Radio Ham

Bank Holiday. Traditionally a busy time for the police and other emergency services, especially on hot sunny days like today when the alcohol flows a little too freely. I was on an early shift, so much of my time at work is spent when others are in bed. The damage is usually done later.

All human life is here when it comes to the reasons people phone the police. Imagine the scene. Some children playing football kick the ball into your garden. They come to retrieve their ball so you give them and earful. In response they call you a "Fat Cow". Would you call the police to report this incident? Well the Fat Cow in question did.

At the other end of the scale, we received a call from a man whose daughter had been sexually assaulted earlier in the month; this had been reported and the offender had been arrested and released on police bail pending the trial. Today his daughter had received a number of threats and intimidating phone calls from the offender. Under the circumstances my colleague and I felt this was a serious enough job to warrant a priority, and decided to allocate it to the first patrol who came available.

Ten minutes later this man's bank holiday got even worse; we received a second call from the same man reporting an entirely unrelated incident where 3 of his "business associates" had attended with iron bars and were proceeding to batter his person. We managed to drag some officers off other incidents and get them to his address within about 5 minutes, by which time the offenders had gone. A number of attempts were made to locate and arrest the offenders, but without success.

Just before I finished duty we received a further call from the man; he had attended his lockup to find 2 of his vans had been stolen. By this time I imagine he was thinking things couldn't get much worse for him. Whether they did or not I can't say, as I then finished duty.

The above incidents of course took up a great deal of time and used much of our limited resources, and they are serious enough incidents to warrant such attention, but I do find it frustrating. I suspect the assault and the theft of the vans were related; the offenders, who are also the man's business associates, are well known to the police. A background check on the man himself showed that he is also known to us, with a list of many convictions for just the sort of offences for which he was now the aggrieved party. Of course the law should be blind, but it can be depressing when we have to use so many of our resources to deal with such incidents at the expense of more deserving cases. Some peoples lifestyles means that they create a lot of work for the police, sometimes as victims, but at other times as offenders.

PS. In common with many towns, a Bank Holiday festival was held in our area. To manage security a large additional police presence was in force, run by a Silver Control Room. To cover a small fair there were almost ten times as many officers available as I had at my disposal to cover a whole sub-division; and yet when they made an arrest for public order they still required our van to transport the prisoner, so depriving me of 20% of my available resources. This is unfortunately typical. Further more, because the fair itself closed at Five pm, most of the officers also finished duty then; in all likelihood leaving behind them a vast swathe of merrily drunk people to then frequent the pubs nearby and get drunker still. In other words, the extra resources who had been brought on were leaving just when they would be needed most, with the responsibility for dealing with any subsequent disorder dropping on the toes of the meagrely rescourced response officers again; I am just glad that I went home when I did, and when it was likely to all kick off. This is the type of foresight and planning I am sadly well used to, just as you soon will be.