Is this a criminal offence...

Optimist

vax2002 wrote: »

The police are having a lot of difficulty lately "Policing" they are so pre-occupied with trying to grab as many rights away from the public as possible that minor things such as crime appear to have been forgotten.

The police do not "grab rights" they try to implement the law as brought in by Parliament, and given the previous government put in place over 4000 extra criminal laws I fear you are venting your fury at the wrong target.

Nilrem

Optimist wrote: »

The police do not "grab rights" they try to implement the law as brought in by Parliament, and given the previous government put in place over 4000 extra criminal laws I fear you are venting your fury at the wrong target.

Aye, and many of those laws/changes to the existing law were bought in before previous changes (also made by the same government), had been implemented - from memory there is/was a huge backlog in training all aspects of the legal enforcement infrastructure, from the Police, to the CPS, to the Magistrates, to the Judges.
Hence a lot of Police etc aren't fully up to date on less common offences (or less common variants) as they've not had official training on them, and not come across them since the changes.

I would certainly say the ops case sounds like fraud, and that one of the first things to do is contact the debt collectors etc and let them know that the debt is in dispute as he never took out the services, that should in theory put their attempts to collect on hold.

penguinSmall

I got on by being told they won't be doing anything, unless Scottish Power want to prosecute because it's them who'll be losing out. I was patted on the head and told I was overreacting.

They seemed to focus entirely on it not having cost me any thing, the fact that a) this was not the intention when the contract was signed and b) if it was as the sergeant suggested 'a random passing person trying to be funny' why did the letting agent lie and say I handed the keys back on March 31st when I handed them back on January 12th. If they weren't aware of what had happened no need to lie.

None of this surprises me however, I had a neighbour at the old house for years threatened me on a regular basis, "Sorry madam, we can't act until he actually does something" this was AFTER the anti harassment laws came in.

After four years of being told this, said neighbour ran out of his house in front of two witnesses and punched an 18 year old friend of mine in the face while she was strapped into the passenger seat of her own car with her son in the back seat. The guy was 52. Called police and were told "It's common assault which isn't an arrestable offence, you can bring a private prosecution if you like but it'll cost a fortune."

I shan't be bothering to report anything in the future.

Azari

penguinSmall wrote: »

After four years of being told this, said neighbour ran out of his house in front of two witnesses and punched an 18 year old friend of mine in the face while she was strapped into the passenger seat of her own car with her son in the back seat. The guy was 52. Called police and were told "It's common assault which isn't an arrestable offence, you can bring a private prosecution if you like but it'll cost a fortune."

Sometimes the police say the stupidest things. Particularly but not exclusively, the lower ranks.

Just consider, for a moment, the implications of what you were told.

It would imply that anyone could go and assault anyone and the police would be unable to do anything. Does that really seem likely?

Sometimes, some members of the police seem to be bone idle as well as pig ignorant and will say anything to avoid doing some work. (A minority, one hopes.)

devildog

I would go back to the police and tell them that you have seen a lawyer who advised you that a criminal offence and taken place and that you should contact them(police) again to take action.

I had a dispute with neighbours some years back, police not interested, saw lawyer and he advised going back to police. Did this and then police did get involved.