POLICING should be about fighting fear of crime and not just about collating crime statistics, say North Yorkshire federation chiefs.

As the county's force celebrates another year of falling crime figures, federation chiefs have urged caution on interpreting the figures.

The Police Federation of England and Wales welcomed the figures and said they were a testament to hard work. But it points out that crime statistics are only an indicator, with the best indicator being people feeling safe.

Mark Botham, chairman of North Yorkshire Police Federation, said too many policemen were taken off the beat to fill in the kind of forms that performance targets were based around. He said: "There should be a trade off between the performance culture and common sense."

"Everyone knows about the form filling. We recognise that it is essential we can demonstrate our practices to council tax payers in York and North Yorkshire. But we should not be number crunching just because of the sake of it. We should measure, but we shouldn't perform just to measure."

While crime fell nationally by six per cent in 2004/2005, North Yorkshire reduced the number of incidents by 13.5 per cent, while detection rates rose to 35 per cent - nearly ten per cent above the national average.

North Yorkshire Police Assistant Chief Constable, Peter Bagshaw, said: "Statistics do not always show the whole picture, but we get a bench mark to work from. Crime figures are an important indicator of performance and our recent figures tend to confirm the quality of service being provided by North Yorkshire Police.

"However, we also recognise the importance of tackling the fear of crime, which is why we place such great emphasis on things like high visibility reassurance patrols, and the recently-introduced, easily-recognisable neighbourhood policing teams."

Updated: 09:32 Saturday, July 23, 2005