For obvious reasons I will not disclose too much but yesterday I witnessed what would appear to be a serious crime. I followed the perpetrators who were on foot for 15 mins with 3 separate calls to 999 notifying the police what had happened, full description, where they were, where they were headed.
The police never got them.
For my efforts I was basically held up for an hour and a half whilst a PC, then his Sergeant, then his Inspector came to speak to me and take statements.
Two hours after the incident they decided it would be an idea to get the dogs down!
I really was disillusioned by the whole outcome.
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Strathclyde plods? The rest of Scotland is unimpressed with the introduction of their procedures.
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Yip was Strathclyde. The Inspector actually phoned me and introduced himself from Strathclyde Police and then said sorry, Police Scotland, I still can't get used to saying that!
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You should have said it was a racially motivated attack, or a chance
to fine a driver £60 & 3 points and you would have had someone there quickly!
Strathclyde Police & the others have to get their act together and respond to Joe Public that they will respond to victims and to witnesses of crimes.
2 yrs ago I spotted a suspected DDriver but could not give reg number as it was covered in road dirt gave them description Volvo 240, green, roughly early 80s - it was someone fairly local as I has seen it before - an absolute wreck - a quick check on DVLA would have thrown it up in seconds.
Cannot do much without the reg........... we do not have anyone available at this moment - Saturday Lunchtime!!!
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>> Cannot do much without the reg........... we do not have anyone available at this moment
>> - Saturday Lunchtime!!!
>>
All getting ready to police (watch) football matches. :-)
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Apparently there was some 'important' football match in London today where the fans started hitting each other. I hadn't realised they still did that. Why don't they just euthanise them and be done with it. What possible use to society are morons who hit each other because they prefer one football team over another?
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>> I really was disillusioned by the whole outcome.
>>
They increasingly do not have anyone to send.
I dialled '999' a month or so back for a suspect van I spotted parked up in my local town, that someone had previously circulated via Facebook as having caught someone in their garden trying to steal their dogs.
My first call had me spoken to most dismissively and nothing was going to be done.
So I rang back... and this time 'showed out' as being ex Job and 'could someone please do something'. This time the lady spent quite some time explaining why they couldn't do anything... and gave me examples of what they now don't do (and should be). In fairness she didn't agree with it.. but she's stuck with the system that there is.
Frightening really. The lack of staff is unreal.
The public has absolutely no idea.
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>> Frightening really. The lack of staff is unreal.
>>
>> The public has absolutely no idea.
>>
The armed forces were getting a bit thin on the ground when I left, I doubt if things have improved.
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The dumb ***** in Wales are trying to foist the Scotland model here. Madness.
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When the inspector got involved I made a comment along the lines of "what I have seen and witnessed is something very big isn't it" and he replied yip, there is something major going down here.
Which makes it more annoying that they never got caught. Add in to the mix I was on my new bike, and if I had been on my old bike I may have caught it all on camera as a mate at work gave me his "action cam" to try and it is clipped onto my old bikes bars!
And then, after the event, you think it would have been more useful to use my phone to video everything rather than for phoning 999!
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Ya can't build without Builders. Ya can't cook without Cooks. Ya get the picture? WTF do the government think they are doing. You rarely see a copper here now and fewer pcso's it would seem too. Our little local station had a refit, several tens of thousands only to be closed to the public immediately afterwards. Now it is closing completely. I just despair.
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Strangely enough, where I have just returned from, Finestrat, south of Beni on the Costa Blanca, there were police everywhere. You would see them walking around, chatting and having a coffee in a local bar, plenty of cars and bikes in evidence. More coppers around than you could shake a stick at.
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>> Strangely enough, where I have just returned from, Finestrat, south of Beni on the Costa
>> Blanca, there were police everywhere. You would see them walking around, chatting and having a
>> coffee in a local bar, plenty of cars and bikes in evidence. More coppers around
>> than you could shake a stick at.
Strangely still with crime rates very similar to ours.
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Doesn't surprise me at all
Maybe they should spend less time sitting in cafes drinking Americanos
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The Policia Local in Spain is, at least in Marbella, an eagerly sought after job by young men (particularly) who love to strut their stuff in uniform, whilst ogling the bikini clad babes!
The Policia National, again in Marbella, are fond of nipping over to a local bar at lunchtime, (fully armed) and sinking a few bevvies before returning to the nick and "encouraging" suspects up the steps to the cop shop. Yep - we lived right opposite the PN nick in Marbella, for 6 months, before our first apartment was ready.
The Guardia are a law unto themselves!
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>> The Guardia are a law unto themselves!
You would be stroppy if you had to wear a silly hat like that.
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>> >> The Guardia are a law unto themselves!
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>> You would be stroppy if you had to wear a silly hat like that.
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Only in ceremonial full fig - rather like the Guards with their bearskins! (NOT Busbies!)
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>> a silly hat like that.
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>> Only in ceremonial full fig -
Don't Spanish guardia civil wear funny little metal jobs, sort of tinplate things painted black? They did in the early sixties I seem to remember.
Some countries have special tourist fuzz, or used to. A bit confusing for the British, there being several categories of local fuzz in these places. Helps to keep it interesting though.
Plainclothes carabinieri in Italy can put the fear of God into you just by standing there. Help! Phone the British Ambassador! It wasn't me, honest!
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sun 6 Mar 16 at 12:07
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>>The public has absolutely no idea.
We do now, some of us anyway.
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We have a police commissioner Matthew Grove on the local radio station regulary.
He is good at waffling and sounding important.
Daughters school friend who is a police officer knows to well about the shortage of coppers on duty.
Two of them where covering a big area of the town on nightshift.
Is it to do with the council or is the government not funding recruitment?
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It seems to me that a high proportion of police are not uniformed, or in company cars. While that may not have the same deterrent effect, I expect it means they can creep up on crims better and actually feel some collars.
My personal experiences of plod are mixed but my co tact with them is insufficiently frequent to make a valid judgement. But certainly on hearsay I'd have to conclude that there aren't enough of them. But then I suspect there are a lot more bad boys (and girls) than there ever were.
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The powers that be have more or less supplanted police officers with video cameras. This is the most constantly spied upon country in the world by a very large margin. The main problem is that the police do not man, control or approve location of the cameras. Its mostly local councils subbed out to private contractors.
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>> Frightening really. The lack of staff is unreal.
>>
>> The public has absolutely no idea.
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The public sector will only ever cut from the front line never at the top usually to make them look them look like victims and the government as the evil cutter !
Also just before Christmas an elderly man collapsed in the local High St, there was no crime involved and 3 people including an off duty nurse stopped to help him and waited with him until the para medics arrived. By the time the ambulance left there were 10 police cars with 14 police officers in attendance. Some of them were still there an hour after the ambulance had left doing nothing but standing around talking. Is that a good use of police resources ? I certainly don't think so. There was a minor RTA in my road last night, again 6 police cars turned up with most of the officers doing nothing from what I could see. Sometimes I can't help but thinking that the "they are only interested in going after the motorist who is doing 5mph over the speed limit" brigade are right - and I say that as a 53 year old who has never been in trouble with the police not even for a minor traffic offence so I have no axe to grind !
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I take it you live in a big city? I know round here you would have to near empty the county to get 14 police officers round.
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>> I take it you live in a big city? I know round here you would
>> have to near empty the county to get 14 police officers round.
>>
No, I don't. I think that many of us were surprised to see so many of them as you don't normally see any of them out and about !
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>> No, I don't. I think that many of us were surprised to see so many
>> of them as you don't normally see any of them out and about !
>>
Likewise we can often go weeks without seeing any police around here.
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>>no crime involved and...
Something for them to do and which filled in an hour or two but which wasn't very difficult?
Cynical? Maybe, maybe not eh?
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Our now nearest Police stations are 30mls, 25 and 19 mls away, we never see Police in the town during the week, about 3 vans turn up in the Market Sq about 10 on a Saturday night. They just sit there till about 3am then thats it! - if they do arrest a bod for DD, they are taken to Workington about 40mls away kept overnight then dumped back on the streets Sunday am. Theres no public transport back to town of any form on a Sunday so most "perps" end up either walking or "thumbing" it home, serves them right really, but you would think that the Police would have a "duty of care" over somebody they they have stranded. It may have been a better policy just to take them home at first instance?
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>> For obvious reasons I will not disclose too much but yesterday I witnessed what would appear to be a serious crime.
The reasons aren't obvious to me Bobby. If you won't even say what the crime was the rest of us have to take your word for its 'seriousness'.
I've noticed a few times over the years that the old bill don't always appreciate concerned citizens sticking their noses in. What looks like a serious crime to you or me may just seem a tiresome misdemeanour to them. And faffing citizens increase their bureaucratic workload.
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Perhaps it's having to fill in the answer to:
How was this crime solved?
as, by a member of the public. So no brownie points for them.
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I suppose I can see how they wouldn't be so keen on people telling them how to do their job. I know I wouldn't have liked it, especially from a non-professional.
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I need to stop watching police programs! - Old Navy
