Charlies to Bobbies 161The Committee's statistics showed committals for assaults had increased
50 per cent and for larceny 13 per cent; But burglary committals were down
by 22 per cent and larceny in dwelling places had decreased 77 per cent. The
Report explained the significance: 'It appears that the more violent offences
have already decreased, while the detection of the lighter offences has
increased, which is precisely what was to be expected from a good system
of preventive Police.'^80 Clive Emsley questions the extent to which such
statistics really reflect a decrease in crime, given the numbers of crimes
that may be unreported and the amount of discretion given to police offi-
cials.81 What is important is not whether these numbers reflect the reality of
crime but that the Committee was willing to believe they did. The measure
of success by which the Metropolitan Police were judged was the number of
property crimes they prevented and fights they broke up, not the riots they
controlled.
Local authorities firmly believed that the Metropolitan Police's primary
function was to protect their parishes from ordinary crime. While they
understood the need for the Home Office to use their men to police crowds,
some vestries complained that this then left them with no protection from
thieves. A committee from St George, Hanover Square (which had an
elected vestry as of 1832) noted: 'with regard to the efficiency of the New
System of Police your Committee find that so far as they have been able to
obtain Information there is little Room for complaint except on occasions of
public disturbances when the Parish has been left in a great measure without
protection .. .'.^82 The vestry of the united parishes of St Andrew, Holbom,
and St George-the-Martyr, dominated by middle-class radicals, voiced the
same complaint, with a slight difference, in November 1830:
That on occasion of the late unfounded alarm the Police force of this
District was removed to Westminster thereby leaving these Parishes wholly
unprotected notwithstanding the exorbitant Rate levied upon the Parish-
ioners and who were in consequence abruptly and peremptorily called
upon at the Insistence of the Home Office to act as Special Constables the
new Police being engaged in quelling ~artial disturbances of which they
themselves were the Object and Cause.So even though these vestrymen disliked the new police on principle,
they did not want to be left without their protection from more ordinary
crimes.^84
By 1834, many of these complaints and objections to the new system had
been successfully addressed. The cost of the new force was shared between
local and central government. Scotland Yard adjusted its methods and func-
tions to meet the expectations of both their superiors and the residents of the
communities they patrolled. With the issues of expense and efficiency under
control, the constitutional issue lost its urgent appeal, helped by the fact that