{"id":4837,"date":"2021-08-24T22:27:44","date_gmt":"2021-08-24T22:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4837"},"modified":"2021-08-24T22:27:44","modified_gmt":"2021-08-24T22:27:44","slug":"exclusive-priti-patel-used-incorrect-data-about-illegal-raves-to-justify-emergency-powers-for-the-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/4837","title":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: PRITI PATEL USED INCORRECT DATA ABOUT ILLEGAL RAVES TO JUSTIFY EMERGENCY POWERS FOR THE POLICE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FEATURES<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EXCLUSIVE: PRITI PATEL USED INCORRECT DATA ABOUT ILLEGAL RAVES TO JUSTIFY EMERGENCY POWERS FOR THE POLICE<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

An investigation by Mixmag has found that The Met was using a flawed methodology to calculate the number of raves that it was responding to during lockdown, which had the potential to dramatically inflate its statistics<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Priti Patel used incorrect data about illegal raves<\/a> provided by the Met Police to justify emergency powers for police forces during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mixmag<\/em> can reveal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introducing new powers for the police in an article for The Telegraph<\/a><\/em> on August 28, 2020, the Home Secretary said: \u201cIn London alone, the Metropolitan Police has responded to more than 1,000 unlicensed events \u2013 such as big raves and parties \u2013 since the end of June, receiving information on more than 200 events across the city in a single weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will not allow this breathtakingly selfish behaviour from a senseless minority to jeopardise the progress we have made together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is why we are cracking down on the most serious breaches of social distancing restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An investigation by Mixmag<\/em> has found that during this time The Met was using a flawed methodology to calculate the number of raves that it was responding to, which had the potential to dramatically inflate its statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read this next: Dance ‘Til The Police Come: How oppressive policing has eroded rave culture<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that the figures published were actually the number of \u201cmessages\u201d about illegal raves recorded on its \u201cComputer Aided Dispatch\u201d system rather than the number of confirmed unlicensed events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means the Met could have counted individual events dozens or even hundreds of times in the numbers it published as well as including incidents that were not actually illegal raves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A separate CAD message is created every time the police are contacted and informed of a crime, so if more than 50 people report the same illegal rave the system creates more than 50 CAD messages for a single event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On 18 August 2021, in an emailed statement to Mixmag<\/em>, the Met issued an apology for \u201cconfusion\u201d over the statistics used by the Home Secretary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said that the figures she used related to the number of \u201cpieces of information about events in the capital\u201d received by the police force, not the number of events identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Met declined to provide a breakdown that would reveal the true number of illegal raves identified by the force during the time period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read this next: Dave Clarke: \u201cPlague raves are disgusting\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to Mixmag<\/em> under the condition of anonymity, a former police officer told Mixmag<\/em> it is common for a single illegal rave to generate large numbers of CAD messages as many different people call the police separately to report the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Met doesn\u2019t regularly publish the number of separate calls that it receives for individual unlicensed music events, but on 19 July 2020, the Met revealed that it received more than 30 calls about a single party<\/a> that took place in North London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This incident would have been double counted more than 30 times in the statistics quoted by the Home Secretary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As well as being used by the Home Secretary, inflated figures about illegal raves provided by the Met were widely reported on in both national and regional newspapers as well as television news programmes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

News organisations that published the incorrect figures include Sky News<\/em><\/a>, The Times<\/a><\/em>, The Independent<\/a><\/em>, The Evening Standard<\/a><\/em>, The Economist<\/a><\/em>, The Mirror<\/a><\/em>, The Express<\/a><\/em>, and Manchester Evening News<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On August 17, the Evening Standard<\/em> published a story<\/a> saying \u201cmore than 1,000 unlicensed lockdown events have been held in London since June.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On August 23, Sky News<\/em> published a similar report<\/a> that said: \u201cThe Metropolitan Police has responded to more than 1,000 illegal events in London since the end of June.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read this next: A new photobook documenting 2000s rave culture is coming out<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same figures used by Priti Patel were also used by The Economist<\/a><\/em> on September 3, 2020, in an article with the title: Why raves are enjoying a revival: Britons are partying like it\u2019s 1988<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said: \u201cThe Metropolitan Police has recorded more than 1,000 raves (which it defines as unlicensed music events with more than 20 people) in London since the end of June.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than a month before the Home Secretary wrote her article in the Telegraph, the Met Police released a press release that also used inaccurate data, saying that the force had \u201creceived information on more than 530 events across the capital\u201d in the space of a single month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read this next: Police chief calls for power to force entry into suspected lockdown breakers\u2019 homes<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Met calls illegal raves \u201cunlicensed music events\u201d, and in the press release it said it was responding to \u201capproximately 23 UMEs every day\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It added: \u201cOn Saturday, 18 July alone, information was received on 86 separate incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police force has now said that all these figures were incorrect and the original press release, which was published on 24 July last year, has since been deleted from the Met\u2019s website. (Its content can still be seen here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent statement issued in response to a Freedom of Information request from Mixmag<\/em>, the police force said: \u201cFor clarity, the figure of 530 within the MPS press release does not relate to the number of raves\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It added: \u201cWe may have received several calls by several different members of the public when in fact it is only one incident with several CAD messages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The force went on to say that some of the CAD messages counted in the figures published may have been about incidents that were mistakenly identified as an unlicensed music event by members of the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The misleading figures on the press release were reproduced in a wide range of newspapers, intensifying fears that music events were a key factor hastening the spread of the COVID-19 virus in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One article in The Times<\/a><\/em> stated: \u201cIn just over three weeks to July 18, Scotland Yard was made aware of 530 lockdown raves and \u2018block parties\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An article in The Express<\/a><\/em>, which was published on July 24, was given the headline: \u201cLondon crackdown on ‘dangerous’ illegal raves launched after 500 unlicensed events held\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read this next: Illegal rave organisers face fines of up to \u00a310,000 under new rules<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mohammed Qasim<\/a>, a visiting research fellow in criminology at the London School of Economics, believes the Met needs to put new systems in place to stop the publication of incorrect statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter a string of scandals and failures, trust in the Met Police is extremely low at the moment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe force should be trying to rebuild trust \u2013 and this isn\u2019t going to happen if it continually publishes statements that are wrong or misleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNew fact-checking processes need to be put in place to make sure the public can believe what the Met is saying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Qasim added: \u201cIn the middle of a crisis, such as the pandemic, what both the public and policymakers need are clear cut facts that they can rely on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe inaccurate figures published by the police force, and the slew of high-profile news stories that followed, may have prompted an unjustified focus on music events in the middle of the pandemic, distracting from other issues such as government policy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figures published by the Met last summer were especially alarming because, since the early stages of the pandemic, virologists had warned that mass gatherings have the capacity to dramatically hasten the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time music events had already been linked to outbreaks of COVID-19 in other countries, with evidence that a single infected person can infect dozens of others when moving through crowded spaces<\/a> without social distancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The free party veteran and acid techno innovator Chris Liberator<\/a> believes that the numbers published by the Met were out of step with reality and fuelled a false narrative about the resurgence of illegal rave culture in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe nature of illegal raves means that it is impossible to exactly quantify the number of raves that occurred in any region during a specific time period, but if you are a raver connected to the free party scene with your ear to the ground you know when events of a certain size are taking place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely true that lockdown and the closure of commercial clubs created a new audience looking for illegal raves – and there were also some groups that put on parties during lockdown to cater for this demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut, if you compare the summer of 2020 to previous years when there was no lockdown, there were far fewer big illegal raves taking place during the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDuring lockdown many established free party crews stopped putting on events because they were worried about the public health implications of putting on an illegal rave<\/a> and spreading the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were also worried about the severe penalties that they could face such as large fines and the seizure of their equipment<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read this next: Carl Cox on illegal raves during COVID-19 restrictions: “It’s not the answer to this”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cDuring the lockdown in the summer of 2020 members of the public were repeatedly encouraged to report anyone who was breaking the rules \u2013 so it is possible that the police could have received dozens, if not hundreds, of complaints and messages about many of the illegal raves that took place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kevin Blowe, coordinator of the police monitoring group Netpol<\/a>, said: \u201cThe publication of these figures that exaggerated the number of illegal raves identified by the Met Police raise serious questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is unlikely that we will ever find out whether publishing the incorrect data was a simple mistake or deliberate misinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHowever, what we do know is that the police benefitted from the publication of these figures about illegal raves as they helped justify the extra powers they were granted during the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There have long been issues regarding the publication of misleading and unreliable data by police forces in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2014, “national statistics” status was withdrawn from police recorded crime figures following allegations from the police watchdog that some of the quarterly published figures were subject to “a degree of fiddling”.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, the UK Statistics Authority said it took the decision as a result of “accumulating evidence” that the underlying data on crimes recorded by the police may be unreliable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allegations included claims that the Metropolitan police had understated sexual offences by as much as 25 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than seven years later, the national statistics designation is yet to be restored as problems with misleading police data have persisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read this next: How illegal rave crews are using custom apps to avoid police<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the regularity of police forces publishing unreliable information, some experts believe that information supplied by the police should be subjected to increased fact-checking by external organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Qasim said: \u201cIt is shocking to see politicians and publications repeating the Met\u2019s incorrect figures about illegal raves without rigorously checking them or qualifying them in any way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInstitutions that interact with UK police forces need to hold them to account rather than unquestioningly accepting unlikely information when it suits their own agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Home Office was contacted by Mixmag<\/em> to respond to the Home Secretary\u2019s use of incorrect statistics provided by the Met Police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Home Office spokesperson said: \u201cDuring the height of the pandemic, illegal raves were extremely dangerous and put people’s lives at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPolice forces have worked hard to gather and share intelligence in order to detect and disrupt unlicensed music events which were purposely organised at short notice to avoid detection, and took the appropriate enforcement action through the issuing of Fixed Penalty Notices, where necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Home Office spokesperson added: \u201cThe Home Secretary used this figure in good faith and with the understanding that it was correct at the time. We note that the Metropolitan Police have today clarified that the figure referred to 1,000 pieces of information about unlicensed music events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe also note that the Met Police made exhaustive efforts to shut down such events, as they were illegal at the time and posed a risk of Covid-19 transmission.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n