Whether police corruption is an individual or an organisational phenomenon has been a feature of recent criminological debates. The definition of police corruption has also changed and more modern definitions, based on the motivation behind the behaviour, include perverse practices designed to give a false impression of improved performance. Such practices are referred to as ‘gaming’, and examples involving law enforcement agencies are regularly cited in the academic literature on this subject. In this article statistical patterns in police performance data are linked to particular forms of ‘gaming’ behaviour. It is argued that the scale and seismic nature of fluctuations linked to particular events, sometimes involving scandals or other exposures, indicate that the behaviour is organisational and linked to objectives being pursued by senior officers. The contributions of Her Majesty's Government Statistical Office and Home Office Research Development and Statistics department are acknowledged in the provision of the statistics on which this article is based.