Letters: Crimes are going unreported as police disconnect from the public – The Telegraph
SIR – I have tried to report two crimes in the past two weeks (“Police leave 999 callers hanging”, report, May 31).
If you phone 101, you enter a queue. After twice waiting for an hour and a half, I gave up. Despite opening times on the website stating otherwise, the police station was not open, and on a third visit I was told it would be closed all week.
The next nearest police station had “closed all week” for its “opening” hours. I tried a web form and was told…….
SIR – I have tried to report two crimes in the past two weeks (“Police leave 999 callers hanging”, report, May 31).
If you phone 101, you enter a queue. After twice waiting for an hour and a half, I gave up. Despite opening times on the website stating otherwise, the police station was not open, and on a third visit I was told it would be closed all week.
The next nearest police station had “closed all week” for its “opening” hours. I tried a web form and was told that the form did not cater for the circumstances of the second crime.
If you ring the Police and Crime Commissioner you are told in a recorded message to phone a mobile number. Here I succeeded, only to be told that complaints have to be put in writing. I was given an email address that didn’t work, and neither did the link on the website. The result was that one crime was reported but then in effect closed, and the second remains unreported.
I have sent letters to my MP, the Police and Crime Commissioner headquarters and the Home Secretary. What has it come to when you cannot even get as far as reporting a crime?
Cherryll West
Bristol
SIR – It’s no surprise that police performance is declining, with falling prosecutions, failure to investigate crime and hopeless call centres.
For nearly nine years I was the Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, one of the country’s largest police forces. At the start of my tenure Theresa May, the home secretary at the time, cut the police budget by nearly 30 per cent. To try to maintain frontline police numbers, civilian staff were heavily cut. Some of these cuts fell on call centres.
At the same time the College of Policing became a centre of academic wokery. As it plays a major part in both selecting senior officers and training them, the fall in policing standards was inevitable.
Policing has to get back to its core purpose: the reduction of crime. Priority has to be given to household burglary, violence, anti-social behaviour and fraud. The police cannot go on picking up responsibility for other government agencies.
If offenders are not caught they go on offending. In my first year of office the police were able to reduce household burglary by 60 per cent in one of our larger towns. It can be done.
The cut in police numbers (20,000 since 2010) is being rectified, but it takes time to recruit, train and gain experience.
Anthony Stansfeld
Kintbury, Berkshire
SIR – Poor police performance can be put solely at the doors of the Police …….
