Uh oh…
The Casey review had the quote “short term projects designed entirely to generate evidence for promotion” and everyone could make half a dozen.
I’ve know Neighbourhood Polcing to have 4 names in the past 20 years.
Problem oriented policing.
Because we wouldn’t want to police area where there are no problems.
I’m still surprised no one has decided to redo the Neighbourhood Watch logo.
That looks like an easy way to spaff some money up the wall. (Although, I do think it needs it)
Problem Oriented Policing
Reassurance
Neighbourhood Policing x2
If they’re not willing to investigate such common crimes, is there any point to the BTP continuing to exist?
BTP’s focus has always been in 3 areas, it doesn’t have the resources for much more:
Counter Terrorism
Events (moving tens of thousands of football fans every weekend)
Disruption (people under trains, trespassers etc).
Everything else comes a very distant second, especially since the wonderful mayor of London insisted he needs 120 cops on foot for night tube (which is one of his greatest and least mentioned failings)
I don’t agree with this decision, but I do get where it’s come from, how many bike thefts a day, how many hours of CCTV to trawl? They are really just coming into line with everyone else.
Ok, let them drop it, but in return make the organisational financially liable for the replacement cost of the bike on any case where they choose not to investigate.
Anything else is a deliberate injustice to the victim.
You realise the police Triage crimes all day everyday? Just because a crime is solvable doesn’t mean that it’s in the public interest to do so.
Report a bike stolen to GMP or Merseyside and see how far you get with an investigation actually being conducted.
You want every crime investigated better be prepared a shed load more tax.
The Met has just had to disband its Burglary Squad due to a lack of funds.
The motto for this round of cuts isn’t do more with less like, it was under the coalition, it’s give less get less.
Precisely, they triage them - they don’t just discard them over a stupid arbitrary time limit, essentially saying it’s the owner’s fault for the bike being in the outdoors for more than 2 hours. Would you apply the same logic for stolen cars?
Frankly, I’ve witnessed first-hand the bias that police have against cyclists and this absolutely reeks of a continuation of that.
12 years ago I was hit by a driver in London who failed to stop, leading to an injury that required medical treatment for several months. The Met had clear CCTV, an exact timeframe of when to check it, the vehicle’s SCRIM info and everything else they needed to take a dangerous driver off the road. Their response? “Oh well we knocked at his door and he didn’t answer so we gave up.” - I wish I was exaggerating.
Not long after that, I was hit in a road rage incident in the City. Luckily nothing serious, but clear and deliberate aggression by a driver in front of their young child. The City of London Police’s response was that they weren’t going to bother trying to track down the driver, even for a quiet word, but they were very keen to have a go at me for remonstrating with the driver after he chose to endanger me.
The police in this country are institutionally anti-cycling, despite their best efforts to whitewash it with “awareness” campaigns that almost always victim blame. This latest action by BTP is a symptom of that institutional bias.
You think the Police are trawling CCTV for stolen cars?
If your car gets nicked the numberplate is going on ANPR and that’s it, unless you’ve got a tracker.
Why do you think shoplifting was ignored for so long? Because there was an arbitrary limit, if it was below a certain value it was closed straight away.
It ultimately comes down to best use of resources and for BTP if it comes down to a choice between trawling CCTV for an insured bike or having a decent sized escort for Millwall going to play away on the league the choice is the second one.
I was listening to an interesting chat on LBC about shoplifting, and there were loads of shop staff explaining that big stores used to be hotter on shoplifting until the cost of preventative measures became higher than the loss risk. They basically stopped paying for better CCTV and security, and more staff because it was cheaper to take the hit on stock.
1 Like
We’ve felt similar at work about investing in more CCTV. No point in having it if the police won’t actually go after those stealing from us.
Recently, the police have actually arrested someone for stealing from our yard, but we still don’t expect much to come from it.
From the big chain there are several elements of shoplifting that make the willing to take the hit.
-
They won’t take basic crime prevention measures because they want expensive stock out where customers can get to it, they also want it by the door to entice customers in.
-
They don’t want to spend the money on kit and staff when the markup on the goods is so good. They can afford to lose loads of stock out the DofE.
-
They don’t want staff abstracted to go to court in working hours, so they discourage staff from reporting.
That’s the wrong way around. The police are catching fewer shoplifters partly BECAUSE of these decisions:
- There’s less preventative measures, so more shoplifting.
- There’s less evidence gathering equipment and people, so fewer identified defendants.
If you call the police as a shop and report a shoplifting after the event, if the CCTV isn’t clear, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.
Where attention becomes focussed, or has done recently, is because shoplifters have started pulling knives on staff, which turns a simple summary- only shoplifting into a knifepoint robbery, (Max 6 months becomes minimum 4 years!)
Thing is, our neighbouring units have pretty good CCTV already, and we have 1 camera. We’ve gone to the police with very good evidence in the past and nothing has been done. Likewise with our neighbours.
This recent time I went round to 4 separate business near us to gather evidence. I really do question whether that’s something I should have to do at all, or whether I should just be reporting the theft and letting the police do the leg work. But I know the leg work won’t get done.
Valid points all.
That said it’s an example of where technology appears to offer a solution but then the costs kick in.
Relatives who worked in retail years ago called theft (shoplifting but also employee theft etch ‘shrinkage’ and a percentage was built into margins and stock orders.
Then CCTV and other ‘inventory control’ measures came along and management thought they could do away with shrinkage and boost profits.
But the systems cost money and the tags etc slow transactions and annoy honest customers.
So management decided to save money on the counter measures to boost profits…
Which I’d accept if this was a new thing, but it isn’t. Hence me giving examples from more than a decade ago.
There’s been distinct changes to the way shoplifting has been managed, but this latest statement is just a continuation of the normal deprioritisation of anyone on a bike that we’ve always witnessed.
The problem with CCTV is that it helps the police know WHAT happened, but without the WHO, it doesn’t have separate value.
A decent enough photo spread over Facebook normally gets a name quick enough 
Certainly the case in our most recent incident!
1 Like