To think that shoplifting should be taken seriously by the police and public?

[ScarySpinster]

I used to work in retail. The police would rarely come out for a shoplifter, even if it was £1000s of pounds.

My local village shop may have to close because of teenagers regularly shoplifting. It's just not profitable for them to stay open with the losses they have.

Looking at the bigger picture, shoplifting raids are taking place regularly in London, and all the big cities, with the people involved rarely being prosecuted.

I think that we need to take this crime much more seriously. I don't want to live in a world where there are no repercussions for bad behavior. Because where will this stop? Will burgarly and mugging start to become okay next?

In a world without a working police force, isn't it time that small shops went back to the design of having everything behind a counter and you have to ask the assistant for the stuff?

😂 you actually have no clue what you're talking about, literally zero

@ScarySpinster ask the courts

Shop themselves could do more to help themselves, especially garage drive offs , just make that prepay , problem solved .

Vigilante justice rarely ends well.

@crumblylancs so why are women being investigated by the police for saying men aren't women? And what are the police doing here?

Where else would someone who identifies as a police do go ?

@SerendipityJane yes, it's almost like it's easier to target autistic teenage girls and middle aged women with stickers than actual fucking criminals.

So you think that's how the majority of police time is spent? That picture is ridiculous but surely as someone with half a brain, you can understand that isn't the normal activity for any police officer- even them two having that picture won't spend even 1% of their working week doing shit like that.

And for spying on feminists 🤣 if someone makes a complaint, which they are entitled to do, it's likely going to be looked in to to see if there have been any offences committed.

I can guarantee you a lot more time will be spent on shoplifters than the headline grabbing/Twitter posts have you believe!

Before you and any one else posts anything else so stupid, why don't you get off your high horses, stop pretending like you have any kind of clue about a job which you don't do and go and apply to be a special constable to see what the reality is really like.

The best thing people can do is vote for whoever is most likely to oust a Tory MP. The Tories have wrecked the UK and all its institutions.

I never said "the majority of their time" 🤔So you're saying if someone complains about a tweet that says men aren't women, the police are bound to investigate. But if someone walks out of shop with £100s worth of goods, all they deserve to get is a crime number a week later 🤷🏻‍♀️

It really baffles me how people can still defend this so called profession, in the wake of all the shit.

Please can you point out where I said anything like that? Please can you also point me in the right direction of where that is the outcome for all shoplifting cases/reports of men being told they're not women?

Each report should be looked at separately, it's not a case of shoplifting gets a crime number and online posts about men being told they're not women get investigated properly- both of them examples are investigated and the outcome of each will depend on individual factors of each report, for a starters is there any evidence.

You're opinion of the matter is far too simplistic, it's not a one size fits all for every crime report.

From your previous post "So you think that's how the majority of police time is spent?"

Before you and any one else posts anything else so stupid, why don't you get off your high horses, stop pretending like you have any kind of clue about a job which you don't do and go and apply to be a special constable to see what the reality is really like.

well said @crumblylancs

So no one is allowed to have an opinion unless they're actually in the police? How ridiculous. The police themselves have described the forces as having major problems. My good friend in Police Scotland is in despair at what his superiors are telling him to spend his time on.

If you can't stand up to public scrutiny you have no business being in public service.

As crumblylancs has said - each job has to be taken on its own merits.

Not all Twitter posts result in an investigation. You will also be amazed how many shops just want to report the theft, but will not make staff available to provide statements or provide CCTV when asked. So with no 'solve-ability' factors, the shop thefts are often just crimed and closed.

But you have to balance this with all the other jobs which come in to the police control room - mental health cases, suicidal people, missing from homes, cell watches, hospital watches, DV cases, etc etc

All of these have a threat, harm and risk factor which will trump a shop theft

If we had an endless supply of cops, we would have a chance to get to all thefts, but we don't

RhymesWithOrange
My good friend in Police Scotland is in despair at what his superiors are telling him to spend his time on.

I agree - we go to the same people threatening suicide all the time, but they never do carry through with the threat . You end up closing roads, bridges and using about 10 cops just for one person who we manage to talk down and take to a mental health hospital. They are back out in a few days and are doing the same thing again.

Or missing children from care homes, who go missing every day. The care home can not lock the doors or windows, so as soon as we find them & return them - they go missing again.

At what point do we ignore these calls in order to attend the shop theft which is sat waiting on the queue?

Maybe they shouldn't have wasted all that time on Marion Millar then.

RhymesWithOrange
So that was one job - and each job has to be taken on its own merits. And it will have been investigated by one cop. And each cop on a shift will have a dozen jobs on their crime queue which they just tick over when they can (common assaults, thefts etc etc).

If there was threats or something similar which suggested a crime (harassment or malicious communication) then it needs to be investigated. And what isn't harassment to you - maybe to someone else.

It gets to the stage of saying - do the police just ignore all harassment & mal comms over social media? What if its and ex-partner doing this and its causing the victim's life to be a complete misery. May be trivial to some people, but to the victim its not.

It's also been passed through a gate which has resulted in a charge by CPS, so there must have been some sort of evidence there to suggest a crime.

No you don't have to be in the police to have an opinion but before you start spouting absolute shit that you know nothing about, you might want to actually look a bit deeper than the media.

Public scrutiny is one thing but what its based upon isn't always a full story (there are obviously examples where it is, I certainly would not be condoning the likes of Wayne Couzins)

I'd also agree with your friend in police Scotland, I despair at what we spend our time on! I honestly think you would struggle to find a regular cop who doesn't agree with that- the time spent to investigate crime reports (regardless of what they are) is taken over by relentless mental health jobs and others which have been previously mentioned.

👏🏼👏🏼

But the point of this thread is that many people are of the impression that police are choosing not to investigate crime that really affects people's lives and livelihoods, and instead do stupid stuff around hurty feelz on the internet.

Cyber crime, shop lifting, house breaking, stalking, harassment, all seem to come under the category of "too trivial/tricky" and serious crimes such as rape and sexual assault are committed with near impunity. In the meantime Suffolk police are threatening a woman with arrest for reading an online magazine written by women.

So @crumblylancs you're saying that you actually agree with me! When I talk about "the police" I'm not distinguishing between the rank and file and the leads. They are all in the same organisation to me. The outcome is the same.

Mental health calls should not be the Police’s problem to deal with until a crime is in progress.

Bicycle theft in Cambridge has been massively reduced by one Facebook group, when the police did bog all.

My personal interactions with the police give me no faith that they will provide a response to a crime in my area. The news regarding corruption in the Met, and overreaction to social media spats also give me little faith in the police.