On the other hand, assaults committed on private properties increased by nearly the same amount. The number of aggravated assaults recorded also grew from the previous year.

The number of sexual offences reported to the police has been growing for the past decade, and this trend appears to be continuing. The number of sexual offences reported grew by nearly 15 percent from 2017.

A total of 1,400 reports of sexual abuse of a child were recorded in 2018, which constitutes an increase of almost 18 percent from the previous year. The numbers of reported rapes and other sexual offences also grew.

Kolehmainen emphasized that these figures represent the crimes reported to the police.

“The sexual abuse of children, for example, is a widespread phenomenon, and not every suspected crime is reported to the police. This is a typical category of hidden crime. More and more often, the internet is somehow related to the offences – today’s paedophiles operate online. We require more education and surveillance to prevent and detect these offences”, he said.