to ask wtaf is going on with the Met Police?

[whatyadoing]

I was a victim of crime last night (serious crime and was in ongoing danger). I reported the crime at approx. 1.20am (999), they eventually made their way to my HOME address at 6am at which point I was home (no fucking thanks to them!).

I rang 101 this evening to discuss said crime and was on hold for 23 minutes at which point I gave up holding.
Wtf?
Is there something I should know about? What has Theresa May done now or am I just living in a particulary cunt of a bastarding place in London?

Idk because it was? Don't treat me like one?
I was confused on why you thought it was a big issue when it was realised.
Enough poster clearly explained it to me so thanks to them.

I moved to London almost 30 years ago after Uni. I have been a victim of crime many times (violent mugging, have had handbag stolen three times, car stolen, car window smashed, threatened with violence etc) and the police have always been completely and absolutely useless on each occasion. Whilst I’m sure budget cuts haven’t helped, in my personal experience, the police haven’t been able to solve these types of crime for the past thirty years so I don’t expect them to start now.

The previous Home Secretary, a woman by the name of May, had a lot of bickering from police and others when she explained, repeatedly and clearly, that cutting budget and police numbers had absolutely no effect on crime, and anyone who said it did, was simply scaremongering.

She did have to repeat herself very firmly, because for some reason people didn't seem to believe her.

I hope that's clear now.

If we want more police then the money has to come from somewhere else, such as cutting the NHS, defence or Social services. All of which are already suffering from a lack of funding.

I think society does have a part in being to blame for some of the problems we've, we complain services are poor etc then complain that theirs higher taxes etc

In the end I logged it online. Not holding my breath!

Hollygibney please don’t imply I am a liar or that I have embellished anything. Maybe you don’t get out much. I can assure you I have lived in London all my life which is considerably more than 15 years.

Hibbledibble no it may not have been I didn’t say it was illegal parking I said my friend dropped an unlit cigarette. However, police turned up, in force, to arrest her. A whole vehicle of tactical support officers and two others who were passing.

Bailiffs also have no trouble getting police to attend to help them.

I've asked for my post to be deleted, it's missing some stuff I typed and I don't know why. Maybe I need more caffeine. Apologies.

I spoke with a policeman after a serious incident which got no response, merely told to log it. The officer said that the problem was now with all the reporting they are required to do (Health and Safety analysis, actual crime reports, shift reports, contact reports, etc) they spend 6.5 hours of every 8 doing reporting instead of actual policing.

Welcome to the budget cuts.
Every single force is so so stretched.
They've not enough officers to respond to even all urgent incidents.

I find myself sympathizing, but also find it odd that they can't respond to incidents at the same time as (according to a freedom of information request last year) UK police are arresting 3,000+ people a year for saying stuff people find offensive on the internet. With nearly a third of that being the met.

My heart says the country is riddled with crime, budgets are cut, trust the police etc. but my head says well no, either they are too pushed for resources to respond to incidents or they have the time and people to arrest randoms for naughty tweets: pick one.

I was involved in a deeply upsetting incident on the 9th of June this year. I'm still waiting for the Police to talk to the other person. The PC I was assigned has been on leave for nearly 4 weeks and they won't hand it over to another. It's been so frustrating and I'm having to make myself stay calm as it's really affecting my health now with the stress of it.

It's truly senseless to cut Policing budgets. Yet we're still paying fraudulent benefit claims to the tune of billions and allowing health tourism costing the NHS billions too. It's like the lunatics are running the asylum.

I once was the victim of an attempted car jacking. When I tried to report it to the police they told me that I'd need to be able to name the people who did it or else they couldn't record it/take a statement.

Anyway, it turned out that the person I had spoken to wasn't in fact a police officer but a poorly trained, inexperienced civilian who had misunderstood the training she had received. But I only found that out because I complained formally about the ridiculous logic of only being able to report a crime if you have also solved it.

But it did have the desired effect in a way because now I just wouldn't bother reporting.

Yes, the police are massively underfunded, so this means the call handlers have to prioritise calls.

I’ve had to call the police four times. In three of them (where someone was in immediate danger), they were there within minutes. In one - which was serious to me as it concerned a lot of money being stolen but there was no immediate threat - they arrived the next day for a statement.

So... YANBU if you were in danger and needed help to become safe. YABU if you weren’t in danger (or the danger had passed).

These sort of threads always end up as an excuse to slate the police. Unless you work for the police, you have no idea how the, very few, incident response patrols are run ragged on a daily basis.
OP, as a matter of interest, what we're you reporting?

It is terrible, and not just the Met. But you ring 101 and wait to report something, and you are on the phone for 30 minutes plus. You try reporting the crime online and, either it tells you to ring 101 and make a record, or some random bod writes to you six weeks hence telling you all investigations have ceased.

Only life or death emergencies are responded to now. The Met cannot investigate anything else.

My friend left the Transport Police to work as a customer service assistant on the Tube because he earns more. He isn't the only one, he is in contact on Twitter with both Met and Transport officers who have quit to do the same. Less stress, more money, more benefits, more job satisfaction. Ffs.

45% is for extremely high earners. 40% is any income above around the £45,000 mark, maybe a bit higher. CBA to check exact figure. Income from around £11,000 to £45,000 is 20%.

I think the "economically correct" way to calculate the tax burden on employment is to calculate the government's take as a percentage of what the employer pays out. In other words, you need to include NI, both employee and employer. I last calculated this a few years ago, so my figures may no longer be bang on, but I believe the rate is in the region of 38% for a basic rate taxpayer and 47% for a higher rate one. I've never calculated it for top rate but it's fairly clearly going to be over 50%.

I do believe the rates calculated above should be capped at 50%. SInce they are in fact so close together, you could simplify things and tax everyone at 50% while increasing tax-free allowances at the bottom, so that overall you still brought in the same amount of money. You could also tax pensioners and people living on investment income at the same rate as workers, that would actually bring in some extra money, as they don't pay NI now.

Removing the smoked and mirrors of NI would let people see how much they are really taxed, and if that happened they wouldn't stand for current levels of tax, let alone higher ones.

Budget cuts. It’s not fair on the public or the police officers. They can only deal with life or death situations anything else has to wait. They don’t have the staff on the street or behind the desk. Complain complain as nothing is being done about this. Ridiculous. We need more investment in all public services. Hope you are ok Op.

I agree with ImAldoot re social media crimes.

A friend of mine is a police officer. She was transferred to online crimes unit. She said it was soul destroying. There were thousands of reports coming in every day, and because this is "high profile" valuable resources (eg police) were being diverted to dealing with these crime reports.

She said that people reported things like being called fat, or ugly, or not liking something, or online dating ghosting etc etc. She requested a transfer back asap as she was so angry about the waste of time, money and people power.

I was talking about marginal rather than average rates of tax when giving percentages.

Not RTFT but you are a victim of good old “Austerity”.

It’s no better anywhere else in the country either.

My post wasn't intended as a criticism of the police, most of whom are probably very decent people working in almost unbearable conditions. It was however a criticism of the system that they are working under, enforced on them by the government.

Yep to paperwork. More paperwork than policing (are we surprised?)

I know of someone locally (not met area) who was walking home with a friend after a night out. They were randomly attacked by a guy who knew looked out of it (bad enough to need hospital treatment). They rang the police because they were worried he would attack someone else as he was so wired, and followed him for a bit so they could say where he was going. Police said they didn’t have the resources to send anyone.

Oh I mean the attack was bad enough that they needed to attend A&E