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Saturday, July 22, 2006
Clive Davis Finds Thames Valley Police Not Fit For Purpose
Read THIS and weep. But you probably won't be surprised.
9 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Same here is Vienna, probaly worse! A guy parked his new BMW sport hack outside our house last summer and when he returned the following morning it was standing on bricks. He called the police and they said it was a civil matter - call your insurance company! Another neighbour returned home late one evening and saw a flashlight beam going from room to room. He called the police and when they eventually turned up they told him to go in ahead of them ...not forgetting the police are armed over here???
Not sure why you guys complain about the Thames Valley Police, see Hutton inquiry - "One piece of evidence listed on the Hutton inquiry website was 'TVP Tactical Support Major Incident Policy Book: Operation 'Mason' Between 1430 17.07.03 and 0930 18.07.03, DCI Alan Young.' [HI exhibit TVP/10/0099-0105]" The operation into the disappearance of Dr Kelly started at least 30 mins BEFORE he left home and over 9 hours before he was reported missing!!!! We certainly don't get that level of service in Worcestershire where I live.
What you this highlights is the real problem with "rebalencing" the justice system. It is not to do with what the law is, that is far more than harsh enough, it is whether any boby can be arsed to enforce it.
A friend of mine was headbutted to the ground after resisting sexual adcances all night. (From a married man) the police did not interview her for 3 weeks and did not question the suspect for 4 weeks. Furthermore when the suspect made claims of angelic status they did not seek to gather evidence to either support his story or refute it.
So Tony should stop passing pointless laws and get the current ones enforced by a competent police service.
We also had a ridiculous experience with TVP. My mum had a load of guides at a campsite and as they were all leaving (so there were lots of cars about), a guy wandered into the house, took her handbag and drove off in my dad's porsche. One of the parents had seen the 2 men and their car, and one of them had even closed her boot for her (fingerprints) but they didn't bothered contacting her until about a week later after a lot of hassle from us and a load of rain. The place they were staying was on the same road as Chequers and quite close so there was a fairly good chance they'd driven past it and would have been caught on camera but they didn't bother looking at the tapes. Luckily it was a company car but it was so frustrating and ridiculous that they didn't take any of these opportunities to investigate it or try and catch the theives.
One thing you have to remember (and as any viewing of "Road Wars" or "Traffic Cops" or "Street Wars" will quickly confirm) is that most of our police most of the time are dealing with the consequences of total breakdown in a segment of society, eg, the "deprived" poor estate kids, who are utterly out of control and dealing out mayhem and destruction daily. In our fairly normal lower-middle class suburb (in Derbyshire) with some poor housing nearby, we have had armed robberies, carjackings, forced kidnap, cash machine forced theft and numerous car thefts by entering homes at night to steal the keys. A call to the police here with anything less than the above and you will get de-prioritised to about position 250 in the job queue. This isn't the police's fault - they are fantastically overwhelmed, simply running from one murderous piece of lunacy to the next. I might add that the importation of criminal gangs from Kosovo and other places in the world has not made things any easier. Most of the recent "vile crimes" in our area, including several hideous rapes of young people have been carried out by this element. The overall impression is of a Dickensian underclass beyond all help and hope and a police force that is in despair with precious little support for it from the powers that be in terms of real understanding of the challenges, or government-level back up by for example dealing properly with the issue of allowing criminals from abroad to freely enter Britain. You have to get things into perspective; Britain is now in one significant portion of the population effectively a collapsed society wholly given over to what used to be called "barbarism". Against that background I believe we need a massive new set of specialist prison institutions that will actually try to help this tranche of forgotten youth, large expenditures on the police and effectively a new armed force to enter deprived areas of our towns and deal once and for all with the drug dealers. There is a lack of political will for all these measures, so the difficulties we hear from the other posts here about middle class people getting help from the police (now more or less a thing of the past) will continue. If you want that help back, we are going to have to change root and branch. Otherwise just get a shotgun and never get out of your 4x4 except in daylight and in a safe place.
Ian, Do any of your readers have any suggestions about how to take my complaint further without getting bogged down in red tape? I made the mistake of ringing the PC dealing with my case yesterday, and ended up losing my temper with him and his supervisor. Obviously, that doesn't help anyone... I've had a lot of dealings with the police in the last ten years or so and, with one major exception, it's been a totally exasperating experience. I appreciate they're undermanned and overwhelmed, but surely they can find a better way of, well, fobbing us off. That's all I'm really asking for, which is a sign of the times, really.
9 comments:
Same here is Vienna, probaly worse! A guy parked his new BMW sport hack outside our house last summer and when he returned the following morning it was standing on bricks. He called the police and they said it was a civil matter - call your insurance company! Another neighbour returned home late one evening and saw a flashlight beam going from room to room. He called the police and when they eventually turned up they told him to go in ahead of them ...not forgetting the police are armed over here???
Not sure why you guys complain about the Thames Valley Police, see Hutton inquiry - "One piece of evidence listed on the Hutton inquiry website was 'TVP Tactical Support Major Incident Policy Book: Operation 'Mason' Between 1430 17.07.03 and 0930 18.07.03, DCI Alan Young.' [HI exhibit TVP/10/0099-0105]"
The operation into the disappearance of Dr Kelly started at least 30 mins BEFORE he left home and over 9 hours before he was reported missing!!!!
We certainly don't get that level of service in Worcestershire where I live.
What you this highlights is the real problem with "rebalencing" the justice system. It is not to do with what the law is, that is far more than harsh enough, it is whether any boby can be arsed to enforce it.
A friend of mine was headbutted to the ground after resisting sexual adcances all night. (From a married man) the police did not interview her for 3 weeks and did not question the suspect for 4 weeks. Furthermore when the suspect made claims of angelic status they did not seek to gather evidence to either support his story or refute it.
So Tony should stop passing pointless laws and get the current ones enforced by a competent police service.
OK, time for my broken record act: let us elect our police chiefs.....
Meanwhile, read Andrew's jaw-dropper of a story at Resident Alien
Is there a single English or Welsh constabulary that is fit for purpose?
I'll bet if there is it'll be one of the small county forces Blair is just itching to merge into some "supaforce" like TVP.
RM
We also had a ridiculous experience with TVP. My mum had a load of guides at a campsite and as they were all leaving (so there were lots of cars about), a guy wandered into the house, took her handbag and drove off in my dad's porsche. One of the parents had seen the 2 men and their car, and one of them had even closed her boot for her (fingerprints) but they didn't bothered contacting her until about a week later after a lot of hassle from us and a load of rain. The place they were staying was on the same road as Chequers and quite close so there was a fairly good chance they'd driven past it and would have been caught on camera but they didn't bother looking at the tapes. Luckily it was a company car but it was so frustrating and ridiculous that they didn't take any of these opportunities to investigate it or try and catch the theives.
It's sad that this sort of thing doesn't surprise me anymore.
Did you know the only contact 70% of people have with the police is when they send you one of those letters saying they caught you speeding?
One thing you have to remember (and as any viewing of "Road Wars" or "Traffic Cops" or "Street Wars" will quickly confirm) is that most of our police most of the time are dealing with the consequences of total breakdown in a segment of society, eg, the "deprived" poor estate kids, who are utterly out of control and dealing out mayhem and destruction daily. In our fairly normal lower-middle class suburb (in Derbyshire) with some poor housing nearby, we have had armed robberies, carjackings, forced kidnap, cash machine forced theft and numerous car thefts by entering homes at night to steal the keys. A call to the police here with anything less than the above and you will get de-prioritised to about position 250 in the job queue. This isn't the police's fault - they are fantastically overwhelmed, simply running from one murderous piece of lunacy to the next. I might add that the importation of criminal gangs from Kosovo and other places in the world has not made things any easier. Most of the recent "vile crimes" in our area, including several hideous rapes of young people have been carried out by this element. The overall impression is of a Dickensian underclass beyond all help and hope and a police force that is in despair with precious little support for it from the powers that be in terms of real understanding of the challenges, or government-level back up by for example dealing properly with the issue of allowing criminals from abroad to freely enter Britain. You have to get things into perspective; Britain is now in one significant portion of the population effectively a collapsed society wholly given over to what used to be called "barbarism". Against that background I believe we need a massive new set of specialist prison institutions that will actually try to help this tranche of forgotten youth, large expenditures on the police and effectively a new armed force to enter deprived areas of our towns and deal once and for all with the drug dealers. There is a lack of political will for all these measures, so the difficulties we hear from the other posts here about middle class people getting help from the police (now more or less a thing of the past) will continue. If you want that help back, we are going to have to change root and branch. Otherwise just get a shotgun and never get out of your 4x4 except in daylight and in a safe place.
Ian,
Do any of your readers have any suggestions about how to take my complaint further without getting bogged down in red tape? I made the mistake of ringing the PC dealing with my case yesterday, and ended up losing my temper with him and his supervisor. Obviously, that doesn't help anyone... I've had a lot of dealings with the police in the last ten years or so and, with one major exception, it's been a totally exasperating experience. I appreciate they're undermanned and overwhelmed, but surely they can find a better way of, well, fobbing us off. That's all I'm really asking for, which is a sign of the times, really.
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