Hanging's Too Good For Them

by Niall McCann

I am currently the victim of a mini crime spree. It began last week when I came home to find that a supermarket sweep had been done of my electrical possessions and continued yesterday when a cunning little scallywag helped himself to my phone whilst I was supping pints in the local. I can live with my property being knicked. Fortunately I was insured and I will be wandering home tonight laden with Argos bags. The real pain are burglars’ abilities to make such a mess (why can’t they wipe their feet and close the draws they have rummaged through?) and the shame of having to tell your insurance company that, amongst the stolen items, were the Glee soundtrack and Greys Anatomy Season 6. Whilst some of you will now be holding back the tears, others will be thinking what on earth has this got to do with licensing law? Well, if you lose an item or have it stolen, in order to claim from your insurance you normally require a crime number. To obtain a crime number you naturally have to give details of the incident and relay where it took place. All too often the names of bars or restaurants crop up and hence the crime is logged against the premises in question. Often, this is perfectly correct – we all know that bag theft is a common problem for licensed premises. However, on many occasions the logging of the incident against the premises is completely unjustified, for example when the premises simply happens to be the nearest landmark to where the crime occurred or people claim that their phone was stolen because they are too embarrassed to admit that they simply left it in the taxi. Misidentification of crimes can be detrimental to licensed premises as they could find themselves under greater scrutiny by the police or even face a review application based on incorrect crime statistics. If you are approached by your local licensing officer and they express concern at the number of crimes being reported, you should ask to sit down with them and go through the incidents one by one. You might be amazed at the number which clearly should not be attributed to your premises (i.e. because you were closed at the time). By reducing your incident number you should hopefully be able to stay under the police’s radar and avoid unwanted attention. On that note I am off to do my Christmas shopping – a laptop, DVD player, TV and baseball bat...