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Someone hit my wife's legally parked car and drove off. We got the registration no. from witnesses (who were prepared to sign witness statements). Police response: nil.
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Police attitude / response varies massively depending on where you live.
We moved recently from Uxbridge, Middlesex where we had one car stolen, another vandalised three times, and various incidents of chavs and chavettes hanging around in gangs throwing stuff at windows and generally intimidating people. The only time I ever recall seeing them respond to anything was when a malnourished looking 13 year old kid crashed a crowbarred steering locked Kawasaki ZXR400 into a wall opposite where they waited with the bike until it was recovered, and even managed to arrest the little ray of sunshine. Otherwise, the police couldn't have cared less, and beyond giving us crime reference numbers, were completely and utterly useless.
We moved to a small town in Hampshire where, in the year and a half we have been there, there has been one incident. Someone decided to walk down the street one night and steal every single aerial off the parked cars.
The police turned up the next day and went door to door asking for witnesses. A neighbour's son had seen the offenders and recognised one of them. Within a few hours they had arrested the guy that did it and recovered the aerials. They then went back door to door to get people to identify which was theirs.
Never heard any more about it after that, but I couldn't believe that such a small incident was taken so seriously.
Cheers
DP
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Never heard any more about it after that, but I couldn't believe that such a small incident was taken so seriously.
How long is it going to take our politicians and police to realise that if smaller crimes are firmly dealt with, there will be a knock on effect through to serious crime? It's a bit like the adage 'if you take care of the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves'.
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Don't misunderstand me, I think it was a good thing, but after years of complete police apathy to anything short of murder, it was a bit of a shock.
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"How long is it going to take our politicians and police to realise that if smaller crimes are firmly dealt with, there will be a knock on effect through to serious crime? It's a bit like the adage 'if you take care of the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves'."
We are a police sate. The police do what Central government want.
We have no say in police policy. Full stop.
So blame all your police woes on the Home Secretary. Only He has the power to change things. And of course the prior 3 incombants were: incompetent. At everything they did...Mr John Reid says so. It must be true:-)
madf
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Police attitude / response varies massively depending on where you live. We moved recently from Uxbridge, Middlesex where we had one car stolen, another vandalised three times.
We left Uxbridge, our home town, (Hillingdon), in 1987 and escaped to Devon cos of the dross. Couldn't have done a better thing. Rush hour can be a pain though, but hell, the Pheasants have to walk somewhere!
vbr......................MD
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We are a police sate
No we're not, If you were in a Police State you wouldn't be posting this without fearing a knock on the door. Read "Defying Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner. That will explaint to you in some detail what a Police State is all about.
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Hear hear PU. A lot of loose polemic to that effect, silly and destructive.
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The sad thing is, the police have too many conflicting demands of them to achieve everything, so something has to drop....so it's your garden shed 'break in' or damage to your car (or even the peeing into your garden).
Nowadays, compared to even 10 years ago, there are things like the folllowing considered priorities: homophobic crime, race hate crime, domestic violence, child abuse to name a few. I pass no commment on their suitability as a priority, because you can easily argue each and every one of them, it's just the fact they never used to be.
Furthermore when you consider how advanced some frauds have now become and internet/computer crime then there's a lot more to consider.
As an example govt guidelines state that police forces should be 'intelligence led' conforming to a national model, this means that instead of 2 pc's in an office fulfilling that role, there are now 15 or more. The intent is more than laudable, but if you end up with drastically less officers available to work the streets and those that are, are young and inexperienced, then the object is somewhat defeated.... and this sort of thing is relevant to many other areas.
Direct govt interference , via the Home Office doesn't help, with all sorts of priorities and work returns imposed.
Lastly and as an aside,compare the policing numbers between New York - approx 45,000 and London - approx 33,000, when they are comparable cities. I make it about 24% less. Is it any wonder there's a big void and certain 'low level' crime is ignored.
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It isn't true to say that crime level is inversely proportional to police numbers.
As a westerner, you can walk through many third-world countries and not experience any crime: despite the fact that you are likely to be carrying enough dollars to feed a family for a year.
Yet rarely do you see a policeman in these areas, maybe the odd army checkpoint on the outskirts of town. Many of the people (who do not mug you) are very poor indeed, and are homeless apart from their taxi-tricycle thing parked up on the side of the road.
I am not against increasing police numbers, but there are other more effective ways of reducing criminality.
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