Not serious enough

The lady across the road, who lives alone, bought herself a nice new car recently. I say 'nice', it was, until somebody decided to smash it front and back with a brick, while it was parked on her drive.

She reported it to the coppers. There response was apparently that they wont do anything because "it was probably just kids" and its not serious.

So she reported it to the council's anti-social behaviour team, who were apparently equally disinterested.

There's no wonder there is such contempt these days for our fully paid for authorities.

Now if she was to catch the perpetrators who smashed up many thousands of pounds worth of car on her own property, and gave them a slight clip round the ear hole, you can be pretty sure she'd be done for assault AND be terrorised for ever more by every scruffy little chav in the area.

 

It's criminal damage

 

It's absolutely crazy.
What those amoebas in power don't realize is that without any discipline and repercussions, those miscreants will simply move on to bigger and bigger crimes.
Eventually they will get nicked (when the crime is "serious" enough), probably serve some time, get a criminal record thus decimating their chances of gainful employment driving them to more crime.
And so the wheel goes round and round.

 

Hmm, they've set a good precedence for the next time I do the same to a police car then,

"It was probably just Admin" and it's not serious.

 

You would then have to change your "mood" to:

 

So, what is she going to do about this?

Hopefully, she will either:

a) write a letter to her local MP
b) write a complaint to the IPCC
c) Complain to the local council re: their anti-social behaviour team
d) all of the above

If the Police were called, I could potentially see that, with no clear 'evidence', which would lead to finding the miscreants who did this, it being very difficult and ineffective to 'investigate'. However, brushing her off with such trite remarks is not really "customer" friendly! Unless, of course, they did explain that to her and the "Chinese whispers" effect is what you have now come to believe as fact?

The councils seem to require "at least" two or more complaints (from different people) before they will even acknowledge a complaint has been lodged. Now, on the one hand, I can appreciate that point of view: for example, this would (hopefully) discourage people from a one-on-one vendetta/bitch fight style scenario (which would cost a mini fortune in admin to sort out and would only add extra shillings to already huge community charges!). But, as is often the case, it does exclude "common sense" from prevailing over "red tape"!

It is oh so easy to criticize/have contempt for the authorities we turn to at times of distress and crises: far harder to stand back and take either a broader view, a dispassionate view or to know where to turn to next!

For the woman and situation you describe, I would be taking option D

 

I duly consider that possibility. However having had more experience than I'd like at dealing with these people, I have no doubt her account was pretty accurate.

 

Perhaps

Recommend to her, Option D She'll get a bit more of a response that way.

 

She'll probably also most likely get nicked for a broken tail light, under inflated tyre, excessively dirty windscreen obscuring her view, or whatever else the disgruntled constabulary can think of.

 

Ah, in that case then: Option E; REVOLT!!!!!

 

Its funny (well not funny but you know what I mean) that in this particular 'hood', it is a taboo to talk to the coppers. Its no wonder really, because I've noticed coppers round here treat people with contempt to an even greater degree than elsewhere I've lived. But then the coppers might take this stance because of the taboo about speaking to them, so its a vicious circle. The difference being that the neighbourhood is changing. The people here are mostly good now (years ago this patch had a fair old reputation), but the coppers don't seem to be matching that change, and in any case, they are the ones that are supposedly trained in the art of dealing with people, whereas people round here, as elsewhere, are just people.