Am I expecting too much of plod?
Discussion
Just wondered if any BIB (or anyone else) could let me know whether I am expecting too much here, or is this another example where my faith in the police is justifiably eroded further...
Long story short, I was having a bit of a party at my place on Saturday night and around 1.30am, one of my guests informed me that someone has been shooting at my house and has shot a hole straight through my lounge window!
I had a look and, sure enough, there was a hole in the single-pane window around an inch in diameter. Anyway, plod called (we genuinely had no idea where/why/who and I was quite concerned for the safety of my guests), and the conversation, after explaining what had happened, went like this:
Plod: well there's not a lot we can do at the moment without any proof.
Wiggy: I'm sorry, could you repeat that please? Could you not attempt to stop someone from shooting my guests please?
Plod: Like I say, we need some proof first?
Wiggy: How about the whacking great hole in my window and 20 rather worried guests of mine?
Plod: We still need you to supply us evidence of who is doing this before we can act.
Wiggy: Erm, no offence, but isn't that supposed to be your job?
Plod: Well what do you expect me to do, knock on your neighbours' doors to see if they've seen or heard anything?
Wiggy: Well I think that would be a very good start...
Plod: Well I'm not prepared to do that at this hour in the morning.
Wiggy: Well then I hope for your sake no-one gets injured here tonight.
At this point, another "missile" of some description case buzzing a few feet from my head, narrowly missing several people and from the direction of the school field opposite.
Wiggy: Well there's a little more proof for you that I'm not imagining this! Would you care to investigate now?
Plod: We'll look into it.
The two police officers then jumped back into their car and drove off, making absolutely no attempt to investigate where this was coming from or who was responsible.
Is this normal police behaviour because if it is I am quite franky disgusted! I admit I may have become a little sarcastic but I simply could not believe what I was hearing! We had no idea whether this was a kid throwing stones or some nutter with a shot-gun! Although we ruled-out the stone throwing kid when I witnessed the speed the second "missile" shot past me.
Does anyone believe I have grounds for complaint and, more importantly, would anything be done if I did? This just stinks of another example whereby the police are next to useless when you seriously need them... :angry:
Apologies for the long rant...
Long story short, I was having a bit of a party at my place on Saturday night and around 1.30am, one of my guests informed me that someone has been shooting at my house and has shot a hole straight through my lounge window!
I had a look and, sure enough, there was a hole in the single-pane window around an inch in diameter. Anyway, plod called (we genuinely had no idea where/why/who and I was quite concerned for the safety of my guests), and the conversation, after explaining what had happened, went like this: Plod: well there's not a lot we can do at the moment without any proof.
Wiggy: I'm sorry, could you repeat that please? Could you not attempt to stop someone from shooting my guests please?
Plod: Like I say, we need some proof first?
Wiggy: How about the whacking great hole in my window and 20 rather worried guests of mine?
Plod: We still need you to supply us evidence of who is doing this before we can act.
Wiggy: Erm, no offence, but isn't that supposed to be your job?
Plod: Well what do you expect me to do, knock on your neighbours' doors to see if they've seen or heard anything?
Wiggy: Well I think that would be a very good start...
Plod: Well I'm not prepared to do that at this hour in the morning.
Wiggy: Well then I hope for your sake no-one gets injured here tonight.
At this point, another "missile" of some description case buzzing a few feet from my head, narrowly missing several people and from the direction of the school field opposite.
Wiggy: Well there's a little more proof for you that I'm not imagining this! Would you care to investigate now?
Plod: We'll look into it.
The two police officers then jumped back into their car and drove off, making absolutely no attempt to investigate where this was coming from or who was responsible.
Is this normal police behaviour because if it is I am quite franky disgusted! I admit I may have become a little sarcastic but I simply could not believe what I was hearing! We had no idea whether this was a kid throwing stones or some nutter with a shot-gun! Although we ruled-out the stone throwing kid when I witnessed the speed the second "missile" shot past me.
Does anyone believe I have grounds for complaint and, more importantly, would anything be done if I did? This just stinks of another example whereby the police are next to useless when you seriously need them... :angry:
Apologies for the long rant...
Plotloss said:
I think you can safely rule out the shotgun angle to be honest...
I realise that now having assessed the situation but the point is, the police couldn't rule it out at the time.
As for the other comment about the neighbours and the noise, I was being particularly careful to keep the noise to an acceptable level but this was my first thought too until I saw where the "shots" were coming from...
Anyway, it's not the motive of our window-smashing friend I'm questioning here...
wiggy001 said:
The two police officers then jumped back into their car and drove off, making absolutely no attempt to investigate where this was coming from or who was responsible.
How do you know what they did from that point onwards?
They may well have gone to investigate where the missiles were coming from. Or did you expect them stage a 'man from milk tray' operation to get to the area the problem was coming from ( unless of course you had a gate into the area from your property
)? wiggy001 said:
Is this normal police behaviour because if it is I am quite franky disgusted! I admit I may have become a little sarcastic but I simply could not believe what I was hearing! We had no idea whether this was a kid throwing stones or some nutter with a shot-gun!
Not much experience of people with shotguns then
A shot gun at more than 10 yards would make a hell of a lot bigger hole than an inch!
If they had though it was a firearm, you would have been evacuated from the house. I can tell you the officers would not have stayed inside your house whilst firearms were discharged at it!
wiggy001 said:
Although we ruled-out the stone throwing kid when I witnessed the speed the second "missile" shot past me.
I doubt you would have been able to assess the speed of a projectile from a firearm unless it happened to be an airweapon!
wiggy001 said:
Does anyone believe I have grounds for complaint
If you feel you need to complain, then I would urge you to do so.
What would be the grounds of your complaint?
Attitude of the attending officers?
Rudeness of officers?
The fact you assume they did nothing? (which you really do not know at the moment
) wiggy001 said:
and, more importantly, would anything be done if I did?
If you complain, it will be documented by an Inspector and forwarded with your statement to the IPCC authority unless the Professional standards department feel that informal resolution is applicable.
wiggy001 said:
This just stinks of another example whereby the police are next to useless when you seriously need them... :angry:
Apologies for the long rant...
Sorry you did not get the service you thought you deserved!
Did you expect ARV and helicopter response?
What response did you expect?
Are you aware of any other actions that might have been deployed to deal with your complaint?
Do you know if any other people had complained of damage to windows i your neighbourhood?
How do you know that the officers were not aware of such information already?
Thats OK (about the long rant)
!I still would have expected the minimum of a crime report taken and statements etc.
But BiB did have a point that unless they could find where it was comming from there is no way of catching the person responsible.
And knocking on doors at 0130 am isnt a good option especially if its an air weapon that may not have been herd.
Sounds like someone was annoyed at the amount of noise you were making at 0130 noise travels no matter how "quiet" you think you were.
Edited << and what Gone said.
>> Edited by ^Slider^ on Monday 14th March 11:40
But BiB did have a point that unless they could find where it was comming from there is no way of catching the person responsible.
And knocking on doors at 0130 am isnt a good option especially if its an air weapon that may not have been herd.
Sounds like someone was annoyed at the amount of noise you were making at 0130 noise travels no matter how "quiet" you think you were.
Edited << and what Gone said.
>> Edited by ^Slider^ on Monday 14th March 11:40
lieber gone said:
The two police officers then jumped back into their car and drove off, making absolutely no attempt to investigate where this was coming from or who was responsible.
How do you know what they did from that point onwards?
They may well have gone to investigate where the missiles were coming from.
Thought wiggy said the second missile came from school field opposite?
They could have taken look-see into school field at least
lieber gone said:
Or did you expect them stage a 'man from milk tray' operation to get to the area the problem was coming from ( unless of course you had a gate into the area from your property
But of course Liebchen! I need to see how my money ist being spent on your training und developing your strongest muscles
Und besides -
I do expect my husband to go through fire und water to bring me my chocolates 
lieber gone said:
Does anyone believe I have grounds for complaint
If you feel you need to complain, then I would urge you to do so.
What would be the grounds of your complaint?
Attitude of the attending officers?
Rudeness of officers?
The fact you assume they did nothing? (which you really do not know at the moment
But at least if he complains he can find out what (if anything) they actually did. I would have expected them to tell me they would explore the field where the missile apparently came from - given that they were talking to wiggy when this occurred. It could have damaged the police car - und what about any one in way?
lieber gone said:
wiggy001 said:
This just stinks of another example whereby the police are next to useless when you seriously need them... :angry:
Apologies for the long rant...
Sorry you did not get the service you thought you deserved!
Did you expect ARV and helicopter response?
What response did you expect?
Are you aware of any other actions that might have been deployed to deal with your complaint?
Do you know if any other people had complained of damage to windows i your neighbourhood?
How do you know that the officers were not aware of such information already?
I think he expected them to at least investigate the field und arrest or caution the little scrote chucking missiles at a house. Und if the officers were aware of other incidents - all the more reason for them to reassure wiggy that they were taking matter seriously.
Thanks for the responses so far guys. I think Wildcat has my feelings worked out but to clarify:
1. No, I don't have much experience of firearms, although I can now see that this was more likely someone with a catapult than any kind of gun, although an airgun is also a possibility. My point is that at the time I simply didn't know, and received nothing in the way of reassurance from the BIB.
2. Related to the above, aren't certain catapults classed as firearms? ie slightly serious? Regardless of what it was, it made a hole in my glass and I didn't want it making a hole in one of my guests!
3. No, I didn't expect a full armed response, but surely investigating the area the missiles came from would be the minimum I could expect? Even shining a torch across the field might have led me to believe they had done something...
4. I know they did nothing as they drove off from my cul-de-sac without stopping.
5. The only houses near me are on my side of the road, with the school taking up the other side - I very much doubt a neighbour would climb a 6'6" fence into the school field to fire marbles at my house if they were upset with the noise!
6. I think the reason why someone was firing things at my house is a little irrelevant. A crime was committed (criminal damage as a minimum, potentially firearms) and, at the time, nothing was physically done.
7. Grounds for complaint would simply be that nothing was physically done at the time. No check of the area concerned and no talking to neighbours.
8. On the point of my neighbours, the presence of a police-car brought my immediate neighbour to her front door to see what was going on - they could at least have asked her if she knew anything (as she was awake and less that 10 yards away).
Can any of the resident BIB (especially Gone) not see that this kind of thing just reinforces many people's (including my own now) negative opinion of the police? I'm not having a go at all BIB - infact in my situation there was the usual good cop/bad cop and good cop seemed to sympathise with my POV.
1. No, I don't have much experience of firearms, although I can now see that this was more likely someone with a catapult than any kind of gun, although an airgun is also a possibility. My point is that at the time I simply didn't know, and received nothing in the way of reassurance from the BIB.
2. Related to the above, aren't certain catapults classed as firearms? ie slightly serious? Regardless of what it was, it made a hole in my glass and I didn't want it making a hole in one of my guests!
3. No, I didn't expect a full armed response, but surely investigating the area the missiles came from would be the minimum I could expect? Even shining a torch across the field might have led me to believe they had done something...
4. I know they did nothing as they drove off from my cul-de-sac without stopping.
5. The only houses near me are on my side of the road, with the school taking up the other side - I very much doubt a neighbour would climb a 6'6" fence into the school field to fire marbles at my house if they were upset with the noise!
6. I think the reason why someone was firing things at my house is a little irrelevant. A crime was committed (criminal damage as a minimum, potentially firearms) and, at the time, nothing was physically done.
7. Grounds for complaint would simply be that nothing was physically done at the time. No check of the area concerned and no talking to neighbours.
8. On the point of my neighbours, the presence of a police-car brought my immediate neighbour to her front door to see what was going on - they could at least have asked her if she knew anything (as she was awake and less that 10 yards away).
Can any of the resident BIB (especially Gone) not see that this kind of thing just reinforces many people's (including my own now) negative opinion of the police? I'm not having a go at all BIB - infact in my situation there was the usual good cop/bad cop and good cop seemed to sympathise with my POV.
gone said:
Sorry you did not get the service you thought you deserved!
Did you expect ARV and helicopter response?
What response did you expect?
Are you aware of any other actions that might have been deployed to deal with your complaint?
Do you know if any other people had complained of damage to windows i your neighbourhood?
How do you know that the officers were not aware of such information already?
Thats OK (about the long rant)
I dunno the "What do you expect me to do about it, go and ask the neighbours" remark would suggest that they don't give a stuff, wouldn't it ?
You don't think this Officers attitude is pathetic ?
All you can do is wildly hypothesise that criticism isn't fair because they might have done something, even though they were totally disinterested while they were there ?
Sheesh.
^Slider^ said:
I still would have expected the minimum of a crime report taken and statements etc.
But BiB did have a point that unless they could find where it was comming from there is no way of catching the person responsible.
And knocking on doors at 0130 am isnt a good option especially if its an air weapon that may not have been herd.
Sounds like someone was annoyed at the amount of noise you were making at 0130 noise travels no matter how "quiet" you think you were.
Edited << and what Gone said.
>> Edited by ^Slider^ on Monday 14th March 11:40
Well, it's generally not difficult to find out where a missile is coming from, unless you are suggesting it bounced of a wall first !
Slider, this is really unacceptable. The Police attitude was pathetic, they didn't even go to have a look - and your last comment I hope is a joke.
I thought there was housing over the road hence the comment.
End of the day there are things that may have been done in the background. such as the unit that attended took details / statements etc. and another unit may have done an area search for possible offenders. The car that attended may have shot off to do an area search themselves after taking details.
You just dont know.
End of the day there are things that may have been done in the background. such as the unit that attended took details / statements etc. and another unit may have done an area search for possible offenders. The car that attended may have shot off to do an area search themselves after taking details.
You just dont know.
I do have to admit however, that IF that was the exact conversation that took place it was poor service.
It almost seems that there is something said prior to that such as an alligation made that wiggy knew who he thought shot out the glass hence why,, we cant act without proof parts of the conversation.
It almost seems that there is something said prior to that such as an alligation made that wiggy knew who he thought shot out the glass hence why,, we cant act without proof parts of the conversation.
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