Gav's View

I thought, mistakenly apparently, that the police were there to serve and protect. Now three recent events have placed doubt in my mind.

1. Blair announced that ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ is a Victorian ideal that damages justice
2. The police at Labour’s conference used draconian legislation against non-murdering-non-Islamic-non-terrorists (Walter Wolfgang)

And now, someone has approached me after their car was criminally damaged. The car was hit by another when using a theatre in Worthing and the wing-mirror had been broken off. In the way we would hope all would, a witness placed a note under the windscreen wiper with a number saying they had seen who drove into the car and had made a note of the number plate. The damage was assessed by a garage as costing £30 for parts.

When the police were informed they said they would not investigate unless the owner’s insurance company was informed. The victim saw no point in reporting to his insurance company as:

• his excess is greater than the cost of repair; and
• the victim had no guarantee that the police would manage to recover the cost of the claim. There is a high chance that that course of action would cost the car owner in future hiked insurance premiums as he could lose his No Claims Bonus

Surely the police should not be working to avoid invesigating criminal damage? Surely the police should be happy to see you pay for the damage in whichever way you see fit?

If the police will not uphold the law, would others less reasonable than the complainant have taken the law into their own hands? What should someone do in a situation where the police will not uphold the law? A complaint has been sent to those in the relevant positions.

Like this entry? Share it with others:
 |  |  |   |  | 

Politics

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2005 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.