Why didn't the copper book the van and cars parking on yellow lines

olias

As with all 'cop bashing' threads, those posting negative comments are all making huge assumptions.

As has been said, the copper in the van may have had a prisoner in the rear - even if the prisoner was compliant, the police and criminal evidence act states that a prisoner must be dealt with asap, which does not mean stopping for 20 minutes to write out a few tickets en-route to the police station. Similarly (as also stated), he might have been on the way to court, or any one of a load of other commitments.

The copper in the bus stop might be taking an urgent call relating to an armed seige on the other side of town for which he was giving tactical advice or orders - or again, anyone of a load of other possible calls.

(I used to be a copper in case you didn't guess)

My favourite when I raced through the town centre on 'blues and twos', only to then slow down to normal speed, switch of sirens and pull in to a petrol station/police station/whatever, was 'He's only rushing home for his dinner/he's only abusing his authority to get through the traffic/ he obviously wasn't going anywhere.'

Well no actually, what had happened was that all available units were asked to respond to an incident (violence/burglary/whatever), but while en-route, another unit had got their first and found they could handle the situation themselves, and so had cancelled all the other units that were racing towards the incident. This is how police operate and would happen on virtually a daily basis.

So the moral is, don't assume the worst, when the truth is likely to be something completely different.

Olias

kizkiz

Olias is spot on
As for the original post....not many places a policeman actually has power to issue a parking ticket as the power was removed a while back.
Oh, and the usual comments about only policing crimes that the govt mark police on. pmsl there. Show me a policeman and i'll show you someone who doesn't have a clue what those offences might be. The only people who care about govt statistics are the shiny brass sat in offices all day. Real police on the streets deal with anything they come across, not just what the govt apparently mark a force on.

Azari

kizkiz wrote: »

Oh, and the usual comments about only policing crimes that the govt mark police on. pmsl there. Show me a policeman and i'll show you someone who doesn't have a clue what those offences might be. The only people who care about govt statistics are the shiny brass sat in offices all day.

What, you mean the ones who are the superior officers of those on the street and responsible for managing them and setting their priorities?

Real police on the streets deal with anything they come across, not just what the govt apparently mark a force on.

Except that they don't.

And it's extremely hard to get them to deal with anything if they've decided they don't want to. Not impossible, but very, very, hard.

kizkiz

Azari wrote: »

What, you mean the ones who are the superior officers of those on the street and responsible for managing them and setting their priorities? .

Yeah them. We get emails now and then telling us priorities etc. Nobody pays much attention. we're too damn busy answering calls.

Azari wrote: »

Except that they don't.

And it's extremely hard to get them to deal with anything if they've decided they don't want to. Not impossible, but very, very, hard.

Really? Not one policeman anywhere deals with anything they come across? Now you're having a laugh :rotfl:
If you mean that you haven't got a fast response for a minor call, then that would likely be because there are more serious things being dealt with first.
My area constantly has calls outstanding. We cannot keep up, ever. Obviously this annoys people who want us to deal with noisy neighbours, civil dispoutes, parking issues etc etc but we are too busy dealing with burglaries, murders, stabbings and assaults.
In the current climate, you aren't going to get enough coppers on the streets to please you i'm afraid

Azari

kizkiz wrote: »

Yeah them. We get emails now and then telling us priorities etc. Nobody pays much attention. we're too damn busy answering calls.

Ah, so we can blame the woeful state of policing on the junior officers who ignore the instructions of their superiors.

Really? Not one policeman anywhere deals with anything they come across? Now you're having a laugh

Is this indicative of the intelligence of the average policeman?

I hope not.

You said: "Real police on the streets deal with anything they come across".

I disagreed. They do not deal with 'anything' they come across. Certain offences are persistently ignored.

kizkiz

Azari - I was generalising. I didn't realise you were arguing semantics. I'd be interested to know what these offences are and how you know?
Obviously i'm talking from my tiny viewpoint as one person in one area of one force. I dodn't know a single colleague who would see something they should be dealing with and ignore it or walk past someone in need of help. I quite regularly get flagged down on the way to a call to deal with something else.

Loving your idea that all police are part of some govt led secret stasi police who only deal with the certain crimes they are told to by their superiors in order to please the overlords :D
I wonder if aliens might be involved too?

Azari

kizkiz wrote: »

Azari - I was generalising. I didn't realise you were arguing semantics. I'd be interested to know what these offences are and how you know?

Well, at least one assault (not on going) where the police refused to turn out until the mother of the person involved contacted the chairman of the county council who happened to be a personal friend and also the chairman of the local watch committee and he succeed in stirring them into action. (Apparently they were very good when the did come.)

Plus the assault on a young woman mentioned in this thread.

Obviously i'm talking from my tiny viewpoint as one person in one area of one force. I dodn't know a single colleague who would see something they should be dealing with and ignore it or walk past someone in need of help.

I never suggested that they would walk past someone in need of help. Your expanding the nature of my complaint to make it look invalid.

Loving your idea that all police are part of some govt led secret stasi police who only deal with the certain crimes they are told to by their superiors in order to please the overlords :D
I wonder if aliens might be involved too?

There is nothing secret about it.

And it has nothing whatever to do with the police acting like the Stasi,

Neither are there aliens involved.

Government interference in the activities of otherwise competent agencies is neither new, secret, nor surprising.

If the government tells a force (or school) that it is going to be judged on the basis of certain criteria and that judgement will affect various aspects of the agency's control and funding, then it is not in the least unreasonable that the agency will concentrate on those activities on which it is being measured.

My complaint is with the government interfering and preventing people getting on with their jobs in they way their communities want them to rather then the agency's themselves.

It does, nonetheless, give an insight into certain aspects of those agency's behaviour.

kizkiz

That post makes a lot more sense.
I'm not going to deal with specific situations a i wasn't involved, but people are ovbiously going to be influenced by any bad experience they may have heard about or experienced.
Our call centre is mainly run bby civillian staff. They take the calls and put them out to us. We don't know what is on the outstanding list. We quite often turn up to a call the second it gets put out, just to find that they have been sitting on it for hours, and the caller was told all sorts of incorrect things. Or maybe the local force effed up. It happened of course.

The only direct influence from any govt we get is the amount and type of paperwork we have to do. You'll just have to take my word for it that govt targets have sod all to do with how we police. Maybe in smaller forces, but not in the Met. We have between 12 and 15 thousand calls a day to answer...we just go from call to call and deal with them.
The main proprities are always burglary and robbery. It's difficult to do anything about either when you don't have a spare 5 minutes of time at any point to do anything proactive though.
I really don't know why people think the govt exert such a force on what a policeman does day to day. We are still going to answer calls and fill out paperwork whatever happens.

As for twisting your words...I'm glad you clarified, as all you wrote was "Except that they don't." which is what i responded to.

Ninja edit: Does anyone have a list of what these offences are that the govt mark forces on so i can see what calls i'm supposedly prioritising?

Azari

kizkiz wrote: »

Ninja edit: Does anyone have a list of what these offences are that the govt mark forces on so i can see what calls i'm supposedly prioritising?

Well, to be fair, they are the exact ones that you would expect to be prioritised.

But, where people suspect that it's affecting the day to day operations of the police is where the government sets a target for clear up rates for certain offences so that the police need to expend manpower on cases that they have little chance of clearing up so that their forces 'league table' results are not below some government selected figure.

The suspicion is that the police will not take action on very common and annoying offences (and, yes, they will not be major things like murder) because these are not monitored in government statistics whereas they will spend a disproportionate amount of time on cases with a very low chance of getting a result because they need every clear up in that category, no matter how minor, to 'make up the numbers'.

pulliptears

23n1th wrote: »

I take it you'd rather the cop had carried on driving whilst on the phone? You've no idea what that call was, it could have been an emergency, some cops are on call 24/7 for things like mountain rescue.

olias wrote: »

The copper in the bus stop might be taking an urgent call relating to an armed seige on the other side of town for which he was giving tactical advice or orders - or again, anyone of a load of other possible calls.

Or maybe he could have just shown an ounce of common sense and driven to the end of the bus stop so that the bus could have pulled in safely behind and he could have safely continued his phone call, rather than sitting slap bang in the middle of it...