Mr Bill has kindly written an update.
Well, it's been a while, I know. Sorry for the delay in blogging (again).
Well, I can't believe that I have now been in the police force for two years. Just last week, I completed my 2 year initial probationary period. I have now finished my necessary paperwork to enable me to obtain a NVQ in policing (To be honest, I am not sure how much use it will be to me if i ever left the police?). But I digress. The 2 years have flown by and I have become more and more confident in my actions and decisions. I have been assaulted at least 3 times, twice fairly seriously. However I still love the job, and often wish I joined ten years ago, but realise that I would not have been the same person 10 years ago, and it is futile to say "I wish..." (unless you are holding a shiny brass lamp with a genie inside it).
I still enjoy the call from the control room that says "Immediate response" as it means I can use the blue flashing lights and 'woo-woo' sirens :-)
However, I have begun to get to the stage where I hear a call on the radio for "any officer who can attend for a report of criminal damage" and I feel like holding back from responding, as I know that I will attend the scene of some poor individual who has woken up to find their car scratched, or their greenhouse window broken, and both the victim and myself know there is very little chance of finding the offender.
But to make a claim on insurance, the police must be informed, and when the police attend, the offence must be 'crimed'. This means issuing the victim with a crime reference number, and then seeing if there is any forensic opportunities. If there are forensic opportunities, that is brilliant and my heart lifts and there is hope. However, most of the time there is not, and after searching for elusive clues, I return to the station and 'record the crime'. I phone our crime recording bureau and relay the details of the crime and the victims details. Once this is done, I need to populate the fields of the crime report with the information that I know to date and also with details of what enquiries are yet to be completed. This crime complaint is viewed by my sergeant, an inspector and the 'monitoring unit'. The Monitoring Unit are like the police of the police. They check that I have ticked all the boxes, that I have handed out the relevant literature and that I update the victim at regular intervals. They also suggest areas that may still need to be investigated in case I have not mentioned them in my dialogue. This means that my dialogue must have every avenue explored and explained - otherwise I get some comment that says something like "Have you considered the use of the dog section" or "Has the victim advice leaflet been handed out?" All of these are relevant and I guess necessary, and without such checks, it would be all too easy to get crimes buried under the carpet and never investigated properly.
I guess I just get frustrated about how long I have to spend updating crimes with meaningless words just so they are 'compliant'. The victim already knows that there is little to no hope of solving the crime, and I think if the victim realised how much work each little crime entailed for the police, then many crime would never be reported in the 1st place.
But that is the problem - I want people to report the crimes, I want to be able to solve the crimes, I want to be able to find the bad people or careless people who have caused others to suffer financial loss, become afraid or paranoid. I just feel that the present system is so top heavy and in reality, so long as you are quick at typing and can make up the bull s**t then you can create and complete crime complaint forms quite easily.
The real problem comes when you really can't do any more investigation on the crime, and you respectfully request the powers that be that the crime be submitted as 'Undetected'. This is where it hurts. All officers want as many 'detecteds' (or - D's) as possible. And so we come back to the original call on the radio - a call to suspected criminal damage - and immediately the thought process starts - "is this another undetected just awaiting my arrival?"
OK - don't worry, I still answer the radio and I still try my best to solve every crime I am called to. In fact I am really hopeful that a recent case of criminal damage I attended may be detected...
I was called to a greenhouse that had been damaged. One pane broken. Elderly person had gone out in the morning and found the side pane of the greenhouse broken. Another hopeless crime?
Well, obviously the others thought so, as the initial response on the radio was... silence. The call came through again, and although I was busy, I stated that I would attend the address upon becoming available.
When I arrived at the address I was met by a lovely elderly couple. They took me to their back garden and showed me the damage. It was then that I spotted the beer bottle. And then another beer bottle. I donned my latex gloves and placed the bottles into my property bags. I looked out towards the back of their garden and saw some terraced houses that back onto their property. Knowing the area quite well, I spotted one particular property that I have been to on a number of occasions - Noise problems, drunken male problems, fighting etc. By my reckoning, someone from that property has been drinking and then once the contents have been consumed, the owner has decided to get rid of the empty bottle by throwing it away - over the hedge into the neighbours garden - not caring where it lands or what damage it may cause.
So hopefully the bottle will have the fingerprints or DNA of someone who is already known to the police (don't you just love the DNA and fingerprint database?). Yeah, there is a lot of ifs, maybes and possiblies. However, I want to do the best I can to see if I can find out who caused the damage - which irresponsible fool has been brainless enough to throw an empty bottle flying that could have injured or even killed another human being had the circumstances been different (what if there had been someone in the greenhouse at the time, what if the bottle had hit a child in another garden, what if...)
And so it is that I now await the results of the forensic tests - which could be a number of weeks. But I was glad it was me that attended the old couples house. They are the people I work for, they are the 'victims' they are the people that need to see the police working for them!
And so it was that same day I took a walk up to the property where I thought the bottle had been thrown from. I talked to my main suspect and I asked him if he or any of his friends may have thrown the bottles. He obviously denied it and pretended to know nothing. It is so difficult to see with some people if they really know nothing or if they just don't have a brain cell between their two ears. I think with my suspect it is both. He was most likely so drunk he didn't know he had done it. He has so many parties at his house that it could have been any number of people.
So all I can do at the moment is try to put some fear into him. Hopefully get him telling his friends that the police are doing DNA tests. All of his friends are known to the police and hopefully one of them will feel really bad for a while - not through remorse I realise that these people don't suffer from guilt trips. No, my hope is that they are afraid that they may get 'fingered' by the police and that even if the evidence is not enough to go to court, it will be enough to approach the council, and it will be one more piece of evidence that can be presented to the council to build a case against the tenant. One more nail in his tenancy coffin. One more complaint that will mean he is eventually evicted. Yes, I will talk to the local housing officer, yes I do know the officer by name and I have talked to him about this individual before, and yes, the council will take action once they have enough evidence or complaints.
So because I took that call and decided to pursue the 'no-hoper' case properly, maybe the offender will face their just deserts - maybe not this time around, but by me doing my job properly, he may be evicted sooner rather than never. That is all I can hope for at the moment.
Slowly, Slowly, catchy monkey.
