Police get better and better

[Combat squirrel]

The police aren't much of a deterrent of crime in any country - their main task is reacting to incidences of crime that have already occured. That said, they still put resources into investigation and pro-active policing in order to discourage potential criminals. In most cases though, an investigation would be the result of previous criminal offences, and pro-active policing has somewhat minimal overall effectiveness.

Parking offences aren't really dealt with by the police, and Roads Policing is just one of many specialist units. You don't have a clue.

NO sir you clearly dont have a clue 'Road Policing is just one of many specialist units' correct, as 99% of police resources are transfered to policing roads. My best mate is a copper and he himself is :S at the amount of emphesis placed on catching people doing 31mph in a 30mph zone, and are infact TOLD to avoid 'dangerous' areas such as robbery etc (normal 'crimes' to the sane thinking man).

You seemed to of confused yourself with 'their main task is reacting to incidences of crime that have already occured' .....Correct, we dont live in a minority report world, but then you say 'That said, they still put resources into investigation and pro-active policing in order to discourage potential criminals' .................this is what im saying is the problem 'pro-active' policing. If criminals were caught, PROPERLY punished and given harsh senctences I think its common sense to think they would avoid doing stupid things again..........

People getting a few inconvienient years for murder and some even getting 'community service' for KILLING SOMEONE.........its not taking there rights away its giving them a job and a purpose, (which I can see may help 'reabilitate' them into the community, but this should ONLY be done after a very very harsh sentence, its like giving a naughty kid an ice cream when he needs a good smack, iv noticed that kids that are disaplined properly behave properly, same with crims, make them pay for what they have done and they then behave properly once punishment is done

 

[TheVoice]

NO sir you clearly dont have a clue 'Road Policing is just one of many specialist units' correct, as 99% of police resources are transfered to policing roads. My best mate is a copper and he himself is :S at the amount of emphesis placed on catching people doing 31mph in a 30mph zone, and are infact TOLD to avoid 'dangerous' areas such as robbery etc (normal 'crimes' to the sane thinking man).

What an absolute load of rubbish. What police service is he part of?

this is what im saying is the problem 'pro-active' policing. If criminals were caught, PROPERLY punished and given harsh senctences I think its common sense to think they would avoid doing stupid things again..........

Punishment isn't part of the Police's mandate - if the crime is serious (i.e. an FPN is not adequate), it gets forwarded to the Courts. Blame them for punishment and sentencing, not the Police.

And no, most of them wouldn't avoid doing stupid things again. Last time I saw, re-offending rates for those who had been in prison was around 75%. There are a lot of issues regarding that which definitely need to be addressed, but again, that's no fault of the Police. They're just the easiest target for people to lash out at, pure and simple.

 

[richieboy]

all our officers are busy currently, but one will be out ASAP

Sounds fair enough, they don't all just sit around in the police station. If they were you'd be complaining also.

 

[gort]

I'm pro police as mate of mine is a police officer and quite a few times has had arrests for something like shoplifting a £10 handbag and spent 4-5 hours dealing with it (booking in, interview, charging, paperwork needed for court the next day etc.)
Wth several people getting involved (arresting officer,custody sergeant, CPS etc) You're probably talking several £200+ in wages and resources.

You really think my mate wants to be stuck in doing that rubbish and not going to more serious calls??

Plus he says cos they're so short of staffed, sometimes there's something like 20 coppers out and about on patrol to cover a borough of around 280,000 people and his borough is one of the busier ones in london!
All it needs is something big to kick off (large fight, fire, shooting etc)and all officers are tied up with that.

And you wonder why police might not get to a call within the alloted time??

 

[SidewinderINC]

a group of friends and myself went out for a night last year and there was a problem in a phone booth where one indian lad had left his wallet in the phone booth and when he realised it was there he ran back to see a woman (young tracksuit wearing parent with child in pushchair) putting it into her trousers. he tried to get it back and then she kicked off saying he was trying to molest her.

we walked up just as she kicked off and broke up what was going to be a fight, and calmed down both of them down and found out what was happening. we didnt see her have the wallet or him try to get it back but we phoned the police and they said "oh, we'll try and be there as soon as possible"

so being good people we waited about to stop them fighting as both of them wanted to speak to the police (her about sexual assault and him about his wallet). she was still claiming to not have the wallet. half an hour passed and we called the police up again and they said "oh, it'll be about 2 hours before we can have anyone there as its not a serious crime"
as we called them that time i saw her take the wallet out and put it in her pram, the lad saw this as well, barged past us and pushed her to the ground and took his wallet.

in the end we told her that we didnt see him try and get it back, we saw that she had it and thats all so she would be the one going into the cells. they both walked off. this took a good hour and a half out of our night and was a total waste of our time that we werent being paid for. the police station was maybe 5 minutes walk down the road.

 

[Gaygle]

Just as an indication of the paperwork, it takes about 5 hours of paperwork for a simple Affray charge.

 

[Lord_Kokain]

I personally find the police to be professional and doing its job as good as possible. However, I had some experiences with them as well which sort of made me feel negative for their level of bureaucracy and attitude towards smaller crimes:

I once worked at a videostore which also sells other stuff, including alcohol. I must admit that, in this retail business, if you can deal with the alcohol-buying client base, you could pretty much deal with any kind of sales-related tasks. Why am I mentioning this? Well, because during that job, I had in times more dealings with the police than my whole life before that. Well, the area itself was problematic with lots and lots of teens, less than 18, that seem to have nothing to do and to be only aiming to get drunk often even during the weekdays. There were plenty of attempts per day, not to just buy as underaged but to also steal or stay in front of the place and keep asking adult customers to buy stuff for them(something for which many of them complained to...us). A few of them were even ready to start fighting or breaking stuff when refused. Why did they constantly do all that? Because they can and the particularly braver ones know they can! Because they know that, even caught by the police(which hardly bothers to come), they are let to go with a verbal warning, even for thefts, while my boss' complaints for the problems were pretty much ignored.

Once we had the police to us, asking us if we knew some local lad(they described him). We knew him as he was buying sometimes alcohol off us so we answered that we did and they told us something along the lines that they are certain that this guy buys alcohol to give it to his underage pals and therefore we should consider banning him from the shop. Well, so far so good...however, I then pointed them to the notice on the door, stating that adults selling alcohol to kids will be given a 200 pounds fine and I was told that this is something to give if caught on the crime scene. That explanation sounded a bit out of order to me(at least because the notice was written in such way that if the police knew who does that, they would fine him on the spot or later) but I thought of not taking the argument any further. Nevertheless, it sounded to me as a way of the police to nicely tell us to apply our way of law and order while they wouldnt bother with the case. At the same time, I am pretty sure that they would love to see us screwing somewhere and will be prompt giving us a big fat fine for, say, selling an underage.

 

[scarab]

tbh the police are bu**ered if they do and bu**ered if they dont.

yeh you get some cops who dont do their job properly, but as with most things in life it is a small percentage.

from the comments i have seen in here it sadness me. Most of you really have no idea at all what or how the police function or its remits.

1 arrest could equate to about 3 hours of taking two officers of the street, due to travelling, station procedures, paperwork etc etc.
Now if there were only 4 cops to start with covering 5 towns, is it the remaining cops fault that they have arrived 1 or 2 hours after you placed the call? so you are already annoyed because they have not arrived when you expect them to. The two remaining cops have already been on shift for 9 hours with no break....they have dealt with everything from clearing up deceased people and the family's greif, RTA's, shoplifters, assault's. Some of those assaults have no witnesses and therefore insufficient evidence, some of those assaults have a complainer who does not wish the police to do anything because of the fear of repercussions, same with any witnesses, so nobody gets done for it and therefore 'get away with it' (is that the cops fault?). But that doesnt matter, they are two hours late to deal with your neighbours because their kids keep kicking their football into your garden.

The Voice: The police aren't much of a deterrent of crime in any country

Someone answer me this. if you have 2 cops outside a nightclub, would you expect their presence to stop any trouble from happening?

Quote:> if theres someone in your house, and you phone the poilice and they claim they are busy and will be with you sooner or later...

This i just dont believe, sorry.

Take the plane bomb terror plot. I couldnt believe the people moaning about the added security that was implemented following the threat. Would you prefer to be sat next to someone who was just about to blow you up or would you prefer to have put your hand luggage in the hold?

Would you prefer there to be no police at all?

 

[Lord_Kokain]

Of course police deters crime through its authority. There would be much more crimes commited if people are to know that there is no one around to punish them. But the police itself need to keep on acting as good example to people for being prompt and professional. Some other countries are clear examples of having chaos by countless slamming of its own police and people hearing of cases of corruption within it.

 

[MoNkeE]

No. Are you? It's common sense. You have highly trained and professional people who are, according to another poster, Surely that is something that less trained people can do? E.g. let the 'toy cops' do all the admin and station management and get the police on the streets doing the harder, more technical jobs, i.e. doing what they are trained for: catching the criminals? Not the other way round. Seems sensible to me. Do you disagree with that or are you saying that the police should be doing the admin in the station?

But you'll still need to train the admin people up to the same level. What if there's a riot or a prisoner attempts to break loose? You expect the admin staff to call the police?

Also, the fact you get someone guarding the cells doesn't mean they're always guarding the cells - they probably do shifts. And do you actually know that someone on reception is a fully trained officer, or just a civvie? I can't see their IT staff being fully trained officers, after all...

-RaZ

 

[hybrid]

When i was in work tonight we heard a message from The Forum security firm (shopping centre) that a car had been broken into in the multi-storey car park over the radio, but due to the security guard being old and frale he got onto the police and said they are in the car now, be fast and youll get them. Now the local police station is literally a 1 minute run down the road from the car park,

lolololol - i know the exact place. I used to live in Wallsend and i know all about the police there. They are hopeless!!

We used to live near the The Forum and near the High Street... alarm bells all night long.

 

[Charlie Bravo]

My car was broken into earlier this year. Rang the local police to be told someone would call me to arrange a time to come and look at the vehicle but in the meantime, don't touch it !

RAC Windscreens arrived within 2 hours so I let him get on with it and then I went out.
The police called the following day to ask if I'd still like them to come and look at the car. I replied don't bother and hung up



Also, around 4 years ago, I had a motorcycle accident where a car pulled out in front of me before driving off and leaving me unconscious in the road.
I won't go into it all but the police had 3 possible suspects.

So, do you....

A: Visit these people and look at their vehicles
OR
B: Write a lovely letter to them all asking if it was them

If you guessed B then you win todays star prize ! It took them 5 months to get the truth from the guy that did it. He got less points then you would for speeding and not causing any harm to anybody.

 

[Cuchulain]

A shop girl over here was being threatened by someone with screwdriver, the shop was about 500 yards from the main police station, someone rang them and was told "they're all away for their tea at the moment" ...

 

[Slinwagh]

A shop girl over here was being threatened by someone with screwdriver, the shop was about 500 yards from the main police station, someone rang them and was told "they're all away for their tea at the moment" ...

Yes of course that happened.

 

[Cuchulain]

Yes of course that happened.

Are you inferring that I'm a liar?

 

[Slinwagh]

Are you inferring that I'm a liar?

No but the story that has been conveyed to you I do not beleive.

 

[Cuchulain]

No but the story that has been conveyed to you I do not beleive.

Ah right, you're calling my mrs a liar ... idiot.

 

[Slinwagh]

Ah right, you're calling my mrs a liar ... idiot.

I don't think anyone would honestly beleive that the police would replay in that situation with

"They're all away for their tea at the moment"

And less of the insults all i will call the police.

 

[Cuchulain]

I don't think anyone would honestly beleive that the police would replay in that situation with

"They're all away for their tea at the moment"

And less of the insults all i will call the police.

Unfortunately it was true, wasn't the first time it's happened either, the police over here are an absolute joke. As I recall it was in the Derry Journal the same week.

 

[Borris]

Unfortunately it was true, wasn't the first time it's happened either, the police over here are an absolute joke. As I recall it was in the Derry Journal the same week.

And you filed a formal complaint with the IPCC, obviously.