How to get items back from the Police, that they "lost"

How to get items back from the Police, that they "lost"

Author
Discussion

Hugo Stiglitz

37,013 posts

210 months

Tuesday 23rd February 2021
quotequote all
KingofKong said:
My dad had an ex-policeman working for him, really nice fella and was quite open about how he left the force.

The long story short, items that were in stock over X number of days/months unclaimed would end up going to auction.

It was common, according to him, for certain items to go missing rather than go to auction. The ex-officer took or was given a bike from the stores and he said he was set up by one of his seniors who didn’t like him. He was ultimately dismissed and as above quite open about what happened, he said it was a commonly known ‘perk’ of the job right up until he took something, prior to this ‘they’ were all at it, including senior staff.

I suspect he was caught in some kind of internal investigation, it happens in all walks of life, if there’s an opportunity somebody will take advantage somewhere.
Sorry I disagree. Under no circumstances would an officer take home property as a perk and it was accepted. Maybe between certain very small number officers keeping it to themselves but no force policy or other officers would allow it. Most certainly in that nick alone other officers would leg them if they became aware.

The reason why is theft would be rife. No border or boundary.

Thats explaining someone's behaviour away as the norm when it isn't.



Sgt Bilko

1,929 posts

214 months

Tuesday 23rd February 2021
quotequote all
Hugo Stiglitz said:
KingofKong said:
My dad had an ex-policeman working for him, really nice fella and was quite open about how he left the force.

The long story short, items that were in stock over X number of days/months unclaimed would end up going to auction.

It was common, according to him, for certain items to go missing rather than go to auction. The ex-officer took or was given a bike from the stores and he said he was set up by one of his seniors who didn’t like him. He was ultimately dismissed and as above quite open about what happened, he said it was a commonly known ‘perk’ of the job right up until he took something, prior to this ‘they’ were all at it, including senior staff.

I suspect he was caught in some kind of internal investigation, it happens in all walks of life, if there’s an opportunity somebody will take advantage somewhere.
Sorry I disagree. Under no circumstances would an officer take home property as a perk and it was accepted. Maybe between certain very small number officers keeping it to themselves but no force policy or other officers would allow it. Most certainly in that nick alone other officers would leg them if they became aware.

The reason why is theft would be rife. No border or boundary.

Thats explaining someone's behaviour away as the norm when it isn't.
What about the 22 officers suspended from GMP for allegedly using knocked off clothing for covert work? I think some may have been reinstated now, but it was still property/evidence.

Pothole

34,367 posts

281 months

Tuesday 23rd February 2021
quotequote all
Sgt Bilko said:
What about the 22 officers suspended from GMP for allegedly using knocked off clothing for covert work? I think some may have been reinstated now, but it was still property/evidence.
What about going and finding the story, reading and understanding it, checking it's actually relevant, then posting your findings instead of this lazy, half-arsed version? Who knows, it might actually support your point.

Sgt Bilko

1,929 posts

214 months

Tuesday 23rd February 2021
quotequote all
Pothole said:
Sgt Bilko said:
What about the 22 officers suspended from GMP for allegedly using knocked off clothing for covert work? I think some may have been reinstated now, but it was still property/evidence.
What about going and finding the story, reading and understanding it, checking it's actually relevant, then posting your findings instead of this lazy, half-arsed version? Who knows, it might actually support your point.
Wow. Prickly aren’t you. I don’t need to read the story thanks. I was replying to a comment you’ve edited out.

Hugo Stiglitz

37,013 posts

210 months

Tuesday 23rd February 2021
quotequote all
Sgt Bilko said:
Wow. Prickly aren’t you. I don’t need to read the story thanks. I was replying to a comment you’ve edited out.
Sorry. You need to not read the press report. Unless you know something that we don't.

Sgt Bilko

1,929 posts

214 months

Tuesday 23rd February 2021
quotequote all
Hugo Stiglitz said:
Sgt Bilko said:
Wow. Prickly aren’t you. I don’t need to read the story thanks. I was replying to a comment you’ve edited out.
Sorry. You need to not read the press report. Unless you know something that we don't.
I’m fully aware of the facts, it wasn’t some shoddy press article. I will concede though as I haven’t heard any update since summer last year.

Greendubber

13,133 posts

202 months

Wednesday 24th February 2021
quotequote all
Hugo Stiglitz said:
Sgt Bilko said:
Wow. Prickly aren’t you. I don’t need to read the story thanks. I was replying to a comment you’ve edited out.
Sorry. You need to not read the press report. Unless you know something that we don't.
What's the crack with it then?

Nibbles_bits

991 posts

38 months

Thursday 25th February 2021
quotequote all
With seized items likely to be captured on video, recorded in a statement, recorded on the crime report, electronically booked in to storage (to which a PC/Sgt doesn't have access), with every authorised persons entry being recorded.......... I think it's highly unlikely the items were stolen by an Officer.

Even if it's trash being thrown in a skip - an Officer would get written permission to take it.

Cold

15,207 posts

89 months

Thursday 25th February 2021
quotequote all
Choose your poison, OP. Incompetence or criminality? Unfortunately neither will mean the return of your son's property.

BobSaunders

3,028 posts

154 months

Thursday 25th February 2021
quotequote all
HiAsAKite said:
vaud said:
AngryPartsBloke said:
I went to the Cybersecurity expo in London a few years back and watched a talk called 'How to hack a police station' by a pen testing company. It's amazing where you can get with a Police lanyard and an amazon box to hide where the badge should be.
I heard a story about a CEO who commissioned a pen-tester and told them his security was the best in the world.
Next day the CEO arrived and found the tester sat at his desk.

It may just be a story but I know pen-testers can be really good.
The company I work for did exactly this for a customer - very visual way of demonstrating what an attacker could do, if they really wanted to/tried.
It had the desired (positive) effect.
Used to this as a living for about 15 years. We always used to play the game of send the customer to make us a cuppa and who could give him his password on return. Some suitably less than impressed customers on quite a few occasions.

Some stuff i can tell you about, some stuff i can't. Was good fun. Travelling constantly around the country and world is what killed it for me.

Now i advise on it mostly.

Ilovejapcrap

3,274 posts

111 months

Thursday 25th February 2021
quotequote all
La Liga said:
Let’s steal and sell the OP’s property which will have been referred to in the investigation and overtly obvious from the original information.

Nothing better than going to prison and throwing away a career for £50 ??
Did you see the 24 hours in police custody when a copper got caught blackmailing someone for 1000 pound.

No can’t have happened loosing his job, wife and potential jail term for a grand I must have made it up.

Leicester Loyal

4,519 posts

121 months

Thursday 25th February 2021
quotequote all
Hugo Stiglitz said:
KingofKong said:
My dad had an ex-policeman working for him, really nice fella and was quite open about how he left the force.

The long story short, items that were in stock over X number of days/months unclaimed would end up going to auction.

It was common, according to him, for certain items to go missing rather than go to auction. The ex-officer took or was given a bike from the stores and he said he was set up by one of his seniors who didn’t like him. He was ultimately dismissed and as above quite open about what happened, he said it was a commonly known ‘perk’ of the job right up until he took something, prior to this ‘they’ were all at it, including senior staff.

I suspect he was caught in some kind of internal investigation, it happens in all walks of life, if there’s an opportunity somebody will take advantage somewhere.
Sorry I disagree. Under no circumstances would an officer take home property as a perk and it was accepted. Maybe between certain very small number officers keeping it to themselves but no force policy or other officers would allow it. Most certainly in that nick alone other officers would leg them if they became aware.

The reason why is theft would be rife. No border or boundary.

Thats explaining someone's behaviour away as the norm when it isn't.
I went school with a lad whose dad was a copper, he always used to tell us the stuff his old man got and kept via 'evidence' before it went off to auction, I saw some of it with my own eyes, but obviously he could have been lying and they'd actually bought them.

BigLucas

1 posts

48 months

Tuesday 9th March 2021
quotequote all
KungFuPanda said:
Letter before action and then sue them for the cost of the item through the small claims court. It's pretty straight forward.
What chu talking bout fool?

djohnson

3,417 posts

222 months

Tuesday 9th March 2021
quotequote all
BobSaunders said:
Used to this as a living for about 15 years. We always used to play the game of send the customer to make us a cuppa and who could give him his password on return. Some suitably less than impressed customers on quite a few occasions.

Some stuff i can tell you about, some stuff i can't. Was good fun. Travelling constantly around the country and world is what killed it for me.

Now i advise on it mostly.
We used to have a team who did this in our organisation, ‘ethical hackers’ they were referred to at the time. They’d even dress in BT engineer uniforms to get into buildings past the receptionist. It was staggering how far they could get into an organisation and its systems. Often it wasn’t some complex IT hacking approach but finding a way into a building, sitting at empty desks and finding passwords scrawled on post-it notes. Fascinating stuff, this was the best part of 20 years ago so I suspect many organisations are more clued up these days.

vaud

50,291 posts

154 months

Tuesday 9th March 2021
quotequote all
djohnson said:
We used to have a team who did this in our organisation, ‘ethical hackers’ they were referred to at the time. They’d even dress in BT engineer uniforms to get into buildings past the receptionist. It was staggering how far they could get into an organisation and its systems. Often it wasn’t some complex IT hacking approach but finding a way into a building, sitting at empty desks and finding passwords scrawled on post-it notes. Fascinating stuff, this was the best part of 20 years ago so I suspect many organisations are more clued up these days.
You would hope so but sadly not.

One major investment bank ran a targeted (fake) phishing attack against their operational board. Standard fake email with "click here to update your details" and, IIRC, 40% clicked on it and entered their corporate details (user/pass).

One organization I worked with (I was on the board) had no password expiry policy, no 2 factor authentication and when they did an audit c.30% of people had their password on a post-it note...

djohnson

3,417 posts

222 months

Tuesday 9th March 2021
quotequote all
vaud said:
djohnson said:
We used to have a team who did this in our organisation, ‘ethical hackers’ they were referred to at the time. They’d even dress in BT engineer uniforms to get into buildings past the receptionist. It was staggering how far they could get into an organisation and its systems. Often it wasn’t some complex IT hacking approach but finding a way into a building, sitting at empty desks and finding passwords scrawled on post-it notes. Fascinating stuff, this was the best part of 20 years ago so I suspect many organisations are more clued up these days.
You would hope so but sadly not.

One major investment bank ran a targeted (fake) phishing attack against their operational board. Standard fake email with "click here to update your details" and, IIRC, 40% clicked on it and entered their corporate details (user/pass).

One organization I worked with (I was on the board) had no password expiry policy, no 2 factor authentication and when they did an audit c.30% of people had their password on a post-it note...
Almost a third of people with their password written down is terrifying!

anonymous-user

53 months

Tuesday 9th March 2021
quotequote all
Ilovejapcrap said:
La Liga said:
Let’s steal and sell the OP’s property which will have been referred to in the investigation and overtly obvious from the original information.

Nothing better than going to prison and throwing away a career for £50 ??
Did you see the 24 hours in police custody when a copper got caught blackmailing someone for 1000 pound.

No can’t have happened loosing his job, wife and potential jail term for a grand I must have made it up.
Nothing worse than a loose job...

I was proposing it as an improbable event vs other possibilities, I wasn't saying it was impossible.

havoc

29,929 posts

234 months

Tuesday 9th March 2021
quotequote all
vaud said:
...when they did an audit c.30% of people had their password on a post-it note...
Despite not doing that, I can understand it.

When IT policy requires (despite about a decade of IT security research to the contrary*):-
- Uppercase
- Lowercase
- Special character
- Minimum length
- Not the same as any previous password
- Changed every month

...then by the time you've been there a year or two, you're either recycling old stuff with new numbers on the end, or you're writing it down. Because "F3rr4r1!M0nd14l" doesn't exactly trip off the tongue... hehe



* Length is required, not complexity. We should be asking for pass-phrases...real words, easier to remember, far harder to brute-force hack. Only weakness is if someone knows a lot of personal details/background (which is no different to current rules).

djohnson

3,417 posts

222 months

Tuesday 9th March 2021
quotequote all
havoc said:
Length is required, not complexity. We should be asking for pass-phrases...real words, easier to remember, far harder to brute-force hack. Only weakness is if someone knows a lot of personal details/background (which is no different to current rules).
I’d always understood something similar, that the best passwords are a form of acronym based upon something you can easily remember (thus won’t write down) but is specific to you rather then being a well known phrase eg ‘Dave Johnson has four rabbits and two cats’ yields the password DJh4r&2c. I’m not an IT person by trade so no idea how this approach stands up in the scheme of things but seems sensible to me.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Tuesday 9th March 2021
quotequote all
djohnson said:
havoc said:
Length is required, not complexity. We should be asking for pass-phrases...real words, easier to remember, far harder to brute-force hack. Only weakness is if someone knows a lot of personal details/background (which is no different to current rules).
I’d always understood something similar, that the best passwords are a form of acronym based upon something you can easily remember (thus won’t write down) but is specific to you rather then being a well known phrase eg ‘Dave Johnson has four rabbits and two cats’ yields the password DJh4r&2c. I’m not an IT person by trade so no idea how this approach stands up in the scheme of things but seems sensible to me.
https://xkcd.com/936/