Hundreds of spiking incidents across the North East could be going unreported, a police boss claimed as she urged victims to come forward.
Durham Police and Crime Commissioner Joy Allen said there were 82 incidents reported to her force between October and December last year, but warned that may only represent 10% of the total incidents.
Last year students in Durham spoke out about the surge in spiking by injection, with many young women revealing they had been avoiding going to nightclubs for fear of falling victim to the crime.
Go here for the latest regional affairs and North East politics news
Ms Allen, appearing before MPs today, said: "Between October and December, there was 82 spiking incidents reported and of those 37 were thought to be injection related.
"After investigation that was reduced to 25 but still it's a significant number and demonstrates the trend.
"I think that's just a drop in the ocean because we know that other people aren't coming forward."
She added: "We need those people, victims to feel confident to report things and I think it's quite staggering that only 10% of people who have been a victim of spiking feel confident enough to report.
"We need the other 90% feeling confident that they can report this."
Ms Allen admitted to MPs that police currently "feel that sometimes we're working blind, because there's a lot that we don't know about".
In all, more than 1,300 reports of needle spiking have been made to UK police forces in the last six months.
Jason Harwin, National Police Chiefs Council drugs lead, told the Home Affairs Committee that police forces have received 1,382 reports of such crimes since September.
He said forces have started receiving an unprecedented volume of calls, and universities are also raising the issue.
He told MPs: “We’ve not seen that before – the scale of that before – we’ve never seen that before.”
Last October thousands of students took part in a boycott of nightclubs in cities across the country, including in Durham, to highlight the issue.
For the latest local breaking news direct to your inbox as it happens, go here to sign up to our free newsletter
.png?w=600)
