Fed up with the police

hollydays

maninthestreet wrote: »

Car may have been stolen, following him, he might have driven to where he lives or works, so an address could be given to the police to aid in their enquiries.

Someone who steals a car is not someone to be following.

Unity

vixarooni wrote: »

Unity - i think going to the press ect is a last resort if you feel 100% that no action is being taken by the police, or you feel that they arent doing the job properly.

I totally agree , which was why I said 'finally'. As a journalist I know that sometimes just knowing the press are taking an interest is enough to get things moving, but as you rightly say it's a last resort.

darich

Everyone would probably agree that there is too much violence and too many idiots around and that we'd all love extra police to help reduce crime in our own areas.

I'm not belittling the incident the OP had nor am i saying the other driver should not be punished but from a police perspective, this was a minor incident - 2 cars bumped together (with no witnesses) so difficult, if not impossible, to prove the OP was "run off the road". Any injuries yo had were obivously very minor (especially if you could follow the driver and didn't require any medical treatment) so that puts it further down the priority list.

Like i said - from a police standpoint it's minor and they will be following procedures in the background that don't show any visible progress yet. However, they probably have more important things to deal with. For all the police know you may have a vendetta against this driver and are making this up to get him into trouble - not what i'm suggesting - just something else the police have to consider.

Jockanory

First of all,regardless of blame,you have been involved in a road traffic accident and having not exchanged details with the other driver,the minimum requirement of the police is to record the accident and check each drivers documentation.
Also IF any offence's are disclosed,they should be investigated i.e no insurance or evidence of careless/dangerous driving.(you have a witness,your passenger,although not independent).
Secondly as you have been involved in an accident,you should inform your insurance company and as you have the reg number of the other car,your insurance company should commence their own enquire's,to establish blame,unless it is recorded as an un-blameworthy,i.e both parties at equal fault and then the costs are shared by each drivers insurers.
All insurers can have access to any police reports on request,usually in writing.
With regard to any further action by the other driver I think that's unlikely but any concerns should be reported to the police,as it could be construed to be harassment or witness intimidation IF a subsequent investigation/court case was being undertaken.
At the end of the day,you are entitled to find out from the police,what they are doing with your complaint/report.
Hope this helps.

Butterfliesarepretty

I think she did the right thing, she only followed him to see where he would go, at the time no police attempted to follow the car or her car, so she had to do her utmost to try and get his reg and address.

I have done this, I went to the end of my street to take a reg while boy racers were racing up and down the other street, one saw me writing it down and he panicked and drove off. then i phoned the police with the reg and location of the drivers and they were down in 5 minutes to warn them off. I have had my car scratched by a passing space wagon and the chinese driver had no idea he had hit me. When i caught up with him at argos and pointed out what he had done, he had a go at me! It turned out the scratch just wiped off and he got annoyed at me. yet he didn't seem to understand that if I had not chased him and the scratch was worse, I would have had to pay out of my own pocket. :mad:

redrabbit29

Iamthesmartestmanalive wrote: »

How do you know the police have done nothing?

All they can do is report him to the courts and pursue a court action, they cant force him to stop driving etc and not get his car fixed

The chances of someone being remanded on these charges are minimal unless they have a serious history of violence

You seem pretty unreasonable about the polices power, finally you followed him at speed for several miles so im not convinced you were the little innocent party in this

They will have very little evidence too id imagine

Excellent post, very accurate info.

Couple of things:

- Completely understand your frustration, it is really annoying when something like this happens, and you feel as though the police should be busting their door down and jumping on him.

- As the above poster said, it's not really appropriate to arrest this guy so he will probably be summonsed. They also have to go through the process of notifying him that he is due to be prosecuted, preparing a file for him to be summonsed, and also researching his history/the car's history - especially if he is "known" - there may be other offences involved. Unfortunately this can take a few weeks to do.

- I do however believe you should have some form of update, even if it is someone phoning you to explain why they haven't beeen in touch, and why nothing has been done (yet!). Phone them up and ask for an update for what you reported. They will not be able to provide one straight over the phone, but they can enquire if anyone has been looking into it, and if they have, ask them to phone you.

simgranny

I can identify with your situation. About a year ago someone went into the back of me whilst I was stopped to let someone cross a zebra crossing. This crossing is just after a junction where this guy had given me a filthy look because I had not stopped to let him out - the traffic was crawling along but he accellerated into the back of me, did a u-turn, crashed into some railings and then tore off at great speed leaving pieces of his car behind.
It felt to me as if he had done it deliberately as I had seen the crazed look in his eyes and the whole thing shook me up and made me a nervous driver for months afterwards.

This lunatic could have killed someone, either on the crossing (my car was shunted forward) or when he hit the barriers. Being a very busy shopping area, there were numerous witnesses. One of them called the police. After 2 hours and numerous follow up calls I was told that they wouldn't be coming as it was 'damage only' and to phone the insurance company ! I know no-one was hurt, but I was telling them that I was too shaken up to drive, that I thought it was deliberate and that he was driving very dangerously and had badly damaged the railings and had the reg no- Surely he must have committed some offence that they ought to be investigating?
All this took place right under the nose of one of our councils many operator controlled cctv cameras!

I was told that I would have to go and queue up at the police station to report the incident.I went down there a few hours later and the queues were a couple of hours long so I gave up.

We didn't have any problems with the insurers and he must have admitted that it was his fault as we didn't have to pay an excess but it was by no means smooth going - mess ups with the wrong courtesy car and then the hire company trying to charge us for a non-existant spare wheel that they said was ' missing'.

As far as I know, this guy got off scot free, and I wish I'd had the time and energy to persue the matter but my husband is seriously ill and needs full time care and I could see that I would never get anywhere so just had to let go.
It took a long time to get over it though, especially as, a few weeks later I recieved a penalty notice for being 'parked' on the zigzags following the incident.:mad:

RadoJo

Unfortunately, however clear it might seem to someone involved that the perpetrator has a crazed look in their eyes or is acting like a lunatic, the only evidence the police can really use is what's available, and in both these cases, it was 'only' damage. I can understand that it's frustrating, but you can't arrest someone because you think they had a vendetta against you, had a certain expression on their face, you thought that what they did was deliberate or they seemed to be unstable - the police can only go on the facts, and unless he got out of his car and threatened you verbally or physically, then the only crime committed is the 'damage'. Whilst prisons are too crowded for violent criminals, the most likely course of action is a fine, ban, point or a combination of all three, and unfortunately, that does look a lot like getting of with no punishment. You just have to hope that the incident was a one-off and try to put it out of your mind.

I wish anyone who has been in this situation well - it must be frustrating not to see things taken as seriously as you would expect, and I hope you all find some resolution,

redrabbit29

RadoJo wrote: »

Unfortunately, however clear it might seem to someone involved that the perpetrator has a crazed look in their eyes or is acting like a lunatic, the only evidence the police can really use is what's available, and in both these cases, it was 'only' damage. I can understand that it's frustrating, but you can't arrest someone because you think they had a vendetta against you, had a certain expression on their face, you thought that what they did was deliberate or they seemed to be unstable - the police can only go on the facts, and unless he got out of his car and threatened you verbally or physically, then the only crime committed is the 'damage'. Whilst prisons are too crowded for violent criminals, the most likely course of action is a fine, ban, point or a combination of all three, and unfortunately, that does look a lot like getting of with no punishment. You just have to hope that the incident was a one-off and try to put it out of your mind.

I wish anyone who has been in this situation well - it must be frustrating not to see things taken as seriously as you would expect, and I hope you all find some resolution,

Fantastic post.

simgranny

The police did not come to speak to any of the numerous witnesses or examine the CCTV footage so so they were not in a position to "go on the facts" - In my case there was plenty of evidence of very obvious dangerous and reckless driving for a start (all under the eye of the CCTV cameras). I thought the police might have been interested in this offence, especially as it was extremely lucky that no pedestrians were hurt.

I just wish I (and all the others that rang them) had been told from the start that the police were unable to attend. They kept telling people that they were coming, they only came out with this "damage only" line after over 2 hours of me waiting in the rain beside my car shaking from head to toe with shock (my already dodgy neck suffered in the impact as well). All this waiting for the police just added to my ordeal.

People wanted to get an ambulance for me but I refused, because I wanted to be there for the police. Had I been the sort of person that demanded compensation for things, I could have milked the situation and gone in the ambulance and put in a claim for 'whiplash'. All I wanted was for the man to be stopped (and at least spoken to) before someone was hurt.

All you can do is let go and move on, but it might be easier to do so if you thought the police were doing something to deter people from behaving like this.