Interesting to read through all the responses to this thread. To be honest, I was expecting more of a 50:50 ratio in positive and negative opinions, but just from this thread alone shows how useless and a headache they are. Obviously there are good ones and bad ones, but there always seems to be more bad ones. The ones that we personally come across, the ones that we personally depend on or come across on a day to day basis, such as traffic cops and local police forces, the ones we call in time of need, 8 out of 10 times they're useless, dodgy and don't give a monkeys. These days to them it's just a job, whereas once they saw it as a responsibility and a role of great importance in society.
Personally, in my family and across my friendship groups, there not a single time they've actually done good and helped. They've always been utterly useless, corrupt and a total waste of time.
Here's some examples:
Many years ago when I was young, my dad was stopped at a red traffic light at a cross road. Behind was a police car that started flashing it's blues on approaching the traffic lights. Came up behind my dad right up to his rear bumper beeping pressuring my dad to move. There was no where to go other than through the red to allow the police car to pass. Since he was so pushy and pressuring my dad to move, he checked if it was clear (which it was, was a quiet time of the day), and passed through the red so the police vehicle could get by. Well guess what, he pulls my dad over and gets out with this young little trainee chum. He asks why he went through a red, "well it was because you were beeping and pressuring to get by at the lights and making me move", to which the total scum liar denies. Clearly just used it as a easy little demonstration for his little student to show how to deal with pulling someone over. Well it went all the way to court where the lying smug faced nasty piece of work continued denying what he'd done and my dad was landed with 3 points and a nasty fine, at a time when he was skint and barely getting by due to financial difficulties. total scum. Entrapment at it's finest. So because of that, if I'm at a red and a police car comes up behind me I will not be moving an inch if I'm close to that white line, he can wait, as legally I do not need to move unless it's safe to do so, and they are not allowed to pressure me to move. I'm not taking the risk that the police behind me could be another nasty piece of work that will pull me up for passing over the white line to let them pass me, even if it's perfectly safe to do so.
Another time, my dad was pulled over for what reason we have no idea, my dad keeps his wallet in his back pocket which contains his licence, always has. So as the piece of work approached, my dad had just unclipped his seatbelt and was leaning forward in his seat reaching for his wallet to retrieve his licence. The piece of work says I saw you weren't wearing your seatbelt and have pulled you over for it (obviously spotted it as a easy little win for him). There were more than 2 in the car that all explained my dad had just removed his seatbelt, which he would have blatantly seen himself on approaching. But nope, not interested so another 3 points.
Just last year, my dad used to work nights so was driving to and from work when there's barely any cars on the road, round the M25. As it's dead he'd be following the highway code and driving in the 1st lane as the roads are dead so no one to overtake. Comes across this car plodding along at 60mph in the 3rd lane of the 4 lane stretch of the motorway. As my dad approached behind in the 1st lane the car was getting slower, well this idiot is lane hogging (badly as such low speed) so as the roads empty just passed in the 1st lane safely 2 lanes away from it as it's just ridiculous crossing from lane 1 to 4 and back to 1 again. well guess what, the car moves across 2 lanes in to the 1st lane behind my dad and turns it's blues on, it's another piece of work in an unmarked car. Lane hogging at 60mph in the 3rd lane with no other car on the road, blatantly slowed down as he spotted my dad approaching driving properly in the 1st lane and saw an easy ticket. Entrapment yet again.
Between 2003 and 2010 my parent's used to run their own retail store. Used to be open till late so every now and again you'd get trouble, some times serious trouble and the police will need to be called. Absolutely utterly useless on every single occasion. No one would turn up, then around 4-5 weeks later one would turn up to ask what happened, no care or interest in the world, just a job on his to do list for the day. After that you'd never hear from them again. Total waste of time every single time, in the end we stopped wasting our time and deal with it ourselves which on more than once occasion ended with scum bags leaving a little.. say injured.
Just join the local facebook community pages for the local towns round here. Constant complaints of zero police presence round here and how useless they are when called out. There are constant burglaries to the point there's at least 1 every night, cars constantly being stolen again almost a nightly occurrence. constant cctv footage being posted up of scum bags going down the road up every single house's driveway checking each car for any that are unlocked, don't even care when security lights on the driveways turn on. Constant complains of the idiots on loud quad bikes and dirt bikes roaming round like total nutters on pavements playing chicken with people walking on footpaths, especially women and young children. ruining local football and rugby pitches. Scummy young kids and teenagers causing serious problems, vandalism, wrecking peoples fences, bullying younger kids in parks especially ones on their own or in very small groups, intimidating the elderly round here. Call up the police and they don't bother turning up, just given an incident number every time and nothing happens. no one turns up, not interested at all. basically a not our problem attitude. The least you'd think they could do is send a patrol car out to roam around every few nights just to keep an eye on things. This area is heavily targeted by thieves as it's known there's no police presence and that no ones coming. Yet if someone gets fed up, feels they've had enough and goes and lay's one of these scum bags out, guess who'd be nicked in no time.
Recently round here we had a bad problem with travelers trespassing and setting up on land. Worst one was when they broke the gates to a local park and set up on there, in the middle of our town in plain sight of everyone. Looked like a total tip and animal farm with their horses dumping all over the field. This park backs onto houses, and these nasty pieces of work were helping themselves into these people's back gardens taking water from their garden taps and taking whatever else they wanted. On the opposite side is a social club that had thefts and a break in from these scum bags. Caused problems at local shops, stealing and intimidating workers. Call the police, no one turns up for days, and when one is finally spotted, it drives pass slowly taking a little look and sods off. Done nothing at all. No care or interest what so ever. Then it takes them an age to finally get them moved on.
Another traveler problem round here is that they like to do their horse and cart racing down one of our busy dual carriage ways, no care in the world for traffic, a large number of them turn up to do races. Us residents fed up of it made it clear we wanted it stopped as it happens every year. We're promised this massive police presence to stop the event and some sop called authorisation has been signed to approve the police to stop the event. Well that was a total waste of time, we were promised a high police presence, NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD- all police turned up, a few cars that's it. no attempt to stop the event, they closed the road off for them and joined in watching the event all day and cheering. A total waste of space. idiots.
Now the
biggest one I will never forget and proved how a total waste of space and oxygen our police are is what happened in my uncles estate in Milton Keynes up until the end of last year.
I won't ever forget the complete useless idiots of Milton Keynes police in who did absolutely nothing and I mean nothing about a scum bag nasty piece of work teenager who was going out at night keying up cars using a screw driver or blade of some sort (and I mean the whole car until no panel was left unscratched), and the police had zero interest and did nothing to help. That is when I'd had it with police and will never ever bother calling them or rely on them.
My uncle had only just moved to the estate coming up to a year, it is a brand new estate with rather nice houses so the cars parked outside are rather nice too. My uncle (my dad's younger brother) had saved up and treated himself and his wife to a black Audi A7 quattro which he paid £25k for, a lot of money and it's his pride and joy and his achievement. Well his audi was keyed one night, 2 marks down the whole length on each side of the car. At the time, we didn't know when it was done, and as all the neighbours are good, we thought it may had been done else where and he hadn't noticed until the next morning. Well turned out that several cars in the estate had been keyed and we hadn't realised. The car was repaired privately as insurance companies would only use the claim to cash in on ridiculous rip off insurance quotes in the future and it wasn't cheap as 2 full sides had to be resprayed.
Quite a few months later in August 2015 myself and another uncle of mine stayed round my uncles's for a couple nights. I was pretty concerned about leaving my Typhoon ZT outside but as we believed this was just a once off incident, my uncle reassured me it would be safe and had me park it on the driveway near the road. My other uncle who also stayed had his wife's expensive black audi A5 parked outside in front of the house half in the road. Well we woke up the next morning to find his Audi A5 completely scratched to pieces on every single panel, with not a single panel left. The whole car covered in circles and circles of keyed scratches. My heart was racing when I went past the audi on the road to the driveway which was next to the house expecting to find my beloved ZT with the exact same fate, thinking I am screwed now as I'd never be able to have that fixed. Thank god mine was left untouched! And I was extremely lucky as the teen had targeted dark coloured cars so every single black, dark blue, dark green etc coloured car down my uncles road had been keyed to pieces. We counted around 15 cars, including the neighbours car who had just moved in 2 days before the incident and had their new mercedes keyed completely all over, which I think they must have ended up selling as I didn't see it anymore too long after. It was extremely lucky that on that weekend my aunt had taken the A7 to Leeds, otherwise that would have been done for a second time that night.
Well that morning I spent a few hours going through many cctv footage videos to see if I could spot the person responsible (the cctv camera is one of those sensor ones that is activated by movement - and annoyingly there was a little spider's web in the top corner which kept activating the camera every few minutes, so I was left with over 50 clips to go through for that night). Well I found him on the footage. The camera sees the full length of the driveway, and right across to the other side of the road and the house opposite, so anyone going down the road will be captured on the camera. Unfortunately the Audi A5 was just out of sight otherwise that would have been captured. At around 3am, he shows up on the footage after keying the audi walking across the driveway brushing past the rear of my ZT, stops, looks around very edgy, goes to carry on walking and suddenly turns around and runs across the road, which is when he keys the car opposite which was also done but just out of shot. No one else walked or drove past the house all night so it was 100% clear it was him due to that alone as car's had been keyed down the whole road. The footage was clear night vision, so you could see what he was wearing, work out roughly how tall he was, see some of his facial features as he was wearing a hood, see his body language etc. So it was a good place to start. Police turn up and we show them the footage, no interest what so ever because they couldn't see him actually scratching a car, weren't even interested in using it as a starting point for a description of a suspect they could look for. Absolutely no care what so ever. Utterly useless and pathetic, unless it's handed to them on a plate they're not interested as they'd actually have to do some work for a change.
Well months and months of this activity carried on, with some residents having all of their cars vandalised and some on more than 1 occasion. Police showed no care or interest what so ever. We asked that a temp cctv camera be put up to try and catch him, their excuse is they only have a few temp cctv camera's and they're already being used in other estates. We ask that a patrol car be sent round during the nights now and again to try and catch him in the act, nope not interested, never saw a single patrol car.
In the end the residents got fed up and took matters into their own hands as the police were doing nothing about it what so ever. Most residence forked out to have cctv fitted outside of their homes at their own expense to try and protect their vehicles or at least catch him on cctv. That didn't stop him, he covered his face and continued to key up cars, scratching swear words and things like "haha" into the side of cars as he knew the police are not doing anything and there's no one to stop him. In the end it got to the point where guys living in the area were staying up all night for many nights (hard working tax paying people who all have full time day jobs some doing over 14 hours a day with travel) and he was finally caught and taken down by the residents. Sadly, that night before he was caught, my uncles A7 was keyed up for the second time but this time every single panel was done and extremely badly
and yet again my uncles was left with paying up the bill to have the whole car resprayed.
And guess what the police did when he was handed in, absolutely NOTHING AGAIN!!!!!!
he didn't even spend a night in a cell, no conviction, no fine no nothing! it's frekin insane! yet if one of us caught him and knocked him out I bet you any money they'd be coming down on us with all guns blazing looking at prison sentences let a alone fines.
And to top it all off to show how useless and pathetic the police are, well word got out who the teen was who'd been doing all this and where he lived - the idiot lived in the same estate about 12 doors down from my uncles house, he was stupid enough to do it in his own estate whilst we thought someone had been coming from the neighbouring estates. So you know what the police did, as it was highly likely he'd get his teeth kicked in, the police put up a cctv security camera outside his front door to protect him!
where the hell did that cctv camera come from so quickly now? where was it when the residence needed it? Absolute kick in the testicles after everything the estate went through. The police also threatened prosecution for anyone who announces who the teenager is and where he lives!
absolute useless pieces of feces!
So the whole estate has been left with well over £100k worth of damage to their vehicles, most vehicles in the estate requiring full resprays, some more than once. Insurance premiums have spiked in the area due to the extortionate number of insurance claims due to vandalism, so now everyone has to pay much more for insurance due to making claims in the last year and also due to the premiums being increased due to the area now being high risk and will stay that way for a long time. Residence were left stressed, had been hit financially, had family members who'd visited and were left with keyed up cars, felt unsafe in their own homes, left without sleep as you can't sleep when you're constantly worried about your brand new £25k+ car outside being wrecked, the emotional stress too. House prices would also be affected. And even now a year later everyone still worries that he may do it again. There's nothing to stop him or deter him. I still refuse to leave my ZT outside even if it's for a few hours and park it at my grand parents about 15 mins away and then get a lift to my uncles place. And what was done by the police, absolutely nothing at all. What was the punishment, absolutely nothing, he might as well got a reward.
So there you go, I have my reasons for absolutely hating the police and see them as a total useless waste of space and don't trust any of them. Not once have they ever been any use to us personally. on every occasion they've been useless and a waste of time. So we don't ever bother with them.
All they are interested in are easy wins, easy tickets, easy little money earners. Hence why the motorists is always heavily targeted, easy wins, drivers can't do anything about it and can't defend themselves. You can be falsely accused and unless you have a passenger or cam footage to back you up there's nothing you can do. The police aren't interested in real problems and crimes that really affect you and your communities physically or emotionally, burglaries, thefts, damage to your property, antisocial behavior etc, times when we really need help they're not interested. But hey a change to make a quick £££ through a quick fine and they're there in an instant. They wont come when there's all these bad things happening in the town but they've got time and resources to sit someone in a speed trap all day in our to catch the hard working tax payer not quite paying attention and doing 35 in a 30 when there's been no one run over here, where accidents are a rarity in this town and the ones that have happened are due to driver error at junctions and not speed, and no ones ever been killed due to a traffic accident. it's pathetic. Come to doing proper police work and you're given an incident number and you'll never hear from them again.
And I before anyone assumes I have a problem because I've been caught speeding or something, I have a clean licence, always have, no accidents, and I've only ever been pulled over once late at night on my 18th birthday on my way home from work in London. I'd only just pulled out of Upminster station car park where I'd left my car, and already seen the police car following me, and he pulled me over obviously flagged it's my birthday and assumed I'd been drinking. He saw me come out of the station and still asked when I'd come from, idiot. Well I don't even drink, clearly I hadn't been drinking as I'd been driving perfectly fine for the 5 mins he'd been following me and was short and abrupt with me and rather disapointed when I said I've never had a sip of alcohol in my life. As I let him down, he decided to have a quick revenue check around my car, well again had to disappoint as my cars are maintained to a good standard.
There was once a time when our police were good and took pride in what they do, had common sense and were respected and feared by youngsters. Well now they're just a laughing stock and it's their own reputation and poor standards and unhelpfullness as a whole that's got them there. Some individuals might be wonderful (and I'm sure there are good ones although I've never seen one), but as a whole when it comes to times when we need them personally for things affecting us directly they are useless.