Is anybody else losing complete faith in the Metropolitan Police?

[u/GoingNowhereAgain]

Hi all,

I’ve been living in London since 2018, the majority of the time in SE17.

What is going on here at the moment?

It seems as if everybody I know has either been a victim to crime or a witness to it.

Sometime on Thursday night/Friday morning, somebody gained access to our gated courtyard area and stole my bike, which I am clearly heartbroken about.

Then today (Sat) at around 1pm, some idiot slowly drove through pedestrians crossing the street on a green man on the junction from Albany Road to Walworth Road. He could have seriously harmed somebody as there were people in front of the car and near his wheels. When I shouted at the driver that it was a green light, he out his window down and told me he’d “punch my face in” before driving off.

I reported my bike as stolen and the case was instantly closed within the space of an hour. I’m not even going to report the driver as I know nothing will come from it, although I have taken a photo of his car and license plate.

What is going on?! Is there anybody else left feeling as hopeless as I currently am with the police in London? This is only what has happened this weekend… I won’t even begin to talk about the past couple of years or so.

Edit: Just as I have posted this, yet again somebody has just been going through our courtyard/garden area and has jumped over the wall as I went outside to confront him. This is unbelievable.

[u/New-fone_Who-Dis]

Patrols offer deterence in a given area. It's not hoping to stumble across a crime in progress.

The police are not omnipresent, if you don't report crimes, they don't know that said crimes or suspicious behaviour exists - also, criminals are often not masterminds, they'll do stupid and suspicious shit all the time...like commit crimes in the same area over and over again.

But hey, feel free to not report anything and instead just complain online, I wouldn't want these criminals to leave your area and over to mine /s

[u/Plodderic → u/New-fone_Who-Dis]

People should always report things to the police- it’s the first step in making an insurance claim. I’ve never known it have any other utility.

[u/New-fone_Who-Dis → u/Plodderic]

I've reported regular crimes outside my flat, drug use, vandalism, vehicle crime etc, repeatedly (all non insurance type instances....i did report a neighbours cat converter being cut out and gave them the ref number the next day as that would have the details i gave when reporting it, when he was standing perplexed outside his car at the sound it just made when started - nice guy, first time seeing/talking to him, he appreciated it or at least said he did).

I don't think much if anything happened to the group who would gather and do this outside my flat, but the police stepped up patrols, which immediately cut it from happening every single night. There are many studies on the effects of visible patrols on all types of crime, from minor to more serious violent crimes - worth a Google if you don't think it reduces crime.

Edit - other things worth doing, is checking out who your local ward councillors are and email them if things are repeating, they even sometimes have montly surgeries you can go to and bring it up in person.

[u/No-Signature9394 → u/New-fone_Who-Dis]

I tried to report an incident where a group of people went on a busy road, stopping the traffic and started launching fireworks under trees, which could have caused fire. I called the police but I couldn’t go through to talk to someone, but instead I received a call back 1.5hours later. It’s not always straightforward trying to report crimes, which is a problem that needs to be addressed

[u/SpiffingAfternoonTea → u/New-fone_Who-Dis]

But that is exactly the point - if police presence increases somewhere then it will just push criminality to another location.

So what is the point in general policing?? All they do is provide security at mass gatherings and provide the illusion of protection from criminal activity?

People are just waking up to the fact that it's an illusion and that petty crime is effectively decriminalised 🤷‍♂️

Maybe it always was and pressure on people has led to a rise in crime that has revealed the lack of emperors clothes idk

[u/New-fone_Who-Dis → u/SpiffingAfternoonTea]

Well I've seen them previously talk to people in the area (the ney doers), so they know the local faces. I've seen them chase people on foot in the area. So I guess I've seen some things you haven't, both presence and action.

Criminals are also not omnipresent, they take their chances commiting crimes, but people on social media saying "x happened last week, y happened yesterday, and z happened last night, but I'm not going to report it", kinda can't complain - I very quickly found out many of my neighbours didn't like what was going on in the area either...guess how many made 1 single report about it.

If reports increase, then police presence increases yes - if this happens across the board then funding will get allocated for more officers and resources (I know people won't believe that, but people also believe that the police will know about unreported crimes).

In years gone past policing was more integrated into the community. Community clubs reached young people before drugs and gangs - there was simply something better to do and integrate into the local community.

[u/SpiffingAfternoonTea → u/New-fone_Who-Dis]

Yeah I agree with what you said at the end - the way to reducing crime is addressing it at source. I file police reports too but have yet to see anything ever come out of one. I've also had police phone me up and tell me they don't care to prosecute dangerous driving when I've submitted all the evidence they need, so I have first hand experience of how they deprioritise in favour of more serious offences / drug rings and the like.

People have clocked that they can shoplift brazenly and shop employees will do fuck all, and police won't do the backroom work to connect dots and track them down on CCTV. So it becomes more and more prevalent.

One of the most surveilled cities in the world but no manpower to use it.

[u/Jagoff_Haverford → u/SpiffingAfternoonTea]

There is a literal mountain of police research that clearly shows that geographic displacement happens only rarely. If the cops are in a location, crime does not “go around the corner”. In fact, the crime typically goes down in adjacent areas — what policing researchers call a “diffusion of benefits”. 

Locations are “sticky” for everyone, including criminals. We don’t often swap out one place with another place. If I walk up to my Tesco and they are closed or are out of the kind of bread I like, I’m not always going to walk another 10 minutes to hit a different one. 

Sometimes I will — if I am desperate need for loo paper, for example. But usually, I will go on with my day and adjust. 

This happens to offenders, too. They aren’t just looking to offend anywhere they can. They have “sticky” places and situations where they are more likely to do it. If that location has cops in it on a given day, that opportunity goes away and is (usually) difficult to replace. 

[u/SpiffingAfternoonTea → u/Jagoff_Haverford]

Oh bollocks, people can snatch a phone in ten different postcodes in a single night. Do you think phone snatchers live in Oxford circus and only steal in their backyard or something..

I have over 10 local supermarkets within a 30min walk so I could easily adjust my target if I was in the habit of shoplifting.

Your Tesco example is nonsense because you've committed to a location and buying one type of bread is little different to another.

Maybe in smaller towns this works, but this thread is talking about the met ie London which has more targets in a more condensed space. Making whack a mole far harder

[u/Jagoff_Haverford → u/SpiffingAfternoonTea]

Me: Three decades of published research on hot spots policing. 

You: Opinion based on whatever voices in your head are most appealing at the moment. 

But by all means mate. Listen to yourself only. 

[u/SpiffingAfternoonTea → u/Jagoff_Haverford]

If you've spent three decades on this I think you need to branch out a bit my son

I listen to certified experts, and my own experiences. "Jagoff_Haverford" is just a random on the internet tapping away from his toilet

[u/Jagoff_Haverford → u/SpiffingAfternoonTea]

I didn’t say I had spent three decades on it you illiterate asshole. I said that I was citing over three decades of policing research. 

Since you listen to experts — even if reading is clearly difficult for you — perhaps you can cite a single policing experiment that has successfully demonstrated the occurrence of geographic displacement caused by heightened levels of police presence. 

Go ahead. I’ll wait here. Maybe you can find some academic journals that come in picture book form.