Policing By Text Message

[crazylegs]

Chappie hears what he thinks was a break in progress and phones the police.

They then send a text to explain there are insufficient resources to attend and ask him if anything has been stolen and if so where from.

Chappie then is incredulous that this has happened.

Here's the kicker though, a direct quote...

The call was made at about 0500 BST and the couple were told officers would be sent to scour the area, but shortly afterwards they were awoken by a text message.

They went back to sleep, so it was obviously that much of a concern to them...

[Sylvia727]

If the cops can't come right now, I'd rather get a text message explaining that than waiting around for them. I'd be much more irritated that the cops don't have enough resources to deal with my burglary, and I'd damn well look into what the problem was. I don't see that anyone did anything wrong. Other than that the victims bitched about the method of delivery rather than looking into solving the problem.

[crazylegs]

I'd be much more irritated that the cops don't have enough resources to deal with my burglary,

Oh that's easy.

There are around 130,000 officers in England/Scotland/Wales (NOT including police staff/PCSOs).

Of these around 30,000-40,000 are 'response', that is running around answering calls, then you have the remainder within 'squads', however the majority of these squads do not require then to use their warrented powers and are merely administration tasks, then you have other groups of staff,
TSG (or equiv within each force)
Traffic
Dogs
Airborne
CID
SOCO (there are a few warrented officers within SOCO)
DPG (or equiv within each force)
Neighbourhood Policing Teams (contain fully warrented officers as well as PCSOs)
ARVs
Very few of these will respond to a general call for resources as it 'is not in their remit' or their specialism.

It's not as if there are huge amounts of these resources either, I know of a county force that has 3 (three) traffic cars on duty to cover the entire county at any one point.

[Boozy]

If the police had called with the exact same message instead of texting, would this be news?

No, it would not.

Which is a shame, because the important issue here is that the police are not being given sufficient resources to respond to the needs of the community. It should be a story either way.

Texting has been given a bad rap because it seems to impersonal, and conjures images of teeny-boppers and text speak. Once people get used to the technology, a text message will seem no different than a phonecall.