Crime in Cardiff

davodedthomas

Not really a money-saving issue, more of a money-losing issue. I had my house broken in to today and my laptop stolen, the house was broken into in broad daylight. This follows a few months back when my car was broken in to. 2 of my friends houses have been broken into, and another friends car has been broken into. I live in Cathays. I cannot see why crime is SO high here, yet not once have I seen policemen patrolling my area. When the police came round they didn't seem concerned at all and say that it happens all the time, theres nothing they can do.

Anyone else who lives in Cardiff had break ins or am i just a very unlucky person?

edna_clouds

I once had my car broken into in the Cathays area (near the Co-Op) this was done during the day, where people were passing.

AMO

There is nothing that the police can do. Absolutely nothing. It's purely a question of economics.

The police get dragged into everything these days and are highly underfunded. They can only look into crimes where either the crime is considered serious or where the chances of resolving the crime is extremely high and the manpower used to do so can be justified.

Your house/car can be broken into and unless you know exactly who did it and can prove it, all they'll do is issue a crime number.

The police used to be able to handle everything, but these days that have to handle so many things from terrorist attacks, drug addicts, alcoholics, mobile phone misuse, vandalism, football match hooliganism, teenagers causing trouble hanging around in gangs, etc, etc, etc.

Crime is also organised these days.

Whilst other countries have tried to help combat this with technology, e.g. Id cards and in general common sense, the paranoid U.K. population think of films such as Enemy of the State and the Truman Show and then band together about violation of human rights.

In the U.K., criminals are so confident that crime pays that more are doing it. Because of this, this creates a need for an ever increasing police force. However, because we don't want to pay for more prisons as this would cost the tax payer money, we let all but the most serious criminals go. Hence there is no point ever charging them in the first place. Hence all you'll get is a crime number.

Add to this, how we value our human rights. The right to privacy - this really means the right to make anonymous calls knowing the other person can't do anything about it. It means the right to ensure that your voice and video evidence can't be submitted and used in a court of law. We have human rights in the U.K. We have the right to commit crimes and know that the police is so stretched and that we rise against anything that would help the police better protect the public because this is against our human rights.

Therefore our criminals have rights - the right to rob, the right rape, the right to murder.

Yep, its the way us Brits are on our high horse thinking that we have the noblest of views and rights in the world, when in reality we are the ones protecting the criminals and taking away any powers that the police might otherwise efficiently use to deter criminals.

People don't realise how bad it is until they become victims.

AMO

chrispyphillips

I agree, due to the fact that crime has got so serious and organised these days, the Police are probably too stretched for car and house crime, unless you catch them in the act that is!!

It is annoying, especially when you feel so helpless and they dont seem to want to offer help, and you do feel like a victim, and that you should be their priority, but unfortunately it doesnt work that way these days!

Its not just Cardiff either, when I was living in Bristol, I was broken in to 3 times (my car that is) and only one occassion did the police coms out to my house, cos they had a spat of reoprts that night and we 'hot on the trial' of the crooks! Needless to say I heard no more so they obviously werent found!!

I do feel for you though, especially this time of year, have you thought about installing an alarm, CCTV etc? I know that ADT alarms link up direct to the Police so as soon as you are broken into it sends a signal and they dispatch immediately! at least that was the case 3 years ago, not sure if its changed etc. Might wanna look in to it!

laxwill11

Part of this is where you live - Cathays, as youre no doubt aware - is student central - hence each house might have 4 hi-fis, 4 tvs, 4 cd collections etc - a much bigger haul for your average house burglar than a family house with one of each. Also, as most are temporary residences for students, landlords rarely put in burglar alarms or extra security devices.
Sad but true i'm afraid

crompton

I was in cardiff on november 5th. Came out of queen street station and saw two blokes running towards the station on the opposite side of the road. One was holding up his jupmer as if he had something in it. I mean bringing the bottom up to almost create a bag. So we carried on walking and we heard a car alarm, they had broken into a black merc, smashed the front window. I phoned the police straight away and told them "we will be right there i was told" 45mins later im still stood there in the freezing cold next to a merc with an alarm going off and a broken front window. Was annoyed because there were two chinese blokes stood opposite the car when it happened and they did nothing to chase them...not my car but it's still not very nice...

The annoying thing is though that police would rather look in to crime such as movie piracy with takes 0.0050pence from tom hanks pay check per copy than criminals who burgle people who dont have much money

AMO

crompton wrote:

Was annoyed because there were two chinese blokes stood opposite the car when it happened and they did nothing to chase them...not my car but it's still not very nice...

The annoying thing is though that police would rather look in to crime such as movie piracy with takes 0.0050pence from tom hanks pay check per copy than criminals who burgle people who dont have much money

Well, in all fairness, what did you expect the two chinese blokes to do. You'd already rang the police. Not all chinese blokes are Jackie Chan in disguise you know.

This brings up another thing about human rights. Had the chinese blokes interfered, it would be seen as assult.

Even if you were defending your own home, the law is against you. If someone breaks into the house, they can only be charged with burglary and get a crime number. However, if you interfere with them stealing from you you are charged with assault.

When the police turn up, criminals will lie through their teeth whereas the home owner will tell the truth.

Now you have a problem.

If the criminals are not caught, they have gotten away with the crime.

If the home owner admits being in a scruffle, no matter what happens, the home owner will be charged with assault.

The police do not give a damn. The way they see it is this:
Two crimes have been committed:
- People have broken into a house to steal.
- Owner has committed an assault defending his home.

The police cannot justify the time to find the thieves, however, charging the home owner with assault will allow the police to add that extra tick to the number of crimes solved in their books.

Welcome to the reality of the great British justice system.

It is a country that has so many criminals that it has better buy one get one frees with its prison sentences. Rape 2 girls - buy one get one free, each rape gets 3 years, but you can serve the sentence _concurrently_. Hey, multitasking in prison. Add first offence (or rather first time the police were competent enough to catch you), good behaviour, full prisons, good behaviour again (the government has poor I.T. systems and lose track) and you can be out of prison by tea time.

Welcome to the reality of the great British justice system.

But is the government to blame? It's us the great British public that believe that its our god given right to take human rights to extreme. It's us that proactively vote against every decision the government makes to make the country a safer place so that all they can resort to is more and more cameras.

Because no, we don't want Id cards - we want criminals to say they are Luke Skywalker to the police knowing that the police don't have the resource to take every suspect down to the station, check them, and then charge them.

Because no, we don't want our DNA on a national database, only if we've been convicted of a crime and therefore police don't have the advantage of simply doing a simple check against a national database to eliminate 99.999999999% of people in any situation.

And because no, we would rather fight for human rights which we don't really understand. We worry that we lose our privacy if we let the government have access to our details for fighting crime, but don't hesitate to submit our details to Tesco Clubcard cos there's something in it for us.

Ironic eh?

And no-one ever really thinks whether its actually that bad a thing. How does Tesco having our address details and know our shopping patterns violate our human rights to privacy so badly that we will live with fighting for these rights to aid criminals get away with serious crimes?

AMO

WELSH-DRAGON_2

Dai - sorry to hear about the break-in - hope the insurance can sort it out for you.

Welshy x

funky-footprints

Davo - sorry to get a break in at christmas.

dh used to park regularly at Welsh institute of sport, his car was broken into for the stereo 3 times, and he even had things taken out of the changing rooms. The police didnt seem to bother at all.

siaoeh

though I agree with the post about the police not able to do much or rather not wanting to do much when they have very little chance to get the right criminals, I have to disagree with the bit abt them doing something when there's a higher chance of nabbing the right pple.

years ago I was living in a third floor flat along newport road with a little private carpark on the back. I actually saw from my window 2 young lads walking past the field behind, jumped over the wall and broke into a car!! after taking down as much details abt them as I could (they made it easy by taking a mighty long time going thru the glove compartment!) I rung the local station (which is literally 5 mins away on foot) as I saw the boys loitering around. but no one came. even though I told them I could see from my window that the boys were hanging about the field, and they were doing that for almost half an hour! they then went away and came back!!

to make it worse, police finally came that night, after the car owner reported the break-in. (I didn't have the heart to tell the owners that I actually saw the act being committed but couldn't help. I didn't even know then whose car it is)

there was another car at the same carpark that was broken into and the police was going round the flats asking whose it is.

bf and I thought we were lucky as our car was parked at the corner so the burglars had no time to get to it. a few other cars were there and were fine too.

but no. the next morning (christmas eve) we went down to drive off to bf's parents' for christmas, we found our car HAD BEEN BROKEN INTO as well. were the police that blind the night before?? or that lazy? only checked on the cars there were in the middle of the carpark and saw them being broken into and assumed the ones at the end didn't?

sigh. our own fault. shouldn't have trusted the police's judgement. especially after the incident in the afternood when I rung them. oh well. definitely a lesson learnt there. but what a sad lesson. they simple do not care.

sorry for venting.

AMO

No, you misunderstand. Your post didn't state that the police had nabbed them. Therefore the chances of getting them were below probability - the number of crimes is irrelevant. The fact that you saw them is irrelevant. Unless the police are able to catch them there and then, the probability is low to the point that its not worth their time.

It's the reality of things. We don't want to pay £160 each for id cards. We don't want to pay higher taxes for a better police force. We want all the best human rights for all criminals. It's not really the police to blame, but the British public.

AMO