Crime stats release was Overland's choice

16 Jun 2011, 11:14 am   -   Source: AAP
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Crime statistics released before the last Victorian election were misleading and inconsistent, an ombudsman's report has found.

Victoria Police Commissioner Simon Overland was solely responsible for releasing misleading and inconsistent crime statistics shortly before the last state election.

In a long-awaited report to state parliament, Ombudsman George Brouwer found the publication of the figures several weeks early, one month before the November 2010 election, was likely to be used in a political context.

Mr Overland said the decision was his alone and in hindsight he would have acted differently.

"I do accept that is a reason why it is important to qualify data, if it should be qualified, and that it was an oversight and mistake not to have done that on this occasion," Mr Overland told the ombudsman in response to the findings.

Mr Brouwer said the statistic that there had been a 27.5 per cent fall in assaults in the central business district between the July-September quarter in 2010 compared to the same quarter in 2009 was without qualification was based on yet to be validated data.

This meant the statistics were "misleading and inconsistent" with other available data.

The crime figures were contained in a media release on October 28, 2010.

Mr Overland said if the police force had maintained its normal timetable, the crime statistics would have been released the week before the November 2010 election.

"I feared this was a much greater risk of politicisation than an early release," he said.

"I accept that mistakes were made ... and that I can be criticised for them.

"(But) we're in a bit of a Catch-22 situation: if I release the data in caretaker mode, I can be accused of being politically motivated; if I didn't release the data in caretaker mode, I can be accused of being politically motivated."

The ombudsman said deputy commissioner Kieran Walshe should have recognised the data was misleading as he attended a crime statistics forum just three weeks before the data was released and the figure for assaults was a 4.2 per cent increase.

Mr Brouwer recommended an independent body be set up for managing the release of crime statistics.

Mr Overland will face the media on Thursday afternoon.

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