Absolutely no police response, what now?

[Sockypuppet]

For the past few months my office has had a problem with kids hanging around making trouble.

It's a mix of school-aged lads and some older kids, with problems ranging from cheeky comments and being too loud, to more serious issues caused by the older people who sometimes show up.

The more serious issues have been throwing eggs at our window, sexual harassment as we go out to our cars, and drug dealing. We have made police reports and offered to have police look at our CCTV, but they've not responded.

Earlier this week I was leaving work and as I pulled out of the car park the group of lads surrounded my car, smashed my wing mirror, and picked up rocks to throw. They left after a neighbour came out and shouted at them. This is all on CCTV.

I've made a report on 101 and online, saying specifically that this is an ongoing issue and saying this was my third offer to have them come view our CCTV.

Concurrently I made a complaint about lack of response and said I've never once seen a police officer in our neighbourhood.

I've had a couple of ineffectual attempts at communication since, including:

Two separate calls asking for the make and reg of my car. It's visible on the CCTV!

A call asking whether the assailants could be identified from the CCTV. Maybe come have a fucking look?

An update to my complaint with someone with no surname assuring me that some other unnamed person would probably be coming to look at the cctv.

An email from the police asking for my number so they could ring me.

I've told them that I am very busy at work and that I don't wish to be contacted again unless it's to arrange their viewing of the cctv or otherwise actual assistance from them.

You can’t post images of CCTV on local social media. The images are classed as personal data and subject to GDPR rules.

Could you engage a local security firm to do patrols?

I’ve recently had to contact the police where I work about some low level anti social behaviour and the response from our local force couldn’t have been more different than yours. Do they have a local beat meeting where you can go and speak directly with your local PCSO?

Apologies if someone has already suggested this haven't read whole thread.

There is a thing called the "antisocial behaviour community trigger". If you have reported 3 incidences of the same thing in 6 months and nothing has really happened, you can activate this via the council and a review has to be done on the actions taken.

There is information about it here:
asbhelp.co.uk/community-trigger/
I think this is a support site, there will probably also be information on your local police site - for example this is Avon and Somerset version.
www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/advice/neighbourhood-and-community/anti-social-behaviour/anti-social-behaviour-community-trigger/

I understand your frustration. As a recently retired Police detective I can say you have Theresa May to thank for this. Before she decimated the Police numbers you would have got a response. Now officers are operating with half the number of staff on a shift than what they were previously. Another issue is that Policing has massively changed and the issues around risk and vulnerability are massive, ie, public protection work, mental health, etc. It’s not that they don’t want to help, it’s more that they don’t have the staff or time to attend nuisance/minor damage/community issues. They have no option but to prioritise vulnerability. When a shift come on duty there may be 20+ urgent jobs for them to attend with only a handful of officers to respond. Jobs then will continually be coming in. It’s a perpetual cycle of playing catch up. This is not me complaining about the job, it’s an honest account of what it’s like. The days of seeing officers patrolling is gone.

The police have responded, they needed to check the best number to catch you on, you didn't give it. You then asked them not to bother you unless they were coming out to look at CCTV.
The quality of CCTV is important if you can't identify them from it or read your number plate from it then the CCTV is worthless, what would you expect them to do with it?
They are on the bare bones if their arse op they don't want to send officers if the CCTV wont give them something to work with so stop being an arse with them. Ask them for advice and let them give it to you.
They have s ton of jobs to sort few officers to do it so you need to work with them not against them.
Also agree with pp if incident is happening now an danger is imminent dial 999 and stop pudding about relying on CCTV which may not stand up in court as it may not be clear enough in its own right.

Pissing not pudding

Call the local paper. Will probably get a response then

Also give the crime reference to the neighbours and get them to report too

Surely being dragged out of your car, surrounded, your car damaged and threatened with having rocks thrown at you is assault and goes beyond antisocial behaviour.so Yanbu, however I would not know the best way for you to tackle it op.

Where is your employer in this? If they know there is a problem with staff. Safety they should consider employing security.

Call your mp, get the evidence from cctv stored, local police will have a non emergency report number for the county

OP, I completely understand your frustration. Drug dealing, having your car vandalised and being sexual harassed are not minor issues in my book (especially when some police forces appear to have plenty of time to investigate people for wrong think!). The threads on here about the state of the NHS and policing always shock me. A lot of the things accepted as perfectly normal are absolutely outrageous for a first world country, but then many people actively vote for these things, so I suppose they really aren't that bothered.

Agree with your comment about 90s technology, who even still has a disc burner?! Do what other posters have suggested and upload the CCTV to somewhere like wetransfer or dropbox, email them a compressed file or give them a USB stick with the footage.
Does the person who damaged your wing mirror still hang out outside your building or have they not come back?

It IS crap and they should have sent someone to talk to you in person.

Fuck me, I would have called 999

They have my number and I've told them they're welcome to ring if it's to arrange a time to view the CCTV

and

I've told them that I am very busy at work and that I don't wish to be contacted again unless it's to arrange their viewing of the cctv or otherwise actual assistance from them

Ineffectual as they are, it's not really for you to dictate the process they undertake for investigation

Discs definitely are still used. I work in retail and we burn cctv to disc for officers to pick up.
In the town where I live there are sometimes no officers available for hours at a time as the numbers have been drastically reduced and they have to deal with incidents all over a large area.
I suggest you investigate hiring a burly security guard for times when staff are leaving and likely to suffer harassment. Agree that you film and photograph everything you can. Contact the school. Schools local to my store send staff in to view cctv to see if they can identify pupils who are stealing and the parents are then involved. This has a strong impact on many of the offenders.
I know it must be very frustrating but you must form a plan and wage a campaign against the harassment.

I don't think that you're helping yourself here. You need to cooperate with the police. They weren't unreasonable to ask you those questions. Taking your frustration out on MNetters trying to help you is not going to help you either. It's just rude.

Police officer here... Sounds to me like your complaint was probably filed in the bin at the point you told them not to contact you and I really hope it was
I can't believe you genuinely believe you have the right to dictate to the police how they investigate crime. As for the disks that's actually really modern for the police bearing in mind a lot of forces are still very much pen and paper based. I'm not sure how else you think it could be progressed. You don't get to just demand that they come and view cctv on your terms though.
Not sure if you've noticed but the police are pretty overstretched right now, and dealing with yano knife and gun crime and stuff. I know where I'd rather see police funding and it certainly isn't pandering to people with attitudes like yours.

Buy one of those high pitched sound boxes - that'll soon send them elsewhere.

From personal experience, I found that after reporting things to the Police, I was contacted initially by someone asking for more information so they could work out who to direct the incident to, and then it took a couple of weeks for an officer to be assigned and they were in contact when their workload allowed. It took around 3/4 weeks, but once in the system things happened a lot quicker.

Mp4s are too big to email

I'm surprised you don't know that you can upload large files to some sites for a period and send the link for download by email.

In any case, it's silly to focus on disks. Saving to a pen or external drive would do the same thing.

The thing is that you can get those images to the police for them to check.

But it doesn't look like they are very interested in pursuing it, true.

No one uses discs anymore

Police still do.

Police are on their arse. Cut after cut after cut for years is why you don't see police walking around.

You talk about victim blaming, you're doing exactly the same with the police.

You can’t post images of CCTV on local social media. The images are classed as personal data and subject to GDPR rules. Erm... I hardly know ehre to start! I'll be polite!

If you are the owner of the camera the footage is yours! Just as you can't stop somebody from taking your picture, the photographer own all pictures, and, as long as they are not used for commercial gain, can be used. GDPR isn't relevent here. Really it isn't.

Legal CCTV cameras produce legal footage tat can be used to hep track down thives, vandals etc. And yes, that includes social media posts.

ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/cctv/

CCTV operators are not allowed to disclose images of identifiable people to the media - or to put them on the internet - for entertainment. Images released to the media to help identify a person are usually disclosed by the police.

An organisation may need to disclose CCTV images for legal reasons - for example, crime detection. Once they have given the images to another organisation, then that organisation must adhere to the Data Protection Act in their handling of the images.

My bold

@Sockypuppet
Misogyny never sleeps. Neither does arrogance and rudeness clearly.
And as for the idiots suggesting that you falsely report that someone has a gun, words fail me.

Talk about wilfully obtuse with some of these responses. I have done nothing but answer repeated iterations of the same police questions over the past few months. I've offered numerous times to give them access to our CCTV in any way they wished.

Lucylou clearly it was considered unreasonable for me to request a police presence in the neighbourhood. You'll be very pleased to know that due to the police's refusal to "pander" to me the violence escalated and on Thursday night the shopkeeper over the road was put in hospital after a violent assault.

Guess what happened Friday morning? A ploce officer came into my office and asked whether we'd caught the incident on CCTV! I let him look and download. When I mentioned our earlier reports he clearly had no idea what I was talking about.

So well done to you and your colleagues Lucylou. By ignoring the silly complaints of women you can ensure that you only get to deal with yano serious stuff.

Don't ask for advice if you're just going to be a dick to everyone.
OP is not being a dick HTH

Police are on their arse. Cut after cut after cut for years is why you don't see police walking around.
This is where the MP comes in especially if Tory as it's their fault.

They only have the resources to deal with the serious stuff THAT is the issue not the police officers themselves. If you dont like it OP then write to your MP - the problem starts there. Its called lawless London (and other cities and towns) for a reason and it's not directly related to the police themselves anymore. At any one time in my area there is 1 available police car. 1. Thats due to resources from above. Put your anger into action to the right people OP.