If police aren’t investigating crime, what exactly are they doing?

[MyAmusedOpalCrab]

I keep seeing reports about police forces being stretched, backlogs of cases, and victims being told their crimes won’t be investigated. At the same time, we hear about officers spending time on things like social media monitoring, diversity training, or non-crime “interventions.”

Obviously, some of this is necessary but if solving actual crimes isn’t the priority, then what is? What exactly are they being paid to do if not investigate crime?

AIBU to think policing has lost its way? Or am I missing something?

They’re probably off dealing with people and situations you are unwilling and unable to deal with yourself, at constant risk of violence, making risky decisions regarding extremely vulnerable people, thrown under the bus for anything which goes wrong, given zero credit for anything which goes right, highly stressed, under resourced, under immense pressure, all for about 30k a year. Fancy it? Thought not.

The majority of police officers are lazy and corrupted. They can't be bother to seek prosecutions for violent crimes. I was violently assaulted in an unprovoked attack, but the case was closed without any investigation I had two black bruising to prove that I was assaulted, of which made no difference. The offender who assaulted me, would had been successfully prosecuted, if the police had been bothered to do their jobs properly.

Our local police raid a shop every few months plaster it all over the place about their investigation work etc etc....its literally the same shop every time then there is their hunt for shoplifters (the ones who sell on at the pub) its always at the same two pubs and a barber's within a ten minute walk of each other but apparently they cant find them its been told to them publicly they just dont deal with it its been the same places pretty much for the last thirty years some of these officers are local they know "steve" the thief flogs his haul at the local they just dont do anything

I haven’t read the full thread before anyone has a pop.

BUT in my experience, which is vast and knowledgable - they’re doing everything.

The majority of response officers work involves jobs that other services aren’t able or won’t cover - in our personal experience, mostly social work.

searching for vulnerable mispers / dealing with domestics - that’s aren’t domestics but the minute they mention it, they have to become one. Answering nonsensical calls about folk being bitchy on social media etc

Officers aren’t being replaced when they leave or retire. DH currently doing the job of 3 folk with no financial recompense due to his immediate superior retiring. His superior was due so much time from the force he went for a job interview, outwith, was successful, and simply left. His ‘notice’ period didn’t even cover his annual leave or TOIL.

The force has decided to let DH ‘get on with it’ and they’ll maybe consider the situation next financial year. And yet, of course, if DH drops a ball, he’ll be dragged over the coals for it.

please also remember that officers on rhe street are following orders. Normally made by those higher up who have NO idea what it’s like working as a response or community officer. Or at least not for many, many years. Where their main focus lies on performance outcomes on vastly reduced man power & budget.

i believe being a Police Officer is the one job where you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.

Which is a shame as the majority I know, are dedicated and hard working, in a role that removes them from family life often without any consideration or reward.

I left the force many years ago, not an officer, and trust me, nobody ever phones the police to say thank you……

And am sorry for those who feel let down by officers / the force etc but please remember, those on the street are NOT the ones making the financial decisions or deciding what to prioritise.

You need to look much further up the political chain of command for that.

Arresting parents for confiscating their misbehaving children's Ipads

The police officers I know are all conscientious and have a real dislike of criminals - they’d like nothing more than to lock them all up, because they see day in day out what suffering crime causes - but they work within a system that is deeply inefficient and flawed. People don’t get charged without a specific offence and evidence, and these days ‘a witness saw it happen’ is often not enough evidence for the CPS to authorise a charge - ridiculous, but true.

My husband is a police officer and was assaulted at work, while arresting a criminal after he entered into a house through a window, carrying a knife. He describes the assault as ‘almost cartoon like violence’ - ie being picked up and smashed into things - and had concussion. The suspect was not charged with assault on my husband, or indeed charged with anything, because the CPS refused to charge on a technicality. So it’s not laziness - the system doesn’t even protect officers…

What are they doing? In the case of my police officer sister they’re being assaulted (3 times in two weeks) by the thugs ‘protesting’ outside hotels.

Come on now OP.

Harrassing the public for non crime hate incidents, monitoring the public’s tweets, a day out at the pride march, watching shoplifters from a distance is all tiring work.

And after they’ve done that, they’ve built up enough of an appetite to always be found queuing in McDonald’s drive thru at any hour.

Unfortunately I have a negative view of the police. I was brought up to respect the police and always did but now things are different. Some examples:

boyfriend being pulled over (I was in the car) for driving too fast round a roundabout. I will categorically say that he was not. He was not speeding and it was not fast or unsafe whatsoever. Apparently after us arguing the point he ‘will let it go this time’

I got broken into and my garage was trashed. They didn’t even attend.

I was involved in a situation where a woman opened her car door onto my car when I was driving. She was in the wrong admitted it, so I left it. She obviously for whatever reason changed her mind and reported me as a hit and run ( still cannot believe it) Four police officers turned up at my house and made me feel like I had committed a murder when actually I had done nothing wrong. It was awful.

I get they’re underfunded and it’s definitely not a job I’d want to do but personally I’m sick of them turning a blind eye to drugs - weed is everywhere and it’s disgusting but when you speak to them about it they literally can’t/wont do anything. I get that my neighbour smoking a joint isnt that big a deal to them despite it stinking out my house but what about the dealer he bought the weed from or the friends who visit him then drive home?

Read about this at the time it's occured. A complete waste of time of arresting someone for a non crime. The majority of police officers are lazy and corrupt. They don't deal with domestic abuse or violent crimes. The police just don't want to help victims of domestic abuse or violent crimes. The police let criminals get away with it, and let them continue with their criminal activities. I had suffered at least twenty crimes and the police do nothing at all. Therefore what's the point of having the police being there for. I feel so let down by the police, in that I hate living in the UK, where I was born and brought up. I am planning to leave the UK, despite being a British native, because the police do nothing if you suffer a crime.

I had two black bruising that prove I was violently assaulted. If the police wasn't so lazy and corrupted, a successful prosecution would had occured. The police couldn't even be bothered to investigate. I can't even sue the police, as victims of crimes can't do this, but only if you were wrongfully arrested or you were assaulted by a police officer or etc, etc.

Yes God forbid my sister in law regularly working 15 hour shifts then getting out of bed to take her kids to school and going through the same struggles in life as everyone else while being denigrated for it by people like you should dare to make a stop on the road to actually feed herself. Police officers have some nerve to need to eat. No wonder they’re so demoralised.

Also, this online crime stuff. You do realise police officers don’t actually make the laws and that it’s fellow members of the public reporting this nonsense plus priorities from above which necessitates it having to be investigated in the first place.

It's called 'grey policing', paperwork, appearing in court, analysing, and missing whistles.

Dealing with all the calls where people have been advised to ‘log it with 101’ on Mumsnet.

As I understand it they do a lot of social care related work. Responding to and dealing with vulnerable people and disturbances.

I follow the UK Police sub on Reddit. Lots of serving officers on there, it gives a good insight in to the job. Often they post about their workload and say they may have as many as twenty cases on going

They get advised to drop the ones that are less important and not ever going to go anywhere due to lack of evidence for example

The police are so short staffed and overworked that they have to only investigate the cases that are the most serious and likely to get a conviction

If somebody has just stolen a £1.50 sausage roll from Greggs they won’t be attending

They are investigating crime but with lack of funding they are prioritising major crime over volume

That's what people are complaining about. They may deal with one major crime for every 99 'volume' problem but all we - the public - can see is the 99 cases.
All we see is that we are not a priority. That's not going to win you any public support.

So what would you rather have ? The major crimes not being investigated so that police can address anti social behaviour and volume crime , or investigating the serious assaults ( talking about gbh upwards) and the domestic and sexual offences . Because that is literally the choice that is having to be made . Over 9000 officers out of approximately 140,000 nationally resigned last year . Of those 56% were voluntary resignation rather than retirement and of those 72% had between one and five years service ( so realistically , that will be mainly from the response team
pool) and another 10 % had between 5 and 10 years in. They didn’t recruit that many to replace them , so numbers are dropping , and the response force is getting more and more inexperienced, with fewer officers able to mentor the younger ones . I did 22 years on team and the next oldest had 8 years less than me . I was a rarity . No one wants to not catch car thieves or shoplifters , but if the choice is to go to a domestic in progress , or a theft in progress , the domestic wins out every single time .

We are WAY past rock bottom. Any kind of proactive policing on team is virtually impossible. We ran from
job to job to job for 12 hours straight , because we had to . I had a dozen jobs to investigate on top
of dealing with yet more calls , because they never stop . I retired , before I completely burnt out , but I was lucky . Many of my colleagues never made it to the end .

All we see is that we are not a priority. That's not going to win you any public support.

Having seen many news videos of the public standing by videoing police being attacked threatened etc whilst attempting to carry out their duties I doubt they have much interest in public support

So what would you rather have? The major crimes not being investigated so that police can address anti social behaviour and volume crime ... Because that is literally the choice that is having to be made.
You are making it sound like a current problem. The standard police response to volume crime - a mere "do you want a crime number for the insurers?" - has been on-going since at least the 1980s.

It is a current problem . In the eighties, certain
crimes weren’t investigated because cctv wasn’t as prevalent as it is now . Mobile phones were barely heard of , and dna testing wasn’t known about until 1986 , and wasn’t used in volume crime jobs . So unless you caught someone in the act , or their fingerprints were found , leads were a lot sparser then

Now the fastest growing crime sector is human trafficking , and the fastest developing is cybercrime . Both of those need vast numbers of resources that were never needed in the eighties . Yet the numbers of police have only slightly increased, if you account for the yearly number of resignations.

People reporting to police has increased ( not a bad thing at all ) . If you had to run to a phone box to call police , sometimes people wouldn’t . And anti society behaviour wasn’t something that people reported either . They’d far rather deal with it locally . Now , it’s deemed to be a ‘multi agency stakeholder issue’. .

Crime has moved on . Society has moved on . Yet people still expect good old Dixon of Dock green
policing. Champagne expectations, but only willing to pay for diet lemonade in their council tax .

The police are lazy and corrupted. The police don't care that vulnerable people get violently assaulted as a result of a disability hate crime. You get black bruising of which is evidence that a violent assault had occured but corrupted police just close the case because it's the disabled person words against the attacker words. Police don't care that men uses violent against women including those who has a disability. You read daily online another police officer facing a misconduct hearing. The majority of police officers are corrupted. Police officers commit crimes also.