What is the point of lockdown rules and fines

[LadyofTheManners]

If the Police do nothing

We have a guy on our street. To put it bluntly, he's a wanker. He cares not a jot for being a polite, nice neighbour and shows no respect to anyone.
If anyone was going to continuously and proudly show off flouting lockdown, it was always going to be him.

Anyway, on Friday, at 8.30am, we had a knock on our door. It was two Police officers. To be honest, I was worried why they were knocking as we have been meticulous following rules despite the extreme levels of boredom I'm sure the rest of you are experiencing.

Anyway, seems lots of people in our street have had a gut full of him as they said they had had "multiple reports from people" along with the neighborhood watch team about his behaviour. They asked had we seen anything.

I expected DH to say no as he usually doesn't want to get involved, but he surprised me by saying he had indeed seen him having multiple people round for weeks.

They asked us, as they had lots of others, to call 101 if he was actually in the process of having people over so they could catch him, his wife and his mates at it.

Tonight, when DH came back from getting milk and bits, he could barely park as there were so many cars in the road. Yep, he's having another gathering. At least 25 cars worth.

So I rang. Two hours ago.

They said on the phone they had been hoping someone rang when he had a house full due to the reports. Someone will be over soon.

Yeah right. Two hours later and he's out in his car to get extra barbecue lighter and another two cars worth have turned up as well.

I've lost faith in our local police frankly, no wonder we're on the list for one of the ridiculous "picnics against lockdown" this weekend as the Police here have seemingly lost all control.

They could have had an opportunity to close him down once and for all, they know he has been flouting regularly, also they could have fined the rest of his moronic associates and hopefully, that would spread the word they aren't allowing it.

We will never get over this virus whilst this is allowed to carry on.

Sorry for the rant but I'm close to contacting to make an official complaint.

I genuinely am trying to see this from your point of view, but you are making it soooo hard for yourself.

In an ideal world, when the police man knocked on your door and asked you to report it happening again, they WILL of wanted to send a crew to intervene. They will of had higher priority calls in when you phoned back meaning they had no officers to attend. This is not a conspiracy! It’s budget cuts and people being spread too thin. There is no malice or lazy policing!

In all honesty, it being on local Facebook groups and village chats and involving MP’s while your armchair faces the window all adds up to give the picture that you are over involved and likely to froth about nothing. This does not encourage the very natural sympathy most people would have had with your situation before picking up on your attitude.

Look, I think it boils down to the fact that whether they door-knocked you all or not, when it came down to you all reporting an incident they didn’t have the manpower to attend. Now that is annoying, but you can’t really bash them for that. Officer numbers and funding have been slashed. Vote with your feet at the next election or join the force in a voluntary capacity and lend your hands.

Unless you’re suggesting they were all sitting around HQ with their feet up ignoring you?

Well I shall tell our neighbors that because we were doing as asked we are all suddenly wrong, mentally ill (yes I do get the thinly disguised insinuations) and fritters and we should all just sit and wait to either catch it because he's a twat or be locked in well into next year due to, oh yes, he's a twat.

The next time an officer knocks they will be told to get lost in the politest way possible.

It wasn't me who posted it on Facebook, it's a tiny community so it wasn't difficult to foresee it ending up on there.

You are aware that WHO said last night that if people don't do what they can to lessen the spread, this will not be controlled for upto 5 years and it's looking less likely a vaccine will be found due to the new mutations (such as the inflammation similar to Kawasaki disease in children). We all have a duty to ourselves and one another to do what we can. It does work, look at New Zealand.

Thanks to those with the common sense to not just be here to be abusive.

Imo you weren’t wrong to call the police- they even told you to do so. But you are wrong to assume they don’t give a shit about what’s going on with your wanker neighbour.

I do think you’re being really petty about the police officer calling you by your first name.

But you have unrealistic expectations and think the police have more power to act than they do. That’s what we are trying to tell you.

turnthebiglightoff
"No one was taught to call people by their surname and prefix"

I'm in my 50's, we were taught to do that. Your older close family acquaintances were 'Aunty.. Uncle...'. Anyone in officialdom would use your title and Surname. It didn't start to slowly fade out until the 80's.

Everyone is getting desperate to prove the OP wrong.

Calling the police and ‘doing what you were asked’ are not wrong.

Judging the police for not being able to attend and assuming they would drop everything to make you a priority IS wrong.

Hope that helps. If you refuse to further inform the police then you are becoming part of the problem. They cannot act, where able, if you throw your toys out the pram.

Thank you @Ponoka. I'm 40, maybe it was because our head was quite old and old fashioned (in our school you still referred to teachers as sir and mam, never by Mr X or Ms Y, and manners were strongly upheld or detentions given). I was also a guide and again, we were taught how to properly address our elders.
It's just something that has stuck and it does annoy me that people are just so casual.
I won't apologise for being old fashioned.

And yes, the desire to prove me as wrong is ridiculous.

No one is trying to prove you wrong, OP. Just trying to make you realise that your neighbour, who admittedly sounds a total wanker, may not have been their top priority at the time you called. Whether they door-knocked you all or not. Throwing your toys out of the pram and saying ‘well I won’t help the police again,’ is childish and unhelpful.

Would you rather that they left a woman and child who were involved in a life-threatening incident of domestic violence to come to catch your neighbour having a party? Or would you rather they left the scene of a car crash to attend the party? Obviously these are speculations but all emergency services are slammed at the moment and the police’s workload is more varied than most.

Keep reporting, keep making notes, keep looking out the window and be patient.

Our uniformed officers didn’t make it to any covid related calls last night either. Most of the time they are able to, but it was busy last night. They dealt with 2 community deaths, 3 or 4 robberies, a high risk missing child, a teenager who’d been raped, a victim of modern slavery, a couple of fights ongoing, quite a few domestics amongst other things. Policing is about prioritising as we don’t have the manpower to deal with everything. Try must is, we don’t want people having house parties either, it puts all of us at more risk. But there was nothing that we could just leave in order to attend the covid related reports.

*trust us

@Coldilox that's all well and good but that's a snapshot of one area,which I'm assuming is a big town or city. We're a village. There is a small shop, a convenience store, a good pub, a church and a school. There are about 6 roads of houses. It's tiny. We have a village police force.

Unless it became a front runner to replace CSI Miami over night, I don't think we would have had quite the gritty urban sprawl of cases t deal with.

So the staffing will be in proportion to that. You do realise crime is a very small part of a police officers day, don’t you?

Or do you genuinely think they are sitting eating donuts and can’t be bothered? And that police staffing levels are also affected with officers self isolating.

No I think it's a case of he knows someone within the force
They have been very heavy handed here the rest of the time, it's almost like it's all consuming for the police here and they post regular updates on their Facebook page smugly showing off about sitting waiting to pounce outside the shop and all of us at one point or another have been asked is our journey really necessary when we are buying essentials. The worst was when a local mum was given a right telling off for going to our local Iceland- obviously being a small village we have no Supermarkets so have to drive a distance to one of the number over in the big town. She was really left shaken as she was bollocked for not going to Asda or Waitrose as it was the closest and Iceland is five minutes further. She had to explain due to her finances, Asda and certainly Waitrose was too expensive or she would have done. They even posted that on their page and I don't think they appreciated the backlash they got as a result.

For officers who are desperate to give out fines and bollockings, I cannot see what has happened with this individual who constantly flouts the rules, constantly gets reported and they consistently fail to act.

There is no conspiracy. There just wasn’t staffing available. And they can’t fine him anyway

I hope police never try to address me by my first name! I hate it when people do.

One good thing police have done - they caught a lady and man carrying a heavy suitcase at about 11.30pm near a Tarmac company gravel pit I thin kit was and there were body parts in the suitcase. That is pretty good policing.

@Xenia sadly not my force. I don't think they could solve a crime in progress in front of their noses here.

Why not become a special then and show then how it’s done?

If you are a village, you will have fewer resources. So if there were a few urgent jobs in, nobody available to come and deal with him. It’s really not complicated. Its finite resources spread very thinly.

And they can’t fine him anyway

And that’s the bottom line really. What’s the point of the police attending if they can’t legally do anything?

@thecartofhelena Please please make an official complaint, the police need all the laughs they can get

🤦🏼‍♀️ RTFT please!!! 🙄 OP was ASKED to call.

@Winterwoollies I too hate hearing my own name in a sentence by people who don't know me and I am not at all stuck up! Very down to earth Yorkshire woman who was raised working class. It just makes me wince and I find it patronising, I genuinely cannot help it! Every person I know feels the same way. I've discussed it with each of them before. I'm flabbergasted that you're implying that the use of basic manners makes someone 'stuck up!!' Since WHEN did we reach that extreme?

So if you answered the door to a parcel delivery guy for instance and he said "Hi " instead of "Hi Mrs/Ms " it wouldn't even fleetingly feel patronised?

Obviously I don't say anything unless the person is rude in other ways, I wouldn't dream of it as that would be even more rude!

@HavenDilemma did you mean to tag me? I haven’t referenced the name thing and I’m a bit muddled as I certainly haven’t called anyone ‘stuck up’. 😳

@Ponoka7 Everyone is getting desperate to prove the OP wrong.

This seems to be a new (insidious) trend! Like an online pandemic, ruining proper discussions on threads. Bloody sick of it

@Winterwoollies Yes you did