Radio Ham

I have just become aware of this site written by a police Inspector, and it reminds me of an incident a few weeks ago.

We received a call from a woman who stated that her ex had made threats that he was going to go around to her house and blow the premises up. Her ex had previous for firearms offences, and the female was taking this threat seriously.

We got the ball rolling, officers were sent to the address, the Inspector and CID were informed, and then we alerted our supervision to the ongoing incident. I usually wait a little while before I inform my supervision as all they usually do is to then write on the log "please inform outside supervision and CID", ie. exactly what we are doing anyway.

Anyway, on this occasion the Inspector for the division himself attended the address and tried to sort the problem. Meanwhile, as predicted, the duty officer (ie. the Inspector who covers us in comms) typed on the log the usual cut and pasted "inform supervision and CID" regardless of the fact that we had already done so. However, this time, rather than insist we inform the outside Inspector, he wanted us to inform the Superintendant.

Why I do not know. I have never before been asked to inform a Superintendant about such an incident, and I can only assume that we were asked to inform him because the Inspector himself was allocated to the job. In the mind of the duty officer we must just have to inform someone senior whatever the circumstances.

Anyway. the point is that not only am I not used to informing the Superintendant but when asked I realised that I don't know how to. I checked our computerised phone book and realised that we don't even have the Superintendants phone number to hand. I couldn't inform anyone above Inspectors rank what was actually happening in the world even if I wanted to.

Above Inspector are the ranks of Chief Inspector, Superintendant, Chief Superintendant, Assistant Chief Constable, Deputy Chief Constable and Chief Constable. You have to wonder what do they do all day, when they are apparently so totally insulated from day to day policing.

I spoke to a female on the phones yesterday who was understandably upset at the police's response, or lack of it. She had phoned us over a week ago and yet was still waiting for an officer.

Unfortunately this is a far from unusual circumstance and usually I just take the same sympathetic and understanding line; I am not going to argue with someone who states the wait for the police is unacceptable when I agree with every word they say.

I found the relevant incident log and discovered it had been closed and "referred" to the neighbourhood policing unit over 10 days ago and nothing had been done with it. I apologised to the caller and provided her the number for the neighbourhood unit. She was understanding and said she would ring the number right away.

Just before she went she said "I understand you're busy with lots of other more important incidents to deal with; but it's not as if you can claim that you are out catching rapists, because we don't have any in our village".

Poor dear. Quite apart from that fact that we deal with incidents from the whole county, not just her village, in my experience rapists don't respect community values.

There has been a lot of talk about the terrorist raid by police in Forest Gate during which a man was shot. Thankfully the shot man is now recovering; however, both occupants of the house have now been released without charge as it appears the intelligence that led police to the address may have been faulty.

Without knowing the full details of the raid it is difficult to know what else the police could have done under the circumstances. Any delay in acting would surely have also been criticised; it isn't that long ago that police were criticised for not acting during a march against the Danish cartoons, for example. And while it is argued by some that police should have provided more information to the local community, I can understand that discretion is also vital when dealing with a terrorist threat.

Finally it has been mooted that the 250 officers deployed was excessive; and while I can understand that opinion, especially as that is nearly 50 times as many officers as I typically have at my disposal, had they found a chemical device I would have thought a considerable number of officers would be required to evacuate the area safely. I just wonder if the 250 officers had thought ahead and brought their own van, or if they needed to rely on response as usual when they made their arrests?