To think the police are useless?

[RainbowsAndCrystals]

In my 20s I've been around many people that have had bad experiences with them and say how useless they are.

Something happened to me a month ago and it was caught on cctv.

Firstly the police said I had to get the evidence myself. So I had to ask around for cctv ... very difficult when people don't want to be involved and you're someone with zero authority.

Now a month later and they still haven't bothered to look at the footage.

It's so disheartening and almost like they have sided with the criminals.

Someone hit and run our car last week and the police have been really helpful, but there was a witness who rang in so that's helped. If the only way to find the driver was through cctv I doubt they'd have time to ask local shops nearby etc. It's ridiculous how stretched they are, it's not because they don't care. Essential services shouldn't be so affected by cuts, it should be protected in some way

Sorry for the rant but I'm tired of being told that all police are useless. You'd be sorry if we all disappeared.

I doubt that, where I live they don't even respond to 999 and immediate threat to life.

As Kazzyhoward Not much supervision. I'm aware of a police car being used to take relatives home after a night out.

Foniks, I do agree with you but while they are so underfunded it is harder to winkle out which police are crap and can't be bothered, and which police are trying but are smothered by the limitations brough about by underfunding. Take underfunding out of the equation and then we can see more easily which are doing the job right and which aren't.

while they are so underfunded it is harder to winkle out which police are crap and can't be bothered

They couldn't do that when they had money thrown at them either. Part of the "austerity" was to make public services more efficient which should be a driver to weed out the crap staff and deal with other inefficiencies.

It's all going to shit because people aren't prepared to vote for a government that will increase public spending.

Firstly, I've never voted Tory in my life.

Secondly, your lot weren't complaining when Thatcher was giving you substantial pay rises and massive overtime in exchange for doing her dirty work for her during the miners strike and the poll tax protests.

I'd still really like a serving copper to tell me what they would have done in Catalonia yesterday.

Ask anyone who lived in a mining community through the strike, they'll tell you just what the police in this country are capable of.

It's all going to shit because people aren't prepared to vote for a government that will increase public spending.

Depends. If the public could be persuaded that the extra taxes were really going to be spent on worthwhile projects that would improve public services, then yes, I think they would vote.

Unfortunately, most people don't have short memories and remember Labour's massive spending spree which didn't actually improve core services that much. True, the NHS had loads of shiny new buildings, but people were still killed and harmed by crap staff. People havn't forgotten Labour's pledge to "save the NHS" with the extra 1% NIC - and then a few years later, another 1% as the first hadn't saved it at all! Trebling the NHS spending didn't actually improve front line services that much at all because most of it wasn't spent wisely!

Until Labour manage to persuade people that they are competent with money, they'll not get enough votes. There've been far too many huge money wasted vanity projects and political posturing and most voters are old enough to remember the waste and inefficiency, and know that just throwing money at something doesn't actually improve it!

Ask anyone who lived in a mining community through the strike, they'll tell you just what the police in this country are capable of.

Well quite...
On the thread about Catalonia police violence I pointed this out.....that we've had Orgreave and Battle of the Beanfield etc etc

But I have asked similar questions on here, SM and IRL to serving coppers, and those who are most keen to blindly defend them, but I never, ever get a straight answer.

If you, or someone you are close to, is ordered to do what the police did yesterday in Catalonia.....would you lose your job and refuse, or would you go in and do it??

Would you defend/ support the actions of those who battered elderly people and stole ballot boxes??

If you were ordered tomorrow, so attack peaceful people, what would you do??

True, the NHS had loads of shiny new buildings

Not true! Labour invented PFI where private investors own shiny new buildings and the Government are committed to expensively leasing them for the new few generations , despite some of them not being fit for purpose.
Labour's PFI policy was no better than buying essential public services from BrightHouse.

In sweden you pay much higher taxes then the UK people in the UK are much like the usa that hate paying any tax or only want low amount of tax yet expect the world for the pennies you pay......

Yanbu. They have no motivation imo.

They are useless. When I was raped they took my clothes for forensics. 6 months later binned them as they were mouldy. You have to dry them out for forensics so they never bothered.

When I was assaulted a few years later a woman police officer said 'if you had been attacked you would have marks on your wrists'. Said nothing when I had photos of my bruises taken the next day. Never even got an apology.

Kazzy Agree with many of your points & experiences.

Depends. If the public could be persuaded that the extra taxes were really going to be spent on worthwhile projects that would improve public services, then yes, I think they would vote.

This. Many, many people would be happy to pay more tax IF the money was used efficiently. Discussing cuts fails to acknowledge that the public sector did need some form of trimming & it's not abhorrent to cull incompetent staff, etc. I say this having worked in it. Now the Tories have gone too far but unfortunately a lot of people are still scarred from Labour.

worrid we are paying quite a bit of tax over here in the US. Average income families in my state (New Jersey) are paying similar levels to the U.K. after you include property taxes and just their medical insurance premium.

Go out to the burbs here and it's tough to find a family home with taxes below $10k. The average in the burbs is about $15k. However you get much better value for your money compared to the U.K.

Also the Tories tried to make self employed income tax equal to employee taxes. I thought it was fair and a brilliant move. They reversed their decision because it was so very unpopular. DH and I both have income from self employment. The income is taxed as ordinary income and we pay employer taxes too. This is why you do dividends which are taxed at a flat rate. You must take an income if you take a dividend. Example, a dividend of $1 million and no income would not be allowed. Expectations would be for income of $100-200k with $800-900k of dividend payment. The tax take is much greater when you force people to take salary.

snow my sympathies :(

A DI friend told me that unless she was raped by a completely random stranger/taken off the street (which we all know are the rare assaults) she wouldn't proceed with the case. Awful (also a judgement on the judicial process too).

The NHS is on its knees now in part because of those big new shiny buildings. The profit private companies are continuing to make on these is obscene.

The NHS is the fifth largest employer in the world with 1.7 million. It has 300,000 more staff now than it had in 2010.

It needs totally overhauling but no Government is brave enough to do it.

Insurance figures into things. For example, if your Rolex is stolen; it is probable that an item of that values would be insured. I am not sure of the value of the police tracking the watch down.

Or a three-year-old DVD player from a home. Why spend valuable resources tracking it down?

Also there is a massive pension crisis that's not addressed. Think what future we have left our kids, ££££ of pounds for a degree in order to obtain a job which will pay less then ever before, involve longer hours & less protection. Massive debt if they can even afford a house, state pension probably non existent. And they will have to pay more taxes for even less services.

Well that was a cheery post!

I have had many dealings with the police due to various things (attempted rape, stolen handbag, couple of burglaries and my beloved DP collapsing and dying behind locked doors.)
I have been treated as an inconvenience on more than one occasion. Treated with outright contempt once.
When it came to my DP I was treated so well by one police officer that I wrote an extremely long letter to her sergeant to let them know how much of a positive impact she had made.
I used to see her out and about around my town. (Once on a raid in my building!) And she always had a quick chat, a wave or a wink for me.
Some police officers are amazing. Too many are just incompetent power trippers though. (This includes one or two i know in a social setting.)

Or a three-year-old DVD player from a home. Why spend valuable resources tracking it down?

That's not the point though, it's against the law to steal. Or are we all then going to walk into other people's homes & take things that are old?

Where do you draw they line? What if your attacked for your old dvd player?

I usually have around 15-20 active investigations on the go. I work on a patch where there’s usually two of us working, but due to courses, leave, abstractions, I work a fair bit on my own, so it’s down to me to go to every shout that comes in during my shift, and follow up on every 101 call. There’s a hospital on our patch which comes with a variety of problems with people walking out and being reported missing etc. There’s no front desk staff at our nick, so if someone knocks the door they speak to me.

So a normal shift on my own means I won’t have much of a chance to look at those 15 active investigations! We record absolutely everything, even if you suspect that the complaint is malicious, but are expected to provide an A1 service to every victim. There just isn’t enough hours in a day.

Also, even if the victim ‘knows’ Joe bloggs did it, unless there is evidence to support this, then unfortunately it’s not going anywhere...CPS are not interested and logically, how is that court case going to go? No evidence=no charge.

Sorry to hear you've had a rough time OP - hope you're ok after the incident. I think it's the serious lack of resources that is likely to be the issue and they haven't marked your case as urgent, They didn't even bother to come out when we were burgled. As the criminals had left the scene they just gave us a crime number for insurance and that was that.

To Mavs
I think more people need to hear stories like yours, i did the job between 2000/2006 and even I can't believe how hard the job has become it amazes me how you find the will to keep going, especially when members of the public judge you on a few bad apples and what you have described in your post. If all these people had to do what you described yes they'd be still unhappy with the police but they would empathise with what the police can be up against and less likely to call them useless.

Gonna ask again, now I can see more cops on the thread......

Do any serving/ex coppers think that the vast amounts of money spent on dodgy undercover ops, on completely legal activist groups with no history of law breaking or violence is worth it?

Do you support that?? When it takes millions from frontline policing?

If you were called to act as the police in Catalonia did yesterday, would you do it?
Would you attack your own, peaceful citizens?
Or would you risk losing your job??

This ain't goady, honest, just really want to know the answer, because some coppers I have come across would literally jump for joy at the chance to stove some heads in, and so many police in the country seem to have had no qualms about joining in in the past, surely not all them were violent thugs, some of them must have felt bad, right??

especially when members of the public judge you on a few bad apples

This is the crux of the matter. We all know that the majority of nurses, teachers, police officers, etc., are hard working and diligent and trying their best.

BUT, there is a minority of piss-takers who are the ones who tarnish the reputation.

So why don't the decent ones complain and report their lazy and incompetent colleagues? It's just something I can't fathom at all. They must know who the culprits are as they work alongside them, so why do they just accept it? In the private sector, there's a culture of not putting up with free-loading colleages who are regularly reported as a matter of course and no-one bats an eyelid - the lazy/incompetents are sacked or disciplined. Yet, as we've seen with some hospitals, there's a culture of not speaking out, not complaining. So to an extent, some PS workers are their own worst enemy by not speaking out and doing something about their failing colleagues.