to constantly call the police?

[hibbledobble]

I call the police whenever I see illegal behaviour which is/ can potentially endanger other. Given my locality this is very regularly. This includes fights, joy riding, drunk driving etc. I don't bother reporting drug dealing/illegal drug use, as I know the police don't have the time to deal with it in my area. (Though I did report the local very well known drug den)

When I call I give a clear location and description but it seems like the call handlers aren't keen to take the details, and I never receive any follow up to my calls. I wonder if I have been put on some sort of nuisance caller list now! Though everything I have been calling about has been genuine, and to my mind serious.

Aibu to call in?

Don't read anything into a lack of callback though hibble As I said unless they need a statement you more than likely won't get contacted. In an ideal world it would be nice to call every reporter back with an update but to be honest we just don't have the time

Hibble Maybe worth checking the police uk website and seeing the stats for your area.

Something sounds a bit odd - I am wondering if they are actually acting on reports or there's something with the system going wrong. Actually the more I think about this, the more odd it sounds.

Woman being beaten up - potentially very, very serious - the police should have asked for descriptions etc.

Fair enough, red glitter . Last time I called they didn't seem particularly keen on clarifying the location, yet still said they were putting it on immediate response. I guess I'm just being paranoid.

summit in the case of the woman being beaten up the police did attend, I saw them do so, and the altercation was ongoing when they arrived.

That might be because you weren't the first caller to ring in . If there is already a call to the same place , that will have been identified , so location isn't quite as important if you're say , the 3rd , 4th or in some cases 35th person to call in.

I live in London, this thread makes me feel very sheltered. The worst I've seen in the last 15 years is a teenager trying to steal a bicycle.

Me, too, Gloria. We had some kids getting rowdy near the station a couple of years ago of a Saturday night, and sometimes one of our neighbours smokes ganja in his back garden.

You need to move to a different area

It doesn't matter how often you call for anti social behaviour.
Me and my neighbours are calling them daily in the summer, our area isn't usually rough at all but in summer, unfortunately it becomes the area for kids to create havoc.
They did ask that as we could all see the goings on if we would check if neighbours had called first, but that's understandable.
They want you to call and you should, too many people turn a blind eye

Good point plomin I hadn't realised that.

yamadori I would love to, but can't afford it, unless we move out of London. This is something I have seriously considered, but we have a lot of local ties.

YANBU to call OP, please keep doing so. I doubt the police are upset at you calling, you provide them with information they need to do their job. Perhaps you are mistaking their calm competence for disinterest, or they are so badly managed in your area that morale is low and they don't have a great phone manner. But calling 999 when you see a fight or some other crime in progress is exactly what you're supposed to do. They may not always be able to get there in time, but they certainly won't manage it if no one tells them it's happening.

What would you do if violence was threatened? My daughters boyfriend was threatened by our neighbour this morning because he parked his car outside the neighbours house. Neighbour threatened to 'put him on the ground' then came hammering on our front door and stood in front our our lounge window staring in. Neighbour is extremely unpleasant and has made the lives of others a misery. Never had anything to do with the police but this was really awful.

mrs I would say that would warrant immediate response. Since it has now happened, and presumably you didn't call the police at the time, you could call 101 for advice.

Must be some local ties if there is violence, drug dealing etc every single day right in your face on the school run.
Why would you raise children there if you had any chance at all of getting out to somewhere, anywhere else?

User all our friends and family live locally. Dc are settled too. With our careers and long hours family support is particularly important.

The area has positives too: there is a real sense of community which I tthink is llacking in more upmarket parts of London.

If we were to move out, we would need to move far out to afford anything decent. Moving makes sense in many ways, but it also scares me too.

It is something I have thought about a lot.

Can you call 101 for advice? No they didn't report, only a young couple and very rattled, I was out unfortunately.

Out of curiosity; you say you report drink-driving, how do you know if someone is over the limit?

Whilst the amount of calls sounds excessive, if that's how often you see crimes, YANBU at all.

Regarding the drink driving, maybe I should have said 'driving in an erratic and dangerous manner'. Yes it could be alcohol, drugs, or illness causing this, but either way a response is warranted for public safety.

There's a phenomenon in psychology where people in a group, witnessing an incident, tend to think "I won't call for help, someone else probably has already". That's why I tend to call regardless. If someone's brandishing a knife/having a heart attack, better they should have seven calls about it than no calls at all because everyone thinks someone else is taking care about it, and someone potentially die.

Police have measures in place to figure out what warrants an immediate response and what warrants a "thank you for your time", but every time I've called the police I've always been really apologetic (a lot of the time I'm not sure if I'm wasting time reporting) and the person on the other end of the line has always thanked me for my time and assured me that I'm not a nuisance.

tl;dr, just make the call. The police can decide what to do with the information, but I think it's important that they definitely HAVE the information.

I'm surprised that anywhere in the U.K. is so filled with criminal activity that it necessitates you calling the Police so often!

But if you do....... to clarify, and I think someone has said similar above, the response you receive is not dictated by whether you have rung 999 or 101, it is based on the details you give. 999 calls and 101 calls (at least in this area) are answered by the same people in the same Control Room. The only difference is that 999 calls are answered more quickly if there are more calls than Operators available.

Personally, I would stay out of anything that wasn't a serious crime.

I am an emergency services Operator. From my personal point of view, if I saw a teenager WITH a knife as opposed to BRANDISHING a, or behaving threateningly with a knife, it would be the difference between me making a call or not.

However, we don't mind because people like you keep our call figures up and that justifies our jobs so......

I've worked in some rough as guts areas and have never seen the need for one citizen to call us multiple times per week...

Bloody hell I'd move if I were you! I used to live in Stockwell in the early 90s when it was pretty dodgy. but it wasn't as bad as that! Oh hang on, its not Stockwell is it?

I'm a police officer and I'd say that most of the situations you describe do warrant a call yes. I don't know why some pps are being so funny with you. There was a thread on here the other day where a woman wanted to call police because her water supply was cut off and everyone was encouraging her .

You sound like a socially responsible person living in a very rough area.

And fwiw, please do call us ASAP if you see a teenager carrying a knife (excepting fishing etc situations of course!). Stabbings (including deadly ones) in London are on the rise and by the time they are brandishing it it may be too late.

I'd call. Last time I saw a driver wavering all over the road I was going to call but by the time I had their registration and the opportunity to call they had gone. They were a real risk to other road users, whether it was drink, drugs or falling asleep at the wheel.

Luckily I dont live in the sort of area where crime is ignored.

You sound like a good social minded citizen to me. I have called police as well for a couple of things and didn't get any updates but they did call if they needed to confirm details.

One of my friends is involved in a kind of police/community reference group. They meet regularly with local officers to discuss issues and thy have interesting talks eg about terrorism and how they are responding.

I wonder if your local police have something similar and maybe you could volunteer to join as you obviously care about your local community. They could give you some guidance about when and who to call as well, and the officers involved would hopefully be those who value the help of the local community so wouldn't just fob you off.