Police response ! Nil.! Wasters!
 

Guys,
Try and keep it short.
Mother lives in my old house around the corner from me.
My mate lives next door to her.
Went round to watch footy with mate on Sat lunchtime.
Watching footy and heard a load of banging.
Looked through conservatory of mates house and saw a" yoof "on my mums fence next door.
Mate jumps up and goes to his back garden. I sprint to my mums front door ,where there is a gate (locked) to the side of her house leading to her back garden.
Heard my mate shouting at the "yoofs" asking what the f**k they are doing?
One of the said scrotes is now at the gate in front of me. I tell him to climb the gate and come over it to me. He obliges. I grip the snotty little **** by his coat ,albeit with two fingers and very loosely. Asked his name which he gave me .Asked him for his parents phone number but he said he could not remember it ! Told him ,give me the number or I will phone the police. He could not remember it .
Phoned the Police by 999 ,probably should not have done but could not think of the number for non emergency so boll*clks to it, phoned 999.
Response....
" I have no one to attend right now ,I would advise you to let him go ,you have no right to apprehend him!!"
What a load of ....
I was boiling by this time and told the call handler it was an absolute disgrace that no one was available. My mother at 72 yrs old was scared to bloody death nearly and they could not attend!! The kids could have been trying the doors for all I know but still they had nobody available.
The call handler then put the bloody phone down!!
I still had the phone in my hand and the call came back on to the call centre so I said I was disgusted and wished to complain.
By this time I had let go of said "yoof " and he scarpered with the 5 other kids that had jumped over the fence but had come back to hear their tough mate crying "help me ,help me ".
The scrote give me a load of expletives as he disappeared... He had gotten his bravery back at this time ...
Another officer by this time had come on the phone and explained some of the reasons why I was told to let him go (my safety etc etc the legal position and so on ....)and promised to send someone round to discuss. 30 mins later two community support officers called after walking from the other side of town. They were quite nice to be fair and did offer some explanations ,but non good enough for someone who pays well over 2k council tax for this lack of support. They also knew the scrotes as well.
They gave me a number to make my "policy" complaint ,however no one answered and I left a message with the promise of a callback in 24 hours .You guessed it ,no one has called .
Should I be annoyed????
What an absolute disgrace.
After discussing with my mate ,if it ever happens again I will tell the coppers someone is getting hurt and hang up .See if they turn up then ....
Over to you.

Just say you think they are armed and they will be there straight away.

Doesn't surprise me from the police.
No chance of a conviction without putting some effort in.
So no good for figures.
Just get the speed camera out instead.

Next time deal with it as you wish , call no-one , and tell no-one. I know how I would "deal with it" .

Yes there is a joke about this going round.
"I am being burgled"
sorry we have no one available right now it will be 10 mins before we get someone there
"They have a knife"
Coppers arrive with blues on 2 mins later.
Whos got the knife
"no one"
you said they had a knife?
"you said you were 10 mins away !!!"

You can thank our current government for the shortage of Police officers with their cuts, it's the same up here a serious shortage of Police doing the rounds nowadays.

I didn't think there was a shortage, it just seems that way because so many are suspended from duty

They are well short, local guy I know says he is around half what he should be for his shift.

Has he checked the local "dunkin doughnuts"

Police are a waste of time where property is concerned.
As for letting them go, has no one heard of citizen's arrest?

A citizen's arrest is permitted to be made on any person under section 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 for an indictable offence, including either way offences (in this section referred to simply as "an offence"), but excluding certain specific ones listed below. It is thus permissible for any person to arrest:

Anyone who is in the act of committing an offence, or whom the arrestor has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be in the act of committing an offence, or
Where an offence has been committed, anyone who is guilty of that offence or whom the arrestor has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be guilty of it

In order for the arrest to be lawful, the following two conditions must also be satisfied:

It appears to the person making the arrest that it is not reasonably practicable for a constable to make the arrest instead
The arrestor has reasonable grounds for believing that the arrest is necessary to prevent one of the following:
The person causing physical injury to himself or others
The person suffering physical injury
The person causing loss of or damage to property

Have they done away with the minimum height requirement?

"I saw a flash of something silver" rather than "I saw a knife". That way you're not being specific about him being armed with a bladed article, but seeing something of a certain colou associated with being a knife ;)

:D :D

And this kids is what cable ties were invented for.

Sadly, untrue...if there are no ARP units in the vicinity, they will send....NO-ONE!
Trust me. They apparently cannot risk unarmed officers if there might be someone armed.

I once rang to complain of two yoofs using our streets as a race track, to be told no-one was available to deal. I said, don't bother, I'll do it myself.

I then proceded to reverse my car diagonally across the road and "stall it, got out and opened the bonnet.
One minute later, the racers came round again, did 3-point turns and left.
One minute more and a police car with two in arrived to check on me.
Useless over-paid cr@p.

You can only make a citizens arrest if it's an indictable offence which can be trailed in a Crown Court, not a Magistrates Court. So basically it needs to be serious enough to warrant trail in a Crown Court. A lad jumping over a fence just isn't considered serious enough.

The Police are so stretched at the moment they need more volunteer Officers. :)

There is absolutely no deterrent for anything nowadays and the PC / health and safety brigade are running riot. Cops don't care unless it involves someone driving home after spending the day making an honest living on an empty road in the middle of nowhere, get the speed camera out or let's park up at a roundabout on a busy A road at peak time. Seems there more traffic cops than anything else !!

Does a citizens arrest still count if it's a copper in question???
Just asking as I see them breaking the law on a regular basis.

Try it and let us know how you got on.

PACE citizens arrest was replaced by the Any Person Power of Arrest back in 2004. As above it has to be indictable, and the police not present, and the offender must be trying to make off or still attempting to commission their crime.

You did not have the grounds to use this power on this occasion, but had you heard breaking glass for example then you could have.

Just finding someone in your back garden is not enough in this country, sadly.

Yes - we are stretched and the jobs have to get prioritised. Its not the case that there will always be an officer available when each and every job comes in.

The jobs (as they come in) will be prioritised at the comms centre before being dispatched and if its deemed to be and emergency, then the next available unit (if there is one) will be sent. If its not deemed to be and emergency then it will join a queue system for the next available unit after the emergencies.

The queue will never be 0 and can float anywhere between 50-100 at a given time - we field about 15-20 response officers per shift - none of us touch traffic an all of us have our own queue of jobs which require further inquiries. Then you have a whole host of jobs which will tie an individual officer up for the entire shift (prisoners, sudden deaths, missing from homes, crime scenes, vulnerable victims etc etc)

Suffice to say, we do our best with what little resources we have. We have 3 off injured at present, about 10 panda cars off the road with mechanical problems and no money left in the pot.

And yes Alcazar - we do attend knife & gun jobs if the ARV are not available. I don't eat doughnuts and rarely get a meal break as we use this time to catch up on paperwork

Oh, and don't phone up with false claims to 'over egg' the incident. This just adds to the problem as once we are there, we have to deal which may tie us up preventing a response to a genuine emergency.

If you have any better solutions, then i'm all ears

Nail on the head!:thumb:

This can all turn around on you so easily when its minors involved, you could be the one on the wrong side of a PACE interview.

The kid only needs to claim that you touched him inappropriately, and you are in a whole lot of bother. Its his word against yours, how would you ever disprove it.

I was going to call the first person I spoke to on the phone a useless cnut ,but I thought he may be ridiculed by his fellow officers and then go off sick and claim £400k damages for hurt feelings.!!!
Someone did phone me up today to tell me to make my complaint on the 101 phone number. I explained I had phoned this twice and it did not even ring. Try again was the reply!!!
Im sorry but it is things like this that give you guys a bad reputation.

Jeez, look folks the police are a long way from perfect, but you should be directing your anger and ire at successive governments that have used the police service as a political football rather than listen to the people actually doing the job who might have some good ideas on how to improve things.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the police's biggest fan.
They have orders to follow and revenue making laws to enforce.
You have to look at the bigger picture.
The biggest criminals are the politicians and law makers,the elite.
The police have no choice.

We had a local gypsy drunk walking around the village last summer with a rifle! Pointed it at the children playing and it still took 45mins for armed response to turn up! Also was asked to follow the person at a safe distance while staying on the phone till they turned up so I could direct them to the bloke! What's the safest distance from a rifle!

You just shoulda gave the kids a big scare , they don't no it's your mothers place so how could they of reported you?

How's this for police response.

There I am sleeping soundly one snowy night. Daughter comes in
and wakes me saying she can hear footsteps next door (empty house),
I get up and listen and hear footsteps/stuff being moved around. Look
out daughters bedroom window and see footsteps in snow on porch
roof next door.

I dial 999 and report burglary in progress, they send a car with two
officers(this is NI so armed cops) one male and one female. Male officer
gets out of car and goes round to back gate, female officer(driving) gets out
locks car and follows first officer round to back gate.

You can guess what happens next. They shine torch on rear house windows
at which point the burglars immediately bolt downstairs(we could hear them)
and shoot straight out the front door and away into the darkness.

Keystone cops doesn't even come into it.

Felix, what do you think of Special Officers and do you think they are genuinely a valuable resource for you guys? Or do they just create more paper work and hassle in general? I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on the Specials.

You're lucky to have double crewed cars - we are all single crewed, so if you are the only car free you have to take a chance on you're entry. Then there are all the implications of injuring yourself in the process.......

You can hold off and wait for another car to become free, but (as most burglaries last only a few minutes) the burglars will have gone when you do turn up to the house - so you tend to just take a chance of them not hearing you enter.......