Police.. is this the norm these days?

[Meridian]

If you're unhappy about traffic legislation then write to your MP.

I know someone who was talking to his MP about this subject and asked the MP: "How many letters have you had complaining about speed limits and their enforcement?" Answer: two. Ever. If you don't complain, nothing will happen; if you do complain it might. It might not, but it certainly won't if you do nothing. If you think the police have treated you badly (or not at all) use their complaint procedure and send a copy to your MP. If you don't do this, shut up.

But there simply aren't enough police for the work they are asked to do, so they have to prioritise on the information they have at the time. That information is frequently wrong, so very often they are guessing, hence wildly varying responses to different incidents (that's before you add wildly varying availability of officers, which will get worse if the government force through changes to police overtime). The police also have to decide which crimes to investigate because they don't have the money to do all of them. If your crime is very unlikely to lead to a successful prosecution, because the money isn't there to justify the invesigation, then it's not going to get investigated much. If you don't like it, don't complain to the police because they don't set the funding: complain to you MP. But that's the way of the modern world: everything has a cost, and the one for looking into your burglary may be too high.


M

 

[Von Smallhausen]

^^

What he said. Absolutely bang on there M.

 

[Burnsy2023]

It's actually worrying that there is enough people posting sense in this thread we might actually balance the people who don't have a clue.

 

[Andy90]

Steady on Burnsy

The thing is, the people complaining about the Police actually want the same thing as the ordinary Copper on the Street.

1) A Police Force that has no place for corruption / Racism / Thuggery

2) A Police Force that investigates crimes properly.

3) More Police Officers to prevent crime in the first place.

Some of those things aren't in the hands of the Ordinary Police Officer - in fact one of those things, number 3) is actually out of the hands of Chief Constables nowadays.

Number 1) is in the hands of individual Officers and those that commit this sort of behaviour should have a mandatory Prison sentence if convicted. However from my experience it is actually far rarer in the County Forces than in some other Forces that I could mention.

Possibly this is down to their small size, so that any Corruption / Racist behaviour / Thuggery is detected quicker or is harder to hide by the individuals concerned or they have a better Supervision ratio, I couldn't say, but it seems a smaller problem than in the bigger Metropolitan Forces.

As for not getting the service you want. I always say to members of the public who complain about response times that it is down to staffing and that if they have a complaint or grievance to write to the Chief - we are exactly like any other organisation out there, these complaints are called Organistational Complaints and they do get dealt with - no point in grumbling get something done about it.

Also to the Poster who stated that they have never seen a Beat Officer in their town. Ok fine. What have you done about it? Written to the Chief? Are you actually aware of who your Beat Officer is? Have you visited your Police Force Website - my own Force actually has photographs of the Officers for each Beat area so you can see who they are, together with contact details.

Each beat area also has regular Parish Council Meetings with local residents and should actually be setting priorities in those areas for Local Officers - be aware though that if you attend one you might be surprised at what people perceive to be the major problems.... one area I am aware of where you would expect Drugs / Thefts to be a major issue came up with a list of their priorities and the top one was? Thats right, people riding bikes on the pavements......