Screening out. Sounds innocent enough, doesn't it? In fact it's the police's way of making life easier (for them) - by not investigating crimes in the first place. A new study shows that robberies, violent crime, fraud, theft and vandalism simply become 'non-crimes in many areas, with (unsurprisingly) Sir Ian Blair's Met the worst, screening out over half of all reported crime and nearly two-thirds of all burglaries. Other forces came not far behind the Met's dreadful 53% score; Cambridgeshire (37%), Humberside (36%), Hertfordshire (34%), Norfolk (33%), Hampshire (33%) and Devon & Cornwall (31%) all recorded a 1 in 3 chance that they will ignore a crime against you. And of course the police only revealed these figures under a Freedom of Information request - the very law the government wants to tighten to stop us finding out their shenanigans!