What Do Our Police Actually Do?

[Hymie]

With our police not interested in bank fraud or shoplifting – hit and run now appears another ‘crime’ which is beyond their remit.

This Telegraph article is well worth a read – the police are writing to the owner of the car involved in the hit and run accident; possibly hoping that they will admit the incident – with the victim left with a crime number to make a claim on their own insurance.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11565490/Need-the-police-Then-go-to-Costa-Coffee.html

[Svejk]

///You should have said that the errant driver wolf whistled at you. Plod would have been straight round.///

Lol, we're getting so cynical, aren't we.

[DaisyNonna]

Fill in forms, polish their buttons.
Keep such a low profile that they may as well be all be sacked.

[VHG]

Also they keep claiming crime is going down.

This is because people have become so fed up with crimes not being followed up that they no longer bother to report them.

So it looks like crime is going down.

[Peter Pedant]

um not really a law question
BUT....I'll have a go anyway

because the Police CAN do summit doesnt mean they will (!) and doesnt mean you can make them ( they have a power and not a duty )

If they had a duty to get off their butts you would have a right to make them do so by going to court. Hohfeld's analysis - he is on wiki by the way

and this was tried in 1968 in a famour case Blackburn v MPC
The recent parltiamentary comment on this is here

www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN04230.pdf

and the par.iaentary paper says it doesnt look as tho the change in statute imposing a duty to do this and that on the Police commissioners will have much effect

O and you cant sue them for being crap either. Sries of cases around the Yorkshire Ripper were thrown out and they paleaded that if the police had been quicker the later cases would nt have happened. Judges said " get outta here !"

Legal thread Hymie if you ask a q
you get a few cases thrown at you ...
c'est la vie

[Peter Pedant]

// This is because people have become so fed up with crimes not being followed up that they no longer bother to report them. //

and dont forget folks,
if you dont report it
it aint a crime !

[New Judge]

And very often even if you do it isn't either, Peter.

[Hymie]

The answer to my question is given here (at least for the police officers in Faversham).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3059872/Six-officers-arrest-former-Monty-Python-cameraman-lampooning-politicians-Pensioner-71-quizzed-two-hours-satirical-posters-told-police-wasn-t-expecting-Spanish-Inquisition.html

[hammerman]

Replying to DaisyNonna's post above....

They also go out every day with the possibility of being spat at, physically and verbally abused, a knife or firearm being pulled on them and their families put at risk by some of the pond life out there.

Don't blame the officers, blame the system.