To be mad it took me nearly 2 hours to get through to my local police station yesterday?

[FeelingOld]

Yesterday morning (mothers day and dh at work so not in a very good mood) neighbour came round to point out the rear screen on my car had been smashed.
Some one had thrown a big chunk of metal thing (looked like spare part off a car) through it, there was a huge hole and it was snowing. I am a childminder and had a double and single buggy in the back plus raincovers and blankets etc and the glass was everywhere and with each gust of wind a bit more glass fell out and the hole was getting bigger. Contacted glass company etc and got ball rolling there.
Anyway decided to phone the police because last week someone broke off one of my wing mirrors and as there is a cctv camera up the road I wondered if it had captured anything. I phoned and the line was engaged, I tried every couple of minutes for nearly 2 hours before I finally got through and then the woman was really unhelpful. A P.C. did phone me back and is going to look at cctv footage but I find it quite unbelievable that it took 2 hours to be able to get hold of anyone.

We had this with our police a while ago... the bloke on the other end of the phone said that it is the same system, and the same switchboard for 999 calls. I was horrified. I was ringing for something not particularly important, but if I'd been in the midst of a burglary, or worse and rang 999 to get put on hold for 20 minutes at a time......

Poor you, Feelingold. Whenever I have phoned the police (doesn't happen often) I have got through pretty quickly - I'm in the cotswolds so a relatively well off local authority if that makes a difference. However, the police are utterly useless and uninterested in anything it seems. An emergency police call out would take about 40 mins from the station as all of the local ones are part time or closed down now. Crap really considering how much council tax we pay.

Our local police station is the main one for our area, lots of part time stations in villages etc but ours is supposed to be the headquarters (as the main town in a fairly rural area).They are in the process of building a huge new police station because they say the old one is over crowded but what's the use in spending all that money if they can't afford to have enough people to answer the phone?

Our local police station isn't even open on Sundays

Not unreasonable at all! A few years ago I tried to get through to our local station to report some kids causing havoc up and down our street (me and several neighbours having had no effect on them at all). It was the night of some big TV phone vote - can't remember what, but it was some big deal reality tv show - and all the phone lines were jammed, couldn't get through anywhere at all. Police must have had some system to let them see who'd been trying to call as they phoned me back once the lines were clear again. So not their fault in any way, but it was horrible trying to get some help and being totally unable to, so you have all my sympathy.

Something I did once - it caused me a 'bit' of trouble, but I felt it was worth it.....

I live on a very small estate (about 40 house) at the side of a 'nice' area (V big expensive houses). My estate is a mixture of civilian and military private tenants and there has never been any trouble. All of a sudden we started having a lot of problems with teenagers, not from the estate, scratching cars, destroying fences, making loads of noise etc etc. They were always really abusive when challenged and people who had challenged them would find their cars and houses damaged shortly after.

Called the police a ton of times and when they eventually (usually a couple of hours) turned up the culprits would be gone and nothing would be done about it.

Well finaly I had an idea. One night when these gits were being really bad (had set a fire in the kids park and were dancing round it) I phoned the police (same number as always) put on a dippy voice and said I was 14 and had just been punched by an adult on the estate.

Well, the police got to the estate in about 15 mins and caught the gits destroying a car (they'd smashed a back window and put a burning bench plank from the park into the car.

They took all the kids (there were about 8 of them) away and a few months later there was a court case and they got ASBOs n stuff (and you know every single one of them was from the 'nice' area, that look down on our estate)

I did get into trouble for doing it - my phone number of course - but essentially I got a smack on the wrist and told not to do it again......... The cop that came round actually said he applauded my initiative!

our local p.station is only open on saturdays!

my DP rang 999 BECAUSE THERE WERE 2 MEN TRYING TO BREAK INTO MY MUMS HOUSE (WE USED TO LIVE BEHIND HER OPPS CAPS!)

and it took them 2 hours to get to her house!!

luckily my DP scared them off by shouting at them, but 2 hours when theres someone getting into the house??

ridiculous!