People Lie About Crime

I found this news story online at BBC News. It is basically about people admitting they ring up the police and make up incidents/over exagerate in order to get a police response. Obviously I will leave it to Life of a Comms Operator and A Year In the Life of a Police Operator who have discussed the "non merits" of doing such a thing. However, it begs the question why do people do this.

Often (depending on the controller and their mood etc) will get sent to a "juvinile nuisence" and before I get sent the controller will occasionally add a comment. The most frequent one being "im sure its nothing except them just being young". What do they mean by this?

MoP View: "As they are young and hanging around, they will be waiting to pounce on someone and rob them and kick them in and kill them and vandalise my house and every other bad thing under the sun

Youth View: "There is bugger all to do in this dump so I am going to hang around the park kicking a ball about with a couple of mates until its time to grab some food"

Quite a difference. When I go to these jobs not only does it annoy me that I have been sent to it, it annoys the "youths" also. It annoys them because it makes them feel "criminal" when they have done nothing wrong whatsoever. We often tell them that their only crime is "being young" and sadly people just have a stereotype of a young person being up to no good all the time and nothing they do can be good.

Back to the original news story, what benefit do they have making something up? It gets a police response. Thats it. What happens when they genuinly need a police response but cant as police officers are currently otherwise engaged dealing with a made up report of youths kicking a car in and setting it on fire (as I was the other day). It turned out that these youths had just arrived on the park, this car had been set on fire the day before (it was stone cold, and no wet around it from where fire would have no doubt put it out and it wasnt there the day before the day before!)
The caller wanted me to give him the names and addresses of all these "hoodlems and little shits". When I told him I couldnt and wouldnt, he got a bit pissy at "my attitude" and the fact that it took me "half an hour to get there" (yes mate, im sure it did - I got sent here 5 minutes ago from the other side of town, so actually it didnt take me half an hour, it took the police service half an hour)

He was writing a "report" on my town (ohhhh nearly wrote my force name there without realising!!) which he was going to send to some newspapers/magazines. It was examining how much we are paid and where this money goes (as in deployment) and the hours we work. I was very tempted to "uriniate on his pile of combustion" and tell him that 1) I do this for free 2) will go home when I get fed up 3) have done 4 nights this week for free 5) he would have had to wait longer for a police response had I not got my lazy arse out of bed that day. Ofcourse being such a nice kind officer I am I simply made him feel happy about what he was doing . . . but alas, where does this tie in with the original story (I digress yet again!)

I reckon, that if it were only "actual police related calls" (I use that term in the best meaning way possible) that response times would increase as we actually have officers available to deal with proper jobs rather than silly little arguments which are of a civil matter and have shockingly actually been dispatched to!

So before you pick up that phone to make a call to the police, think about is it actually necesary! (Obviously if its an emergency do call! I am talking about the innocent group of youths playing footbal who are somehow when it gets to us, beating someone up and injecting each other with heroin!)