County police can’t cope with child sex investigations

Lincolnshire Police are overwhelmed with the demand from child sex investigations, a leading officer admitted on national radio.

Speaking to  5 Live Investigates on BBC 5Live,  Det Supt Guy Collins from Lincolnshire Police said: “We have to prioritise, that’s the sad reality of life.

“We can’t do everything straightaway.” The force has a backlog of 10 months in dealing with such cases.”

Because incidents which involve high-risk suspects are prioritised, this pushes other cases back, he said.

He said: “It is a matter of absolute regret that we can’t do all of those cases as quickly as we’d like to, but we do work very hard to protect children.”

BBC figures showed more than 1,800 cases are waiting to be processed by police.

More than half of the 40 UK police forces which responded to the Freedom of Information request stated delays of at least three months where cases were waiting to be allocated to staff in the hi-tech crime unit.

Like other forces, Lincolnshire are providing additional resources to its unit which deals with the examining data of computers and mobile phones such as illegal images.

Karen Bradley, minister for preventing abuse and exploitation told the BBC the Government was committed to ensuring police have enough resources.

She said the child abuse image database, launched in December last year will reduce the time to identify illegal images which can be vital to secure convictions.