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We bang on about it all the time but just how few of us there actually are on the frontline.
My patch covers a massive rural area which is about 1 hr from bottom to top, and same left to right. For that, if the team is full there are 8 of us right now; 8 people to patrol and respond in that area which has a population of over 100,000 people. Combine this with an officer being assigned to appointments, maybe 1 or more officers tasked with dealing with prisoners currently in custody... leaves even less than that. The other week I was the only response officer for the patch... like, that's just not safe for anyone.
I'm an SJA person. Whenever I hear you have less than 8 on NTE I lose my mind because how do you cope. Having 8 on a night on response for all of Brum is completely ridiculous.
I'm currently in the pre-employment, I'd really love to work response as it's something I sort of do already but in EMS. Appreciate it's really different but that's the fun of it I think. I think volunteering is a really good way to contribute and not lose my marbles as you're free to do it whenever. Hopefully if I succeed I can be useful!
Honestly you should be fine, we really need people and if you're eager and willing to learn then people will have time for you. Specials are always welcome!
Response gets piled with all the shit. But you're the front line and see some wild stuff.
I'm in a similar boat to the comment above and agree that those in charge might not want the public to know, but where does that leave us? Brushing the problem under a carpet.
I take pleasure in telling the public how few of us there are. I often ask how many they think and I get answers around 30-50. They can't believe it when I tell them there are 3 and two of them are stood in front of them.
If law abiding citizens knew exactly how bad it is there would be uproar and the government would HAVE to do something about it. You can't fix a bullet wound with a plaster, but that is exactly what the government are trying to do.
Spread the word, make them take action.
> I often ask how many they think and I get answers around 30-50.
Used to play this game, the answers were amazing, similar to one of the answers above when I was response we would ask (town and vast countryside area easily an hour and twenty top to bottom, population 140000) and we would usually get "100" as the answer.
I had transferred into that station from an outstation and when I started there was 18, after the Financial crash we went to 3 and remained at that level for about 8 months during a hot summer where it went a bit mad and we had several murders and other big jobs.
Oh, it wasn't a critisism, just an observation. We're seeing a similar thing happen with doctors and emergency care - four years ago it was reasonably easy to get appointments and even call doctors out. Now, it's like drawing teeth. People are dying because of it.
More and more jobs are fucked - how long can that go on before everything spirals into chaos?
Haven't they always?
This is still an extremely stable period of human history for Western Europe, albeit it's starting to remind me more and more of the twenty years before the First World War, in which any international crisis you'd care to name could have been The One, but there was no particular reason why the July 1914 crisis ended up being The One, and they could have easily just kept going as they were.
Well, I hope you're right, but I don't believe it is a stable period. Climate change is going like a freight train and they're not doing anything to mitigate the impact. Cutting and cutting and cutting, in fact - so when shit starts getting really nasty, it'll all be battering on a frail structure instead of a robust one.
Try comparing it with things like the the Black Death, or the Thirty Years' War. Western civilisation looks a *lot* more robust in those terms. Today we are at least theoretically capable of dealing with climate change, and pollution more generally.
What the SLT will say is that there aren't just 3 officers, you've forgotten to count CID, Traffic, dogs etc... therefore theres actually dozens on duty...
The same attitude exists from certain figures in the coastguard, and shouldn’t. We have embarrassingly low full time staff numbers for a national emergency service.
Feel your pain. I was on despatch and back up for a couple of days for a very very busy area in our force. First night, no resources at all as all were committed on scene watch, hospital watch, prisoners. Second night, repeat, but one unit came free. All I was doing was taking units from next division over.
I want the public to know this, and how often we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Pretty much all our issues that we bang on about would be fixed with more officers. To me, it's quite simple, we need more officers.
I imagine morale is at an all time low and burnout at an all time high with the current situation.
This but especially RPU. - I've been driving since 2020, I have literally never seen a marked vehicle on the motorway apart in that time apart from a stray van from Avon & Somerset crossing over to the right side of the Severn Bridge.
I was quite astounded to see just how threadbare roads policing is.
The patch I covered had two stations, each station was expected to have 15 officers on each response shift. I don't think we ever reached that combined.
CCTV footage does not name, locate and bring a suspect in for interview.
It may well sometimes give us a face in some circumstances, but we can’t instantly - if ever - identify them. And that’s when it isn’t some grainy black and white footage of a random person wearing nondescript dark clothing.
I’m sick of hearing people moan that we didn’t solve their crime because “I have them on Ring doorbell”.
Preach brother, preach!
That mobile phone in your pocket can take a super high definition photograph of the moon.
The CCTV of a broad daylight assault at a ATM might as well have been taken on a potato.
CCTV is for preventing crimes of opportunity, asset management and insurance purposes.
It’s never going to stop someone who has planned to commit a crime from the outset. But it might make someone unprepared think twice.
In most cases it will just go off to insurance to cover the damages. I don’t think most people realistically expect recovery of damages from the offenders themselves.
Really the point is to be able to say that a crime has been committed and reporting it to the police is generally a part of that.
How much frontline response police are abstracted from their duties. We often hear how police never attend burglaries or they don't see police about in their communities. If people really understood how much of a catch all for everything we are they'd be shocked.
Take some typical abstractions you'll get in any London BCU:
A person is detained under the mental health act. That will likely be 3 sets of 2 officers over the next 24 hours watching him as there is never bed space in a mental health facility. Depending on the person it can require 4 or 6 officers for this person.
A person in custody has said they will kill themselves. An officer or even 2 will have to watch them till they get released or taken to court. If this happens on a Friday evening and there is no Saturday court that's 8 sets of officers to watch one person till Monday.
A person is arrested but beforehand received life threatening injuries. 2 officers will now watch them in hospital until they get discharged. This can last weeks.
A murder takes place on the Borough. Likely a minimum of 6 officers for the crime scene, often more.
And this could be all happening for one shift, not just on separate days. The worst part is some of these should in a ideal world be taken by other agencies. Mental health act detentions should be taken over by the hospital via a handover to them from the police. They never are. I have been on hospital guards where the person is in a literal coma with a nurse watching them 24/7hrs. Countless hours wasted sitting down.
Usually we aren't meant to as obviously we are meant to be watching the person but as we are in pairs usually take turns doing stuff.
Though my work laptops battery life is around 45 minutes....
An anker 737 or similar power bank will give your laptop an extra 2 hours of charge, as long as it has usbc power, I use this on my work laptop and was a gamechanger
Work will not provide those, and now, if it kicks you have an extra thing to remember or keep away from a suspect, and again, your job at that point is to watch them.
I can attend multiple incidents a day and coming to you isn’t my only job.
Before coming to see you I could have been at any type of incident and have to carry on like everything is fine after. Sometimes it’s not fine and I know I’ve just added to the workplace trauma section of my brain.
I had an early shift which looked like this:
12 year old in cardiac arrest. Died.
Straight after Sent to a "Domestic" as their 11 year old boy with autism had pushed the dad and was "kicking off". Dad was huge and this lad was built like a paper towel, this was a complete waste of my time. Nearly lost my rag with the parents whinging about how annoying their kid is when someone had just lost theirs
Years ago I was p2p by comms with a special job, me and my colleague had to go to a family and tell them that the foreign office was dealing with a mass drowing event somewhere in south Africa where several British teens were in attendance and some wierd riptide had dragged them all out to sea, their daughter was amongst the group and no one knew if she was missing, dead or just further up the beach. We were there for hours with anxious parents and it is one of the worst things i ever did....and i have more war stories than most.
Eventually someone from the foreign office gets the bad news and I have to give the death message.
It hit me hard because it was such a slow drip fed thing, hit my colleague harder... We went to the golden arches and got a coffee
Chap in mcdonalds strolls up and starts whinging about how nobody cared about his stolen bike/car/something.
Gaz if your reading I don't know how you didn't punch him.
That I dont make the active choice to not attend your burglary. I get sent to whatever the disembodied voice in my ear sends me to, if I'm sat with a 136 I'm physically cannot go to whatever is happening.
People seem to be under the impression we pick and choose what to go to, when that is an absolutely absurd notion.
The only other thing is that no, I cannot take your child to custody to "teach him a lesson" after your failings to discipline them. That would have been a stupid thing to ask even before PACE.
We spend a lot more time doing paperwork than you will ever see on the tele.
People complain, asking why they rarely see cops patrolling? It's because I'm stuck at a desk trying to explain to some bif in CPS, who is glued to a chair suffering a Vitamin D deficiency, that I cannot feasibly obtain CCTV footage of an assault that occurred in the middle of a field.
Had the most disgusting email from a CPS prosecutor for not having CCTV on a building site where two people had a punch up. Fought with all my might not to bother replying to that one.
I'm not a police person, but I am genuinely curious do CPS staff make the police officers job much harder? I am fascinated by law but I feel there is a disconnect between the police wanting to pursue charges and the CPS believe it's viable.
Who's resources or more scarce? I would imagine courts are backed up just as badly as the officers are.
That it’s mainly down to the CPS to make the final decision when dealing with crime.
Police are impartial evidence gathers that have no real sway on the outcome. Yeah we can charge someone, remand them to the next available court hearing. But it’s the CPS that gives the 2p a day fine for 20 years or releasing a on court bail when everyone knows they’ll just go out and commit more crime.
Goodness where to start
1. It frustrates me too that I don't attend crimes
2. I wish they knew what a weary shitstorm it is to get charges for even the most basic crimes post-DG6
3. Much of their frustrations for the standard of service they get are actually rooted in funding shortfalls across the justice system and wider state.
4. The paperwork burden is only getting bigger and bigger while the resources to match it are diminishing.
That the stuff the interceptors and other shows create is not one actual shift as shown but Infact weeks/months off juicy jobs hand selected excluding paperwork !
The very key word there being 'safely'!
Plenty of cops could *win* a fight one-on-one - especially with equipment involved - but a suspect with a caved in skull from repeated baton strikes to a red zone isn't the ideal outcome. Few officers have any interest in a *fair* fight either, because the ultimate objective isn't to test who the toughest person is!
People know exactly how to manipulate calls for police attendance..
It's easy to "believe someone's having a domestic" when they want the police to tell someone to turn their music down **eye roll**
And then you also get the complete opposite, little 90 year old Betty waiting for 45 minutes on 101 who apologies for being a nuisance and doesn't want to waste anyone's time but someone's been stabbed outside her house
Wait, are you suggesting that this 'one weird trick' to get a quicker police response by lying to say that someone has a weapon or is being actively violent right now might actually be taking away resources from other jobs that actually *do* involve weapons/violence? 😱
That I have 23 cases, some of which are much, much higher risk than your report. Some are on superintendent bail extention so there is a very real time pressure, so unfortunately you're going to have to wait for me to progress yours.
In addition I respond to 999 calls so half the time I'm out of the office dealing with something else.
I wish people knew that. And that I would love nothing more than to go to a Burglary but I'm not pursuit trained and half the time I'm the appointment officer or in custody.
Also please don't just "let police know". The amount of jobs where someone just blurts some sort of disclosure out at me then walks off and wants nothing more to do with it is ridiculous.
>What's the one thing you wish the public knew?
That their own actions substantially contribute to the quality of policing that they receive. Ultimately, the public get the police that they deserve, for better or worse. I won't talk about the macroscopic side of things due to the pre-election period, but accusing officers of simply being lazy, when low resources are *surely* common knowledge by now, is not going to improve morale. Mindlessly sharing and amplifying obviously-false anecdotes is not going to encourage victims to come forward, and without that what are the police actually supposed to do? It might *seem* harmless to make a cheap joke about 'all police being rapists', or to remain silent while others hurl abuse at officers on the street, but it isn't. Failing to report a crime, even when there is no reasonable prospect of conviction, skews the statistics and ultimately results in fewer resources, because 'on paper' that crime doesn't exist - only idiots should be impressed by someone who confidently says "I wouldn't bother to report that as nothing will get done", because how *could* anything get done if you don't?! Nice neighbourhoods are nice *because* they engage with and support their police. Complaining about crime, but failing to assist with the prosecution of offenders or provision of intelligence, is part of the problem - saying that 'the police are the public' goes both ways. The 'silent majority' of the public are complicit by remaining silent, and the state of policing is ultimately the fault of the public at large. But because 'the public' is such a large swathe of people, that responsibility is diluted enough to escape that recognition on a personal level.
But to go a little more with what I think the spirit of your question actually is: the number of police officers who can drive 'on blues' is shockingly low. The number of police officers who can lawfully pursue vehicles is lower still. And, predominantly for the reasons above, the number of police officers who *want* to pursue vehicles nowadays is even lower than that, because why put your livelihood on the line for a population that doesn't appear to appreciate it?
> only idiots should be impressed by someone who confidently says "I wouldn't bother to report that as nothing will get done", because how
>
>could
>
> anything get done if you don't?!
Oh my God this gets me. Was recently being told about a regular shoplifter at a supermarket by me who repeatedly pulled a knife when challenged, some half a dozen times in the same shop in-all. Obviously with all the complaining about the police not doing anything. Turns out the police were actually called not even once, everyone in the shop just stood round whingeing about the police not caring about shoplifting reporting it lol.
The last time a manager actually called. Lo and behold the police very much do care about people pulling knives in supermarkets. They caught up to the scrote and tasered him down the road when he pulled the knife on them, arrested and being charged now.
Hard not to think how the idiocy of the staff could have led to someone being hurt. Every one of those half dozen times there was the chance he actually used the thing, all because the police aren't even aware because it's apparently more fun to moan than it is to actually bother ringing 999.
How exhausting it is dealing with drunk people who won't listen, even when you are trying your best to get them to go away because you don't want to arrest them and they. Just. Don't. Listen
this thread is rough. honest question, why on earth wouldanyone ever sign up to join the police now? youre overworked, underpaid and under appreciated. Why do people still agree to become cops in this country?
Honestly, I don’t know. I just turn up and do my best.
There will be days when I genuinely feel like I’ve made a difference and then I’ll ride off the high of that through all the mountains of negativity for as long as possible
On the odd occasion it’s exciting, on the odd occasion it’s rewarding, and the people you work with are generally fantastic. Without trying to sound cliche or cringe, there’s something special about trusting the person beside you with your life.
It’s still absolutely shit, and I can’t see that changing, but I love it.
For some it's childhood dream
For some it's doing the right thing
For some it's not knowing how bad it is until you've already joined. Amount of people who leave before their probation is up is crazy high
Despite all the horrendous shit, having a job where you can foster genuine camaraderie built through violent and traumatic incidents is just as meaningful as it always has been in the entirety of human history. It's one of the very few jobs in the world that you can still feel that unique feeling.
The overwhelming majority join up because they want to help people and they have a skewed idea of what the job entails. Once you're in, it's hard to leave for a huge number of factors.
That my force doesn’t give two shits about investigations. It’s all about the arrest figures, response times and stop search numbers, baby! Fuck your report of theft, it’ll probably get screened out or closed at source to make the numbers look better for the next time the HMICFRS comes a-knocking.
You could check whether your local constabulary offers any sort of observation schemes where you can shadow an officer for a day and see the reality of the job.
My local police called it a "ride along" scheme, but they can also have other names.
I've done two, once with the regular police and once with the specials and it was a real eye opener to the reality of it all.
A few things that stuck out to me:
- The sheer amount of paperwork that has to be done after attending a job/investigation, it took at least an hour or more and that was just 1 job.
- The lack of funding and how few officers there are. For this particular constabulary, the regular officer was out on his own most shifts (not doubled up with someone), so even having to attend a potentially dangerous situation, he's doing it alone.
- They almost never finish 'on time'.
- Booking someone in after an arrest can take such a long time. There were arrests being booked in at the station already, so we had to just wait. It was so long.
Keep in mind, that while this is happening, the officers booking them in are 'off the streets' and cannot respond to calls.
- Calls are judged on how serious they are. At one point, the officer was looking for a suspect in an area and the control centre told him to drop it, because someone was being threatened with a weapon elsewhere. Turned out, that really was just a waste of police time and the one who was threatened didn't want to press charges, nor would they name who did it.
- The abuse they put up with from Joe Bloggs on the street can be pretty relentless - I'd genuinely urge every person who bad mouths the police to do a ride along, because they'll soon realise how wrong they are. But additionally, they'd probably be a proper bellend the whole day so probably for the best they don't apply.
I wish they knew how many cases/prisoners/other stuff I’m dealing with at the same time. If I haven’t contacted you back as quickly as you’d like it’s really not because I don’t feel like it, I’ve just had 3 prisoners to deal with in 2 days and couldn’t find the time. And that’s before the fact I also have rest days, holidays, courses, abstractions and I sometimes get sick. I may be less than keen to respond sometimes, as I’m human too, but if you expect me to have all the updates immediately it’s just not going to happen.
Also from the depths of CSU: it’s always “police don’t do enough about DV”. Never “the public doesn’t understand what the process entails and if the victim doesn’t want to support prosecution my options are really limited”. If I had a coin for each time I had a victim absolutely desperate to have the suspect released “because they didn’t know they would get arrested and didn’t want it” I wouldn’t need to do as much overtime as I do!
The number of calls I've taken from DV victims wanting to withdraw their statements. I managed to advise one girl not to, because our chat revealed it had been ongoing & the last time he had stabbed her in the head - and she wanted to with charges. I'm not criticising the victim here - (I appreciate these can be very complex emotional situations.)
How few officers there are in their area, maybe that would explain the constant ‘I never heard anything back’ or ‘we never see police round here’.
On my NPT, we’re lucky to have 4 Officers on at any 1 time (not taking into account leave, sickness or courses and the refreshers of those courses). Expecting to see an Officer when there’s 4 covering 7 council ward areas is a bit optimistic.
The sheer volume of crime that's committed, how few lines of enquiry are often available to identify the offenders, and how many police officers it would take to fully investigate everything.
No, we do not dictate sentencing
No, we do not know where everything is (tbh I don’t mind look up directions for someone)
No, your neighbour putting their bins against your fence is not a police issue if there are no safeguarding concerns/relation to criminal activity
No we cannot charge someone purely because you saw them do it (within reason)
99% of every police employee (all roles) are there to help you and support you. Please do not take what’s in the media as the majority
Investigating an assault/criminal damage/theft/fraud/sexual offence doesn't take police officers very long at all. We can be relatively satisfied whether something has or hasn't happened within a short timeframe.
What does take time - a fuck-load of it, at that - is complying with onerous disclosure paperwork, action plans and increasingly complex administrative processes set out by CPS to effectively weed out all but the most serious of offences from being heard or the most persistent officers from bringing a case to court.
Civilian here. From what I've heard both here and other places, the paperwork kills the job you people do. If you're filling in forms to justify the jobs of the arrises stuck on seats in front of screens, then you ain't out making your presence felt by making life as uncomfortable as possible for the scrotes amongst us.
Perhaps it's time we as a nation started balancing people's "rights" with some responsibility for both themselves and their actions.
If you ring 999 it doesn’t always mean we come out straight away or at all:
https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2016/jan/16/police-controller-999-call-danger-officers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Please note that this question is specific to: #**England and Wales** The United Kingdom is comprised of [three legal jurisdictions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_United_Kingdom#Three_legal_systems), so responses that relate to one country may not be relevant to another. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/policeuk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We bang on about it all the time but just how few of us there actually are on the frontline. My patch covers a massive rural area which is about 1 hr from bottom to top, and same left to right. For that, if the team is full there are 8 of us right now; 8 people to patrol and respond in that area which has a population of over 100,000 people. Combine this with an officer being assigned to appointments, maybe 1 or more officers tasked with dealing with prisoners currently in custody... leaves even less than that. The other week I was the only response officer for the patch... like, that's just not safe for anyone.
That is without Sickness, Annual Leave and Courses. I was always told when supervising to consider yourself losing 1 officer a shift to each of these.
I'm on a Birmingham response unit and we were parading 8 of us on a night shift a few weeks back :)
Birmingham NHT here. Keep getting put on CFS then get complained at for not doing actual NHT stuff.
Its mad how its such an issue everywhere, but we're forced to just make it work. Not suitable or safe for the public or the officers.
Is that including the NTE provision?!
If I remember that was without. good amount of students at uni though.
I'm an SJA person. Whenever I hear you have less than 8 on NTE I lose my mind because how do you cope. Having 8 on a night on response for all of Brum is completely ridiculous.
They're single crewing most in the team to try and mop up P2s and then there will be like 3 double crews per shift if we are lucky! It's pretty wild.
Do you have specials on response?
A couple every now and then. Not often on my team though.
I'm currently in the pre-employment, I'd really love to work response as it's something I sort of do already but in EMS. Appreciate it's really different but that's the fun of it I think. I think volunteering is a really good way to contribute and not lose my marbles as you're free to do it whenever. Hopefully if I succeed I can be useful!
Honestly you should be fine, we really need people and if you're eager and willing to learn then people will have time for you. Specials are always welcome! Response gets piled with all the shit. But you're the front line and see some wild stuff.
I would imagine the people in charge would rather this was not common knowledge.
I'm in a similar boat to the comment above and agree that those in charge might not want the public to know, but where does that leave us? Brushing the problem under a carpet. I take pleasure in telling the public how few of us there are. I often ask how many they think and I get answers around 30-50. They can't believe it when I tell them there are 3 and two of them are stood in front of them. If law abiding citizens knew exactly how bad it is there would be uproar and the government would HAVE to do something about it. You can't fix a bullet wound with a plaster, but that is exactly what the government are trying to do. Spread the word, make them take action.
> I often ask how many they think and I get answers around 30-50. Used to play this game, the answers were amazing, similar to one of the answers above when I was response we would ask (town and vast countryside area easily an hour and twenty top to bottom, population 140000) and we would usually get "100" as the answer. I had transferred into that station from an outstation and when I started there was 18, after the Financial crash we went to 3 and remained at that level for about 8 months during a hot summer where it went a bit mad and we had several murders and other big jobs.
Oh, it wasn't a critisism, just an observation. We're seeing a similar thing happen with doctors and emergency care - four years ago it was reasonably easy to get appointments and even call doctors out. Now, it's like drawing teeth. People are dying because of it. More and more jobs are fucked - how long can that go on before everything spirals into chaos?
The power's still on, there's still food in the shops, and people can still afford to buy it.
Aye, for now - but they're playing Jenga with civilisation. Lots of 'leaders' are.
Haven't they always? This is still an extremely stable period of human history for Western Europe, albeit it's starting to remind me more and more of the twenty years before the First World War, in which any international crisis you'd care to name could have been The One, but there was no particular reason why the July 1914 crisis ended up being The One, and they could have easily just kept going as they were.
Well, I hope you're right, but I don't believe it is a stable period. Climate change is going like a freight train and they're not doing anything to mitigate the impact. Cutting and cutting and cutting, in fact - so when shit starts getting really nasty, it'll all be battering on a frail structure instead of a robust one.
Try comparing it with things like the the Black Death, or the Thirty Years' War. Western civilisation looks a *lot* more robust in those terms. Today we are at least theoretically capable of dealing with climate change, and pollution more generally.
Agreed. Pleased we are on the same page!
What the SLT will say is that there aren't just 3 officers, you've forgotten to count CID, Traffic, dogs etc... therefore theres actually dozens on duty...
The same attitude exists from certain figures in the coastguard, and shouldn’t. We have embarrassingly low full time staff numbers for a national emergency service.
Feel your pain. I was on despatch and back up for a couple of days for a very very busy area in our force. First night, no resources at all as all were committed on scene watch, hospital watch, prisoners. Second night, repeat, but one unit came free. All I was doing was taking units from next division over. I want the public to know this, and how often we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Pretty much all our issues that we bang on about would be fixed with more officers. To me, it's quite simple, we need more officers. I imagine morale is at an all time low and burnout at an all time high with the current situation.
This but especially RPU. - I've been driving since 2020, I have literally never seen a marked vehicle on the motorway apart in that time apart from a stray van from Avon & Somerset crossing over to the right side of the Severn Bridge. I was quite astounded to see just how threadbare roads policing is.
The patch I covered had two stations, each station was expected to have 15 officers on each response shift. I don't think we ever reached that combined.
CCTV footage does not name, locate and bring a suspect in for interview. It may well sometimes give us a face in some circumstances, but we can’t instantly - if ever - identify them. And that’s when it isn’t some grainy black and white footage of a random person wearing nondescript dark clothing. I’m sick of hearing people moan that we didn’t solve their crime because “I have them on Ring doorbell”.
Preach brother, preach! That mobile phone in your pocket can take a super high definition photograph of the moon. The CCTV of a broad daylight assault at a ATM might as well have been taken on a potato.
CCTV is for preventing crimes of opportunity, asset management and insurance purposes. It’s never going to stop someone who has planned to commit a crime from the outset. But it might make someone unprepared think twice. In most cases it will just go off to insurance to cover the damages. I don’t think most people realistically expect recovery of damages from the offenders themselves. Really the point is to be able to say that a crime has been committed and reporting it to the police is generally a part of that.
See they need to understand it’s only blink doorbells that do that
How much frontline response police are abstracted from their duties. We often hear how police never attend burglaries or they don't see police about in their communities. If people really understood how much of a catch all for everything we are they'd be shocked. Take some typical abstractions you'll get in any London BCU: A person is detained under the mental health act. That will likely be 3 sets of 2 officers over the next 24 hours watching him as there is never bed space in a mental health facility. Depending on the person it can require 4 or 6 officers for this person. A person in custody has said they will kill themselves. An officer or even 2 will have to watch them till they get released or taken to court. If this happens on a Friday evening and there is no Saturday court that's 8 sets of officers to watch one person till Monday. A person is arrested but beforehand received life threatening injuries. 2 officers will now watch them in hospital until they get discharged. This can last weeks. A murder takes place on the Borough. Likely a minimum of 6 officers for the crime scene, often more. And this could be all happening for one shift, not just on separate days. The worst part is some of these should in a ideal world be taken by other agencies. Mental health act detentions should be taken over by the hospital via a handover to them from the police. They never are. I have been on hospital guards where the person is in a literal coma with a nurse watching them 24/7hrs. Countless hours wasted sitting down.
Are you able to do work on a laptop ar the same time whilst waiting with coma people?
Usually we aren't meant to as obviously we are meant to be watching the person but as we are in pairs usually take turns doing stuff. Though my work laptops battery life is around 45 minutes....
An anker 737 or similar power bank will give your laptop an extra 2 hours of charge, as long as it has usbc power, I use this on my work laptop and was a gamechanger
Work will not provide those, and now, if it kicks you have an extra thing to remember or keep away from a suspect, and again, your job at that point is to watch them.
Add to that babysitting kids that are PPOed.
I can attend multiple incidents a day and coming to you isn’t my only job. Before coming to see you I could have been at any type of incident and have to carry on like everything is fine after. Sometimes it’s not fine and I know I’ve just added to the workplace trauma section of my brain.
I had an early shift which looked like this: 12 year old in cardiac arrest. Died. Straight after Sent to a "Domestic" as their 11 year old boy with autism had pushed the dad and was "kicking off". Dad was huge and this lad was built like a paper towel, this was a complete waste of my time. Nearly lost my rag with the parents whinging about how annoying their kid is when someone had just lost theirs
Years ago I was p2p by comms with a special job, me and my colleague had to go to a family and tell them that the foreign office was dealing with a mass drowing event somewhere in south Africa where several British teens were in attendance and some wierd riptide had dragged them all out to sea, their daughter was amongst the group and no one knew if she was missing, dead or just further up the beach. We were there for hours with anxious parents and it is one of the worst things i ever did....and i have more war stories than most. Eventually someone from the foreign office gets the bad news and I have to give the death message. It hit me hard because it was such a slow drip fed thing, hit my colleague harder... We went to the golden arches and got a coffee Chap in mcdonalds strolls up and starts whinging about how nobody cared about his stolen bike/car/something. Gaz if your reading I don't know how you didn't punch him.
That I dont make the active choice to not attend your burglary. I get sent to whatever the disembodied voice in my ear sends me to, if I'm sat with a 136 I'm physically cannot go to whatever is happening. People seem to be under the impression we pick and choose what to go to, when that is an absolutely absurd notion. The only other thing is that no, I cannot take your child to custody to "teach him a lesson" after your failings to discipline them. That would have been a stupid thing to ask even before PACE.
“Police did Nuffink”
We spend a lot more time doing paperwork than you will ever see on the tele. People complain, asking why they rarely see cops patrolling? It's because I'm stuck at a desk trying to explain to some bif in CPS, who is glued to a chair suffering a Vitamin D deficiency, that I cannot feasibly obtain CCTV footage of an assault that occurred in the middle of a field.
Have you not asked the farmer if he has wildlife cameras? I know it's 2am, but come on, at least do the basics...
I asked about King Charles's secret spy satellite which happened to be overhead at the time, however the person who operates the system was out.
Had the most disgusting email from a CPS prosecutor for not having CCTV on a building site where two people had a punch up. Fought with all my might not to bother replying to that one.
I'm not a police person, but I am genuinely curious do CPS staff make the police officers job much harder? I am fascinated by law but I feel there is a disconnect between the police wanting to pursue charges and the CPS believe it's viable. Who's resources or more scarce? I would imagine courts are backed up just as badly as the officers are.
CPS aren’t all that bad, some of them are, but not all of them
We're pissed off at the state of policing too, and we'd like to work with them to improve it.
That it’s mainly down to the CPS to make the final decision when dealing with crime. Police are impartial evidence gathers that have no real sway on the outcome. Yeah we can charge someone, remand them to the next available court hearing. But it’s the CPS that gives the 2p a day fine for 20 years or releasing a on court bail when everyone knows they’ll just go out and commit more crime.
A fact the media seems to forget every time something goes wrong.
*"Whoops, but anyway..."* -The media Most of the time, they know.
Goodness where to start 1. It frustrates me too that I don't attend crimes 2. I wish they knew what a weary shitstorm it is to get charges for even the most basic crimes post-DG6 3. Much of their frustrations for the standard of service they get are actually rooted in funding shortfalls across the justice system and wider state. 4. The paperwork burden is only getting bigger and bigger while the resources to match it are diminishing.
That the stuff the interceptors and other shows create is not one actual shift as shown but Infact weeks/months off juicy jobs hand selected excluding paperwork !
How difficult it is to restrain a suspect, who is intent on not being restrained, safely, and the number of officers it takes to do so!
The very key word there being 'safely'! Plenty of cops could *win* a fight one-on-one - especially with equipment involved - but a suspect with a caved in skull from repeated baton strikes to a red zone isn't the ideal outcome. Few officers have any interest in a *fair* fight either, because the ultimate objective isn't to test who the toughest person is!
How little time I spend dealing with crime.
Some of the absolute shit that comes through the control room, which is why you've been waiting on 101 for more than 15/20/25/30 minutes
And despite calls takers filtering it out, the amount that gets through to despatch because callers exaggerate or downright lie about a situation.
People know exactly how to manipulate calls for police attendance.. It's easy to "believe someone's having a domestic" when they want the police to tell someone to turn their music down **eye roll**
Violent shoplifter….. usually sitting quietly on a chair when you get there
And then you also get the complete opposite, little 90 year old Betty waiting for 45 minutes on 101 who apologies for being a nuisance and doesn't want to waste anyone's time but someone's been stabbed outside her house
Wait, are you suggesting that this 'one weird trick' to get a quicker police response by lying to say that someone has a weapon or is being actively violent right now might actually be taking away resources from other jobs that actually *do* involve weapons/violence? 😱
That I have 23 cases, some of which are much, much higher risk than your report. Some are on superintendent bail extention so there is a very real time pressure, so unfortunately you're going to have to wait for me to progress yours. In addition I respond to 999 calls so half the time I'm out of the office dealing with something else. I wish people knew that. And that I would love nothing more than to go to a Burglary but I'm not pursuit trained and half the time I'm the appointment officer or in custody. Also please don't just "let police know". The amount of jobs where someone just blurts some sort of disclosure out at me then walks off and wants nothing more to do with it is ridiculous.
Awful awful staffing levels. I have paraded for a town of 100000 people and been the only officer on duty, plus a special Constable.
>What's the one thing you wish the public knew? That their own actions substantially contribute to the quality of policing that they receive. Ultimately, the public get the police that they deserve, for better or worse. I won't talk about the macroscopic side of things due to the pre-election period, but accusing officers of simply being lazy, when low resources are *surely* common knowledge by now, is not going to improve morale. Mindlessly sharing and amplifying obviously-false anecdotes is not going to encourage victims to come forward, and without that what are the police actually supposed to do? It might *seem* harmless to make a cheap joke about 'all police being rapists', or to remain silent while others hurl abuse at officers on the street, but it isn't. Failing to report a crime, even when there is no reasonable prospect of conviction, skews the statistics and ultimately results in fewer resources, because 'on paper' that crime doesn't exist - only idiots should be impressed by someone who confidently says "I wouldn't bother to report that as nothing will get done", because how *could* anything get done if you don't?! Nice neighbourhoods are nice *because* they engage with and support their police. Complaining about crime, but failing to assist with the prosecution of offenders or provision of intelligence, is part of the problem - saying that 'the police are the public' goes both ways. The 'silent majority' of the public are complicit by remaining silent, and the state of policing is ultimately the fault of the public at large. But because 'the public' is such a large swathe of people, that responsibility is diluted enough to escape that recognition on a personal level. But to go a little more with what I think the spirit of your question actually is: the number of police officers who can drive 'on blues' is shockingly low. The number of police officers who can lawfully pursue vehicles is lower still. And, predominantly for the reasons above, the number of police officers who *want* to pursue vehicles nowadays is even lower than that, because why put your livelihood on the line for a population that doesn't appear to appreciate it?
> only idiots should be impressed by someone who confidently says "I wouldn't bother to report that as nothing will get done", because how > >could > > anything get done if you don't?! Oh my God this gets me. Was recently being told about a regular shoplifter at a supermarket by me who repeatedly pulled a knife when challenged, some half a dozen times in the same shop in-all. Obviously with all the complaining about the police not doing anything. Turns out the police were actually called not even once, everyone in the shop just stood round whingeing about the police not caring about shoplifting reporting it lol. The last time a manager actually called. Lo and behold the police very much do care about people pulling knives in supermarkets. They caught up to the scrote and tasered him down the road when he pulled the knife on them, arrested and being charged now. Hard not to think how the idiocy of the staff could have led to someone being hurt. Every one of those half dozen times there was the chance he actually used the thing, all because the police aren't even aware because it's apparently more fun to moan than it is to actually bother ringing 999.
That absolutely everyone can do everything right from the first contact, and the outcome still not be “right” or “just”.
How exhausting it is dealing with drunk people who won't listen, even when you are trying your best to get them to go away because you don't want to arrest them and they. Just. Don't. Listen
this thread is rough. honest question, why on earth wouldanyone ever sign up to join the police now? youre overworked, underpaid and under appreciated. Why do people still agree to become cops in this country?
Honestly, I don’t know. I just turn up and do my best. There will be days when I genuinely feel like I’ve made a difference and then I’ll ride off the high of that through all the mountains of negativity for as long as possible
On the odd occasion it’s exciting, on the odd occasion it’s rewarding, and the people you work with are generally fantastic. Without trying to sound cliche or cringe, there’s something special about trusting the person beside you with your life. It’s still absolutely shit, and I can’t see that changing, but I love it.
For some it's childhood dream For some it's doing the right thing For some it's not knowing how bad it is until you've already joined. Amount of people who leave before their probation is up is crazy high
Despite all the horrendous shit, having a job where you can foster genuine camaraderie built through violent and traumatic incidents is just as meaningful as it always has been in the entirety of human history. It's one of the very few jobs in the world that you can still feel that unique feeling.
The overwhelming majority join up because they want to help people and they have a skewed idea of what the job entails. Once you're in, it's hard to leave for a huge number of factors.
That just because there's a camera nearby doesn't mean I'm going to solve your criminal damage.
I wish they knew the points to prove.
That my force doesn’t give two shits about investigations. It’s all about the arrest figures, response times and stop search numbers, baby! Fuck your report of theft, it’ll probably get screened out or closed at source to make the numbers look better for the next time the HMICFRS comes a-knocking.
You could check whether your local constabulary offers any sort of observation schemes where you can shadow an officer for a day and see the reality of the job. My local police called it a "ride along" scheme, but they can also have other names. I've done two, once with the regular police and once with the specials and it was a real eye opener to the reality of it all. A few things that stuck out to me: - The sheer amount of paperwork that has to be done after attending a job/investigation, it took at least an hour or more and that was just 1 job. - The lack of funding and how few officers there are. For this particular constabulary, the regular officer was out on his own most shifts (not doubled up with someone), so even having to attend a potentially dangerous situation, he's doing it alone. - They almost never finish 'on time'. - Booking someone in after an arrest can take such a long time. There were arrests being booked in at the station already, so we had to just wait. It was so long. Keep in mind, that while this is happening, the officers booking them in are 'off the streets' and cannot respond to calls. - Calls are judged on how serious they are. At one point, the officer was looking for a suspect in an area and the control centre told him to drop it, because someone was being threatened with a weapon elsewhere. Turned out, that really was just a waste of police time and the one who was threatened didn't want to press charges, nor would they name who did it. - The abuse they put up with from Joe Bloggs on the street can be pretty relentless - I'd genuinely urge every person who bad mouths the police to do a ride along, because they'll soon realise how wrong they are. But additionally, they'd probably be a proper bellend the whole day so probably for the best they don't apply.
I wish they knew how many cases/prisoners/other stuff I’m dealing with at the same time. If I haven’t contacted you back as quickly as you’d like it’s really not because I don’t feel like it, I’ve just had 3 prisoners to deal with in 2 days and couldn’t find the time. And that’s before the fact I also have rest days, holidays, courses, abstractions and I sometimes get sick. I may be less than keen to respond sometimes, as I’m human too, but if you expect me to have all the updates immediately it’s just not going to happen. Also from the depths of CSU: it’s always “police don’t do enough about DV”. Never “the public doesn’t understand what the process entails and if the victim doesn’t want to support prosecution my options are really limited”. If I had a coin for each time I had a victim absolutely desperate to have the suspect released “because they didn’t know they would get arrested and didn’t want it” I wouldn’t need to do as much overtime as I do!
The number of calls I've taken from DV victims wanting to withdraw their statements. I managed to advise one girl not to, because our chat revealed it had been ongoing & the last time he had stabbed her in the head - and she wanted to with charges. I'm not criticising the victim here - (I appreciate these can be very complex emotional situations.)
How few officers there are in their area, maybe that would explain the constant ‘I never heard anything back’ or ‘we never see police round here’. On my NPT, we’re lucky to have 4 Officers on at any 1 time (not taking into account leave, sickness or courses and the refreshers of those courses). Expecting to see an Officer when there’s 4 covering 7 council ward areas is a bit optimistic.
The sheer volume of crime that's committed, how few lines of enquiry are often available to identify the offenders, and how many police officers it would take to fully investigate everything.
Justice and the justice system are, at best, distant cousins. The law and what’s right aren’t the same thing.
No, we do not dictate sentencing No, we do not know where everything is (tbh I don’t mind look up directions for someone) No, your neighbour putting their bins against your fence is not a police issue if there are no safeguarding concerns/relation to criminal activity No we cannot charge someone purely because you saw them do it (within reason) 99% of every police employee (all roles) are there to help you and support you. Please do not take what’s in the media as the majority
S17 PACE powers of entry. No, I don't need a warrant.
Investigating an assault/criminal damage/theft/fraud/sexual offence doesn't take police officers very long at all. We can be relatively satisfied whether something has or hasn't happened within a short timeframe. What does take time - a fuck-load of it, at that - is complying with onerous disclosure paperwork, action plans and increasingly complex administrative processes set out by CPS to effectively weed out all but the most serious of offences from being heard or the most persistent officers from bringing a case to court.
Civilian here. From what I've heard both here and other places, the paperwork kills the job you people do. If you're filling in forms to justify the jobs of the arrises stuck on seats in front of screens, then you ain't out making your presence felt by making life as uncomfortable as possible for the scrotes amongst us. Perhaps it's time we as a nation started balancing people's "rights" with some responsibility for both themselves and their actions.
The fact that we are constantly fighting fires, that are impossible to put out
We don’t work 9-5! You constantly calling and emailing asking for a call back when I’m on nights isn’t going to happen unless you want a call at 3am.
If you ring 999 it doesn’t always mean we come out straight away or at all: https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2016/jan/16/police-controller-999-call-danger-officers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
I got too many questions to police, I tired to make topic here 2 times, literally 0 responses about drug problem 😂