>>The stupid one was the car theft.

I know someone who had their car stolen in Manchester, basically the police said they don't even have the time nor the resources to come out, they gave him a case number and said to let his insurer handle it.

And the thing is, two days later he actually found his car sitting in a parking lot of a supermarket somewhere, rang the police, and they said "....ok? what do you want us to do?". He said that he would expect them to come out and look for prints or whatever - they said they don't have anyone available to do this, if he still has the keys he should take the car and be happy it was found.

I honestly think in UK unless it's an actual murder your chances of getting a successful intervention from Police are close to zero. They are just way too underfunded and understaffed, I do remember reading that some places like Manchester have like one policeman for 100k people. It's impossible to do effective policing with that kind of force.

> I honestly think in UK unless it's an actual murder your chances of getting a successful intervention from Police are close to zero.

There was the old joke about someone ringing the police to complain about someone burgling their garden shed.

  Police say, we'll send someone tomorrow to have a look.

  Homeowner replies, well I've got a kitchen knife and I'm going to stab this guy unless he leaves without taking any of my property.

  Police immediately send round officers to deal with the incident.

I'm never quite sure if the police are supposed to sending someone to deal with the bugler or to arrest the homeowner.

Well that's something I've heard too - if you are calling about a break in, make sure to mention that you think you saw them carrying a gun/knife. Then they will actually send someone within 5 minutes. Otherwise? They will be gone long before anyone turns up.

And no, I'm not talking about purely hypothetical situation here - my sister was alone at home when two drunk guys were trying to break in, throwing rocks and bricks at the windows, shouting that they are going to come in and get her, she locked herself in her room and rang the police.........they arrived 45 minutes later. If one of the guys didn't cut himself badly on the glass and decided to give up(and the other one bailed then), it could have ended extremely badly, but an active break-in is apparently not enough to send the nearest PC to the scene right now.

I'll mention two examples:

One in which dealers with guns, packages of heroin and cooking up crack cocaine, police be like ok we will put on our intel system, begged to send somebody nowt. I mention egads I might as well just kill myself was joking but once said that the operator wasn't going to let it go without the police checking upon me. Who then wasted their time and they still ignored what was going on in flat below.

Another one was they with lanlord knock on their door, they had dealers in, and waitied 5 minutes - could hear them flusing the toilet 3 times as they flushed all the drugs and only once got rid did they enter and go nothing to see here, didn't even bother checking the system tank etc - pure joke.

Was saying that the local police were akin to the keystone cops, though honestly they made the keystone cops look like the SAS.

But those are just two examples and far bigger and wider than that with too many to go thru, but helps when you do your own intellegence gathering and with that about 4TB of stuff to get out and far far worse.

Haven't the police in the UK been chronically underfunded through a decade plus of austerity policies? I get the feeling they are so under water, they can only deal with the most serious crimes.

I feel like this is exactly correct. Police are so underfunded that outside of London they won't even come out to speak with you unless the crime is very serious. But break ins, car/bike theft, petty issues - forget it, no time or resources to do that.

Its all intelligence lead now a days, so much meta data from mobile phone's you can track most people quite easily. Lifespans of drug users are drastically shortened, and with todays global population which has doubled since 1970's planetary resources are scarce, so are most people bothered if a spipce user is locked in a time vortex?

I noticed that this post appeared on Reddit the other day, suggesting people should start wearing woolly gimp masks to avoid facial recognition, which started in China. Have to wait and see if it catches on in the UK. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/umoflx/wearing_balac...

In part but still so many examples of them failing when no excuse to fail that it just don't carry as much water as you would think.

Though mindful the bigger issue would be prosecution just being so epicly fail and a whole raft of lawyers who know the law way better and the tricks that anybody who does go to court and gets sentence kinda needs to be so blantantly guilty to get past the most liberal minded of easily maniplated jurys by lawyers that even those get pithy sentences which get an automatic discount.

Real issue is prisons that are akin to social/networking clubs for criminals and absolutily no deterant at all.

Let alone failing that are more common than people realise like this example: https://www.businessinsider.com/desperate-letter-details-sui...

Another small example would be https://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/18250633.shoplifter-jaile... in that instance he got let out after two weeks which he was able to still get paid benifits and the joy of being banned from wearing a face-mask in shops just prior to the whole COVID pandemic - what geniues. Heck - how many can get away with calling a judge a Witch and get such a pithy sentence of 6 weeks yet out in 2. Let alone the charges. Hardly a deterant, more holiday club.

So if anything - the whole prision and sentencing system as well as financially propping up the whole prosecution needs to be addressed first as they fail the police who inturn fail everybody else. After all, police hands so tied with things that they are so exposed to being sued for saying even a hurty word to a criminal who has lawyers with skills that sure I can accept some level of blame outside the police, but equally, very mindful of so much failure above and beyond that within their remit that the whole system a stumbling joke to many.

So austerity, not the issue when the ones you have fail so hard and with that, demoralise and push out any that are good. Needs serious overhaul and some serious questons and mistakes admitted to. Cuckooing, it's not all that it seems, far from it, but that's best covered when I get it all public.

Well, hopefully the climate will change and others will come forward once it gets traction as a lot of things just get glossed over and burried to the stage that it does nobody any good and just enables bad actors more than is right. Don't even get me started on the court system which hands out weak sentences and then gives a 50% discount - even today that the whole deterant it was is nolonger the case as it has become so watered down that it casts a mockery of it all and that's just the instances in which it even gets and goes to trial.

I think you underestimate the amount of bureaucracy they can muster to avoid acknowledgement and change. But I live in hope.

Oh I'm fully aware of what they can do in their ability to dismiss, ignore, false flag and can be akin to kicking you in the nuts and feeling that their right to focus upon their hurty ears as you scream in pain, is very much a playbook used by so many in many walks of life. Hence looking at multiple avenues of release to curtail much of that.

That's what the IPCC is for, surely. Talk to them. Don't just give up.

Yeah, do you know that's run by the police. Indeed here is a good example somebody I know experienced. They gave statments to the police about somebody, the police then inturn handed those statments to that person who was able to prove to the dealers that wasn't their fault and get them back in the next day. Complaint to IPCC was dismissed completely.

But that's just one example.

Yeah, with the help of the IPCC they can get two apology letters.

It's always failure with you people, born to lose (but whine on HN in the meantime).

"you people" is never a good place for debate, more so when you glibly dismiss it in a derogatory manner, but then many police etc have that level of arrangance that does them and everybody else no good. You might want to look at things from the other way around perhaps, would you be happy with such a dismissive glib response? I'd say no, and who would.

I'm ok with the apathetic and negative so long as they don't try to infect others. I've no time for whingers, I've a lot of time for people who try - and they may fail (I've had my share of that), but at least they tried.

They tried and were failed and to dismiss that as not the IPCC's fault without knowing the nuances is an easy solution. Whilst nothing is perfect - who polices the people who police the police is perhaps the question. More so given that much of their work is done by...the police themselves. Sure the IPCC now changed to IOPC though still the same issue of not being as indepentant as purported.

Now if it was truely independant with investigations not pulling in and using the police for way to many instances, well - the word independant would carry some weight beyond name only.

As it stands, they are not as independant as people think and who do you esculate to after that? So yes, can see why many have nothing left open to them beyond what some would say winging but when you look at the whole structure. Is being unfairly treated winging or vocalising unjustice, well I'd say the later over jumping upon the former would be a far more fairer go to given all the facts.

This is a good, constructive post, thanks.

OK, I know something about handling stuff like this. The first thing you do is escalate it to your MP. The next thing is to publicise it - organisations just hate being embarrassed in public so you push it to the papers. I know this first hand.

You are right, I don't know the nuances and when you start to look into some people's stories, stuff starts to fall apart often enough and the injustice isn't what it seemed, or may not be there at all, it becomes just grudge. But I do want a better sciety, and I really wish we had a more constructive discussion - HN's threads are sometimes the nearest we get to a perpetual motion machine, forever turning but nothing changes.

Thanks again.

We're not born to lose, we're experienced at failures.

Yet they find the time to prosecute offensive posts on twitter. Anarcho-tyranny