Wednesday, September 07, 2005

It's Not Important Enough

I work in a fairly run down part of London, and some of the trainee solicitors that I work with live in some of the run down parts of London as they are the cheaper places to live. One particular trainee that I work with phoned me on Monday night but did not leave a message, I asked her on Tuesday if her call had been urgent and she told me that there had been an incident outside of her front door where someone had been stabbed. Blood had gone everywhere but the Police had not turned up when called.

On Tuesday the trainee solicitor discovered that a large blood stained machete had been left in her recycling bin by her front door. She had telephoned the Police and she had been told that a Police Officer would come and collect the knife. As a Police Officer had not collected the knife by Wednesday morning the trainee then phoned the Police again and asked what she should do about the dangerous weapon left on her doorstep. She was told not to worry and that she should consider bringing it in to the Police Station. The trainee stated that she may inadvertently destroy evidence if she moved the machete and did not want to walk around London holding what was an offensive weapon. Then the trainee was told that the knife incident was on a list of things to do by the Police, and it ranked as 90th it the list of priorities.

The trainee was quite concerned that the Police did not appear to be concerned about collecting the knife or do anything that appeared to look like they were investigating the stabbing. What concerns me is that the Police seem to have left the crime, and that means there will be one less potential arrest for me to deal with!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

For an inside view as to why this happens check out

First Post

Anonymous said...

Quite right to be concerned, but realistically the police wouldn't have caught the (alleged) offender anyway so you haven't really lost any business.

It was considerate to leave it in the recycling bin, handy in case some other crim. wishes to use it.

Bystander said...

There is no excuse for this kind of sloppy policing.

Anonymous said...

It's a bit disturbing that there are 89 more important things for the police to do than gathering evidence from a blood stained machete after a stabbing. I shudder to think what those 89 things were.

I'm glad I live in a more civilised part of the country.

Anonymous said...

Richard.

I wouldn't worry too much, I don't think it's likely that the 89 more important things would in reality be considered more important by most people.

The 89 more important things will no doubt involve paperwork, minor incidents and diversity issues.

Anonymous said...

hmm not so much shoddy policing as bystander says but a shoddy beaurocratic system that causes this to happen. Had a resource actually been allocated to the incident I have no doubt it would have been forensicated and delbt with propperly..

Anonymous said...

I'm an ex-pat Brit now working for a Police Dept in New Hampshire in the States, and I showed this to some of the officers there.....to say they were astounded would be an understatement! The Lt. in charge found it hard to believe this would be so far down the list, so I would love to know just what were the 89 higher priority incidents.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the victim was unwilling to make any allegations

Gavin said...

Perhaps, but the Crown Prosecution Service seem to be issuing more and more witness summonses these days to get unwiliing witness to Court. You would think that they would make an effort to get the knife and then sort out a witness problem later?