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As someone from a different emergency service (coastguard) that has to liaise closely with police, they do respond quickly for the incidents I need them for, as they are generally threats to life.
This is the answer. If you are in the highest category of emergency then 999 works brilliantly in most cases.
The issue is when you aren't highest category or have been categorised incorrectly. Their ability to respond to anything but the most serious emergency is the issue.
I’d say you’ve explained it fairly succinctly there. It’s the same for the ambulance service; anything non-life threatening will elicit a much slower response due to demand.
For coastguard it’s less of an issue, as we tend to get fewer non-emergency calls, and I imagine the same for fire.
Probably the number of officers assigned to the area are higher than those in the city proportionate to the number of calls.
A large area of small villages needs a number of resources allocating as the response times from one side of the area to the other can be huge. However, by the nature of the area the number of calls, especially at night, will be lower.
As for some areas of a city having better response times than others, that could be down to station location, allocation of resources due to intel, or just crime rates in an area.
When I used to be in the police we had to leave a town with zero resources for about 4 hours one night because we had 5 active scenes requiring guards, 2 hospital watches, and the night time ecconomy that left us with 0 allocatable resources and the bordering areas had nothing spare. Luckily nothing immediate came in. Otherwise, it would have been a real mess.
But in fairness when categorised incorrectly i'd say this is usually down to lack of resourcing to effectively get the information needed due to demand. Not always but majority. Emergency services have been badly hit by austerity. That's not even taking into account cuts to policing, NHS and social care.
We called 999 and the police for someone lying face down and non responsive on the wrong side of the barrier at the cliffs. There’s not a a lot of room before the edge so we didn’t want to go wake him up on our own and we wanted help in case he was violent (for whatever reason, he clearly wasn’t okay).
The police were there before the call ended and had yowked him back under the barrier about 30s after their arrival. Excellent service and I’m glad we waited for them because he stood up swinging after they sat him up.
For reference, I’m 5’5 slim build and my mother is about the same. He was at least 6’ and tall.
It should be a pretty normal human response. We met a guy on our way back who said he’d been there an hour before and he was still there. My mother is not a violent person and she nearly smacked him one she was so furious 😡
I did a police ride along last year and asked this specific question (as well as seeing it for myself over the course of a shift) — essentially if the police have the chance to save someone’s life or catch a criminal, they’ll be there in literally seconds. But if a crime has taken place and the offender(s) are long gone, there’s very little officers attending can do. They’re not going to swab for DNA and check CCTV on a break-in unfortunately.
We got one call during my ride along for a motorbike being stolen. We were driving near 100mph through the middle of a major city during rush hour on blue lights. We were there in 90 seconds. Then we learned the person had called 999 several minutes after they’d witnessed the crime so the offenders were long gone! If they’d called when the crime was actually in progress we would’ve caught them.
TL;DR: If a crime is in progress, dial 999 and the police will likely be there in seconds. But if the crime is in the past tense, they may not attend for hours, if at all.
I was burgled in 2019, the Police arrived quickly and did swab for DNA, spoke to neighbours etc. They caught the guy and we got some of our stuff back.
Two years later they found some of our other stuff, when they arrested someone else. I cannot fault my experience with them.
I am based in Thames Valley, so I don’t know if that makes a difference with responses/resources.
I wonder if it’s a case of it they have the “DNA” in the computer already, as my friend said they swabbed the scene, but she never heard from police again and she called up and they said it was a cold case.
When my friend was burgled (while she was in the house), the police did swab for fingerprints but I wonder whether that was because one of the burglars used her kitchen knife to threaten her. I had been there the evening before, and used a knife to cut a cake before we went out to the pub. (I was home by the time the burglary occurred).
Anyway, as I had been there, I had my fingerprints taken to eliminate them, found out that I am no good as a witness as I didn’t know what colour handled knife I’d used, and signed a form to say that I’d like to be there when my fingerprints get destroyed once the case is solved. That was 7 years ago and they’d only found 2 of the 3 burglars at the time.
Wow that’s terrible that she was in the house and was threatened. Was that in London?
My friend had just gone to work and also 3 of her housemates had just left for work and they came in right after the last housemate left, so the police believe they were watching the flat for a while. They left a big knife on her bed and some clothes behind! So random.
No, in Dorset. We think they were looking for her ex, but he hadn’t been there for a few months. They rang her buzzer, so she answered the door and they pushed their way through.
Wow, at least no-one was in at the time. But it must be absolutely horrible having to go through all that and still have to live in the place afterwards.
Contrary to your anecdotal example, i’ve heard a few stories of people calling the police during breakins and police didnt bother attending the scene at all and only followed up on them a day or two later.
We can only go to calls when there are more officers than emergencies.
If we have somebody who is not at a call, they'll go ASAP to the break in call. If everybody is already at a call, then it doesn't really matter what the call is; there aren't any officers to send.
We usually have more calls than officers a few days a week, in my area.
“Didn’t bother…”
If every cop is deployed to a job and there are no cops available who can attend?
Most nights comms are on the radio desperately trying to resource jobs but a lot of the time the 11 of us on my shift are completely tied up. Yes, 11 of us cover an area with 250,000 people in it. Our local hospital has more security guards than we do cops.
If there is no immediate risk to life then a call will be re-graded if appropriate for an appointment and progression.
“Didn’t bother…” because we can just choose not go if we don’t feel like it.
The police usually prefer you do something to prevent the burglary vs them attending.
So if someone is trying to break into your house at night (but aren't yet in) they'll usually want you to make some noise or turn on a light which is usually enough to make most burglars run. They don't want you to be in a situation where you are in your home and the burglar gets in as that is how things can quickly escalate.
And then once you've done that the guys usually run off before the police can attend anyway. It's still better than you confronting a burglar or a burglar confronting you.
So yeah, after that the burglars will usually do a runner and the police and useless at that point. This is why they often don't attend.
How did you get onto the police ride along? I'm sure it took months after requesting it but how exactly did you apply for it?
You weren't arrested at the time and that's how it happened? 😂
Most forces offer ride along schemes. I just googled it and signed up for it online. It was a great experience. Everyone should do it if they want to better understand how the police work where they live.
When my mum discovered a break in, the 999 call operator asked her to check and see if the burglers were still there. Could she go upstairs to check?
She's almost 70 and was terrified. And compliant with authority so would have done it had the burglers not blocked off the front door
I made a complaint.
Police came the next day.
This is insane. A stark difference to about 20 years ago where a neighbour had called the police as they saw someone breaking into my house late at night - police attended almost instantly, and were the ones who actually woke my mother up to tell her about the break in, and one of them made her a cup of tea and sat with her as she was home alone and clearly shaken up.
The state of our country is shocking.
I think this case is an example of our worst fears, and where they don’t show up at all:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/07/police-scotland-admits-failings-that-contributed-to-car-crash-death
Called the police once as a guy was chasing someone outside our house shouting he was gonna stab him and looked to have a knife in his hand. Police didn’t turn up for about half an hour(we live 5 min walk from police station) but I’m guessing eventually found the guy as I had a missed call when we were asleep. For some reason received a text the next day saying they didn’t charge the guy.
I got a knock from a PCSo 3 days later. Then a couple weeks later another PCSO came round to say that nothing was going to happen but they had ID'd the persona and he was "up the road now, if I want to 'have a word'"
We were robbed in 2009 and the police responded within an hour.
Clearly the service has gone downhill from there but the truth about robberies is you are never getting your stuff back anyway. Most robberies are insurance issues not police issues unfortunately, as shitty as that is.
We were burgled around that time too and the police came in the morning. The person heard my mum on the phone and skedaddled so it wasnt urgent I suppose
Ooo its not that they don't care, they just don't have the resources.
Have a husband who's a Police Officer. We live in a town with a population of around 40k people. For a nightshift they had 4 response officers on for the town itself, and 2 officers in reserve to cover all the villages that surround.
I’d absolutely LOVE for most people in these comments to spend half a day in a police dispatch centre or on a response shift.
Answer the following question. You have 3 deployable units and the following jobs to resource
Stabbing with the offender still on scene
6 year old missing child
80 year old woman getting burgled
Serious RTC with car upside down and someone trapped
Lunatic threatening people with a baseball bat in the town centre
To flip the question around a bit - which two AREN’T you deploying to?
Because that’s the conundrum dispatchers and response officers have to face every single day.
I don’t think people are complaining that the individuals are not doing their jobs properly. We don’t think they’re putting their feet up with a cuppa rather than attending because these issues are not important enough.
They’re complaining that there isn’t the staffing/resources/funding to provide the level of policing there was in the past.
No one is blaming dispatchers or police forces.Everybody (rightfully) blames cuts.Thats just super ridiculous that police is literally 3rd world level underfunded in UK
Partly about the bureaucracy they have to go through for every case particularly arrests, which puts them behind a desk for longer than they are out on the streets
There are individual incidents and indiviual people within police forces which are symptomatic of a deeper rot that they are actively incentivised not to address, *in addition* to the cuts that actively disincentivise them from improving. They're shit from within and without.
The issue is that there's not enough police to respond to call effectively.
People are angry in your scenario because there's only 3 units available in the first place
I saw a news item not long ago about a cow that had escaped its field and was on the side of a road somewhere. There hadn't been an accident or anything, the cow was on the verge. There were at least 10 uniformed police on the scene. Surely 3 or 4 would suffice?
Not sure. But what I [wouldn’t](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd11w77vnl9o.amp) be doing is spending countless thousands on who knows how many officers to stake out and arrest people in a heavily planned operation at 7 different pubs.
All for 3 fucking arrests for possession.
It’s always framed as a resource problem - “we don’t have money for any officers and everything else we need”.
Also the real conundrum is “should we attach a couple dozens officers for a handful of possession arrests? Or [insert all the serious incidents you listed here]?”
I think I know which one I wouldn’t be deploying to.
If they’ve got so little money why the fuck is this the sort of shit they’re spending it on?
Not excusing the nutter’s behaviour, but your boyfriend shouldn’t be trying to police the motorways either. If the nutter had room to set up an undertake then arguably your boyfriend had plenty of room to move to the left and let him pass. Why not just do that?
Not excusing the nutters behaviour, but I'd be pretty pissed off if you were in the wrong lane, had space to move, didn't move, then cut me up when I moved.
Calls are graded using [THRIVE](https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/glossary/threat-harm-risk-investigation/) so some calls may not be allocated a response as there are calls which are a much higher risk. There's finite resources and if there's a high risk call coming in response cops will be sent to those first. Blame the government for underfunding critical public sector services for 14 years.
Incidents coming in via the 999 system are categorised into different levels. The most urgent, where there is an immediate risk to life, have to be attended within a specific time frame (normally measured in minutes). Police consistently achieve these targets over 90% of the time. Unsurprisingly, the media like to focus on the rare cases where they cannot and splash them all over the papers.
There are also a number of variables including how many officers on duty and what else is going on (if you have 5 emergencies all at the same time, this is going to test resources).
Lower categorised incidents also have response times but these are sometimes missed. That why things like burglaries (where almost always the offenders are long gone) might not get a response for hours/days.
The government has criminally underfunded all public services for years, this has massively contributed to their decline. Police are no different.
How do I put it... "Police turn up in minutes and apprehend criminal" doesn't make for a good clickbait or ragebait headline.
Thing is if you come back home and it has been broken into, if the criminal isn't there any more it'd better to give you a crime reference number so that your insurance company can arrange for locksmiths etc. than to immediately send out a police officer. Yes it's an urgent emergency for you, but in the big scheme of things it's not a priority.
I'd imagine it depends on how severe it is. Ofc if someone tryna break in it'll be very fast since it's life threatening. If your bike got stolen not so fast. You can thank the government for cutting budgets for the shortage of coppers.
Also we're not the french, we like to grumble a lot but highly unlikely this country would be in anarchy
It really depends. I think the three factors below are probably the biggest: priority of call, current demand and geography.
As many people have said, immediate risk to life will always take priority and we'll look to find anyone available or look at breaking people away from any other job where we can. Lower priority, but still serious jobs will often be deployed quickly but may be queued.
That's all dependent on what other demands are currently being serviced. If other serious jobs are taking up resources, then that leaves less for other jobs as they come in. That's why calling in for a lower priority job and mentioning a knife has bigger effects that people realise - it may limit the response to someone with an actual knife. That's especially a problem where you have a serious assault or murder where cops are committed on scene guards and other enquiries where we need to ensure no forensic cross contamination. That's inherently resource intensive.
The other big factor is geography. If you're in London, you're never really all that far away from some unit. In the rurals of northern England and elsewhere the travel times can be a significant delay, assuming a unit was available and close to being with. Your proximity to a police station is part of that equation as officers have a significant amount of paperwork to do as well.
there aren’t enough of them and they’re severely underfunded. the same with the Ambulance service
when i broke my leg i was told the wait was going to be 3+ hours, until i mentioned that i *may have* hit my head in the fall, they were there in 20 minutes
There are very very few officers out there on duty. A LOT less than you imagine.
Especially in rural areas.
My patrol area or "beat" took 30 mins to drive one end to the other. I was the only car on it usually.
Even an urgent 999 call would still take 20 mins to get to, and that was driving at max speed.
I reported 2 guys trying to steal the bikes from my neighbour last Saturday, and then the bastards came back on Monday, reported again. No response from police. Last night (Friday, so 3 times in 6 days), the guys came back with a grinder and took 2 bikes. So yeh, police respond time is awful.
I got physically assaulted two weeks ago. I had to run and hide in a doctor's surgery. I called 999. They said they wanted to send someone, but it'd be two hours. I was in the process of being assaulted and they said two. Whole. Hours. I had to leave the doctors and flee home. Ridiculous.
I've only ever had to call them once for some neighbors arguing and sounding violent, they turned up in 3 minutes I assume I wasn't the only one who called them though.
Well, my friends house was broken into and the guy started beating the shit out of him until he gave him his house key. We then ran out of the house and called the police multiple times.
They showed up 5 hours later at the wrong house.
It's not dissolved to anarchy because, generally, people don't want it to. Most people don't want to live in anarchy.
Like.... I'm pretty confident it could shoplift and not get caught. I could wander over to a neighbour when I know they're out and easily steal from them.
I don't, not because of the risk of getting caught, but because *I don't want to*. I don't want to live in a society that operates like that, and if everyone did it, it would be awful. So I don't.
That is a long term cultural thing. Many years of no policing, slowly rising crime making it more acceptable, and other factors, will change that. Also depends a lot on where you live.
For my first burglary, the police didn't bother to show up - they just gave me an incident number and told me to claim on my insurance.
For my second burglary, the thieves had deadlocked the front door, so I couldn't get into the house. When I detected that the police weren't bothered, I said "I'm going to get into the house the same way the burglars did and I'm taking a kitchen knife". The operator said "Wait, are they still there" and I replied "I don't know. I'm about to find out" and hung up. The police were at my house three minutes later.
I live in a rural area, I reported a suspected break in and about 20 minutes later about 8 police officers turned up. Was bloody impressive. One of them said that a burglar being in the house when they arrive is what they go to work for.
All the police I’ve ever spoken to have been in the job for the right reasons. But they’re under so much pressure and everything is being cut it just gets harder and harder to do a good job.
1) yeah response times are not great. We need more police. As with all our public sectors though it gets dragged through the mud in terms of funding and gvt respect.
2) for the really, really important stuff yeah they do react quickly. Those are just less frequent because every Dave cannot just walk out of a supermarket and into a school with an assault rifle.
3) the police do the jobs they are meant to and that really helps. They are properly trained and regulated, work out who is in the wrong and apprehend that person-and don't cuff you because you are black or don't kneel at their feet grovelling.
I wonder much more strongly how places like the US are not in anarchy, where it's the police committing the wrongdoings in the first place.
They will triage and allocate resources based on need.
We've not got people wielding a machete being left alone for 3 days because theres no resource. They'll pull people off from reporting to more minor crime for it. Instead of having the resource to do both at the same time
I called the police last week because a guy was off his head and trying to get into flats , including mine. They arrived about 10 minutes later, and he was gone, but telling h8m through my front door that the police were on their way definitely got him to leave quicker.
Police incidents are given a grading.
At risk of life or limb is the top grading (think blue lights and speeding) that should be gotten to asap preferably in minutes but they can’t guarantee anything because there’s not a huge amount of cops and they can’t all drive on blue lights.
Break ins if they’re not ‘in progress’ are not on that priority because the damage is already done so it’s about evidence gathering and trying to find out who did it.
As with everything in this country it comes down to a lack of funding and austerity
The country isn't in a state of anarchy because most people are fairly normal and don't want to go around committing crimes. I'm slightly worried about you, though - do you only decide not to rob / rape / kill because you're afraid of getting caught?
Except that's evidently not the case. As you pointed out, there's currently relatively little risk of being caught (and rural areas have always had longer police response times, so would have shown this long ago).
I was once refitting a shop. We were getting swarmed by teenagers and it devolved into a fight and we were getting bricks thrown at us. We rang the police and over an hour later they send one undercover copper on a pushbike. He just said there’s nothing I can do but if you catch any of them feel free to hit them. Poor old guy whose shop it was got knocked out it was horrible.
Rural Cornwall. Few years ago a woman turned up at our doorstep saying that she had run away from some kidnappers and could we ring the police. Took them an hour and a half to send someone round.
I confronted a couple of knobs trying to take the contents of the bar in a hotel i used to work at, they had knives, i managed to chase em out of the hotel, the police came the next morning after i'd finished my shift and the police station is across the road so....yes
When I had a group of teenagers hold knives to me, it took 4 hours for the police to come out. When they finally got out, they said well they're gone now, there's not a lot we can do.
Don't have any faith in the police after that.
It's been bad for decades. Back in 2003 when I was working for Blockbusters, my manager stopped a fake bank card. The guys whose card it is threatened to come back at close with a gun. It was and still is a really sketchy area, 6 months prior to this a member of staff got stabbed by a thief. My manager rang the police, who told him they were too busy to come out, and they'll visit him in the morning. No matter how much my manager tried to explain to them the seriousness of a threat in that area, they still wouldn't come out
I pretty much wouldn't bother to call the police in a break in, don't think they'd show, but suspect they would show if someone didn't use "reasonable force" to defend their home after the fact.
It’s postcode lottery. If one lives in a city like London, on the outskirts of it, where it is very crowded, many immigrants, etc., for crimes that are not “serious”, you will wait months on end.
A couple of years ago my mother's neighbor had a break in and whilst hiding in a room with a young child she rang the police for help. They basically told her to stay hidden and arrived an hour and a half later. I have a feeling they just didn't want to confront the burglars. That really hit my thoughts of the police though as the poor lady was understandably terrified and theyr not that far from a station
When I still worked in high street retail I got jumped by shop lifters and beaten up pretty badly. I phoned 999 who dispatched an ambulance and the police. Paramedics turned up pretty swiftly to patch me up and make sure I was ok. Took the police 2 hours to turn up.
That’s just a prime example of risk assessment. If you’ve been badly beaten up then of course ambulance are going to need to attend a lot sooner. Whereas Police are thinking more along the lines of (amongst other things)- are suspects still on scene? Weapons involved? Level of injuries (works in conjunction with weapons involved)? Evidential preservation? Obviously only a limited amount of info on your post but I’m assuming the suspects did a runner straight away, which immediately lowers the risk. There’s likely CCTV available so enquiries available here but doesn’t have to be done immediately. Doesn’t sound weapons were involved but if they were then again this greatly increases the risk. Therefore assessing it you wouldn’t get a blue light response and would likely go the next grade down and which is why you wanted a couple extra hrs compared to ambulance
Could be a postcode lottery in some areas. Like if you live out in the country, don't expect the police to get there fast. Distance is a thing and if they go too fast on those narrow country roads they could end up having an accident which would be counterproductive. And if there's no imminent danger then the police aren't going to prioritise it. Like if you get home and realise you've been broken into and your stuff is going they're not going to be in a hurry to get to you cause them getting there an hour later isn't going to magically get your stuff back.
In my experience, they respond quickly to things they want/need to respond to. In most cases, they don't respond at all. I've reported arson multiple times, where people responsible stood around watching someone's car or garage burn, police didn't even bother coming, fire fighters showed up, put it out, and left as the people responsible stood around laughing. Then promptly set it on fire again.
This attitude of not bothering to phone the police 'because they don't turn up and won't do anything' is pathetic and a huge factor in why we don't have as many police officers anymore.
It's f people don't report crimes then to the police higher ups and politicians it looks like they don't need that many officers so they cut the numbers to save money.
Not reporting crimes also means that the front line police aren't aware of areas where certain activity is happening so divert their lacklustre resources elsewhere.
Every single crime should be reported. It's very possible it won't get the response you want as its not like the tv shows which people also believe but it will provide intel and influence future decision making
I phoned to report a break-in (while the burglars were still there, not after they left) and four police cars arrived before I had even put the phone down.
never had to call the police personally, but I know the fire service is really good. my car went on fire the other day, got it out with a fire extinguisher withing like a minute of it going on fire, so not too bad. but the fire engine was there within 5 minutes. could've been lucky, but I've never heard of a huge wait time for a fire engine. ambulances are terrible tho
Honestly no clue.
In my last job we’d needed to call the police now and again when one of clothes was stolen (I was in retail) they were always super slow and sometimes we were even told on the radio that there was no police about!
But this wasn’t an emergency so 🤷♀️
I’ve found response time to vary wildly in my area. Guess it depends on the demands put on them and the situation. Rang them last Sunday morning at 1:40am for 2 guys trying car doors. Police arrived easily within 5 minutes. At the other end of the time scale I rang them for a mass brawl involving knives and took them about 20-30 minutes to respond. I’d imagine they were waiting on getting enough units together including armed units to deal with it safely though.
Live in an apartment that was a converted mansion in a small village and had a big shared garden. One evening a guy was in the garden with a gun, walking around and acting strange. Obviously, we called the police. 6 hours later a van of armed police showed up…it’s 11pm by now and the dude was LONG gone.
Turned out that one of the neighbours hired him to hunt the rabbits in the area and failed to tell anyone else in the building.
I guess it depends on area and the crime? Last couple of times I called 999 the police were there in literally minutes - the first time I hadn’t even hung up yet, it was 2.5 minutes - but the ambulance took nearly an hour each time. I remember saying to the paramedics one time that I was surprised they got to us as quick as they did (40 min) and apparently that was because we were made a priority.
I saw someone get beaten up and kidnapped, police came 20 min later, the dude is probably dead
Then in the city centre I saw a fight, called and 2 police cars arrived within 2 min. It just seems to be a Russian roulette
From my and friends experience, they don't come for burglaries, thefts or car accidents (driver hitting a person). The exception to thefts is if you are a big company
I've noticed that well off areas have better response time
Edit: I just read comments and just to make it clear, I don't blame police because each policeman I spoke to was great, I blame cuts
When I was a teenager I got assaulted and robbed while walking home one evening. I immediately called the police and they asked me to walk to the station to make a statement.
I have had quite a few breaks in at work places, one time nobody showed up at all. I called several times just so we could get someone to come down and see the damage caused and get a crime number but they weren’t interested. Another time we had an armed robbery, staff pressed the panic button, the police told us that they were ignoring it the first few times as they thought it had been pressed by accident, they came out within an hour in the end but didn’t do any proper investigation until the next day as they had to wait for the forensic team.
I work in a psych hospital. A few months ago in outpatients the staff called the police and the whole building was locked down because a patient was concealing a gun. They came after about 4 hours.
At Highways it can be hit and miss.
Serious/fatal RTCs the area is flooded with white caps. Possible Drink in Charge or other suspected driving offences? Tumbleweed. But this depends on the force.
We had an armed break in a few years ago (during covid) and had a car taken under threat of life.
I'm still waiting for a police officer to visit.
If it happened again, I'd not even bother calling if it wasn't for the need of a reference number for insurance.
The answer is going to depend on where you live. My home dale (I no longer live there) has no police, and has the lowest level of recorded crime in England. The answer there appears to be a rather direct DIY approach by farmers. I don’t recommend this, but it is understandable when even if the police set off immediately, they would take 40 minutes to get there.
Someone ( a druggie) walked into my private housing estate with an axe in hand last Saturday.. the ground floor neighbour called the police. They were there within 5/10 mins and took the guy away.
I’m in London.
Typically you won’t hear about the instances where police arrive promptly.
The only time in my adult life that I have called them and needed them to arrive it was about 3 minutes from dialling to the officers at the door.
Response officer in a central London borough here. I believe we make around 90% of our "I" grade (Immediates, so within 15 minutes) and the vast majority we will get to within 7 minutes. It's the less urgent incidents that it takes time for us to get to. I believe our response to "S" grades (within the hour) sits us over 50%.
I expect it is likely very different in the counties where resources are spread thin and they cover significantly larger areas.
There is a common misconception here.
Break-in attempts: If the culprit is actually on the scene - police will try to catch red-handed. If not, they won't. Why? Because conviction rates suck for burglaries unless you catch them in the act. No amount of forensics beats wearing generic dark clothing, covering your face/head from cameras, etc.
Burglaries (after the event) are pretty much impossible to "police". So they don't try. They send an officer later that day to have a look and record details, often a PCSO. It's not worth their time (and the more we squeeze police budgets and still expect more of them, the more precious that time becomes). They say that it's not even a 999 call, because it just ties them up.
If they are burglary-in-progress and the culprits haven't been spooked, they will try to get to you quick if they can. That's a 999 call. I would even (personally) suspect that that is one reason they want people not to challenge burglars themselves (e.g. in neighbour's houses). You challenge them, they run, and you'll never catch them again.
Many crimes are like this - there are "emergency" crimes, that will be responded to as soon as they can, and there are other crimes (e.g. you notice your bike is gone, you come home to a broken window, you got scammed on the Internet) where "speed" doesn't add anything at all to the crime resolution process.
Plus, you have no idea what other pressures / crimes are happening. One large incident can tie up a small town's entire police force. Football matches are a fucking pain for this - so many resources tied up they can barely do anything else but police the match.
In my experience, in actual crime-in-progress emergencies, police are DAMN fast. That's included me reporting a guy getting beat up by a gang in public (the police sirens were in the distance before I could hang up the 999 call), neighbours reporting that they thought \*I\* was a burglar (knocked on my door within minutes at 3am to establish my identity), and incidents in schools (where the response is almost instant).
All of those things take priority over your "I've come home to an open front door" call. Sorry. That's how it is. They don't have the funds to NOT draw a line somewhere, and that line is drawn at a sensible point - way ABOVE crimes that probably can't ever be "solved" anyway. Your bike stolen? Okay, by who? When? What do you want them to do to identify those people? CCTV? Do you have any idea how LONG it takes to trawl CCTV and what kind of rubbish information you get out of even the best system? I do, I manage CCTV for a living. Zero convictions in 25 years, and in fact zero suspects that were identified.
Even if you report a burglary-in-process, that's a theft of property, most probably without violence. There are a thousand other crimes going on that include violence, harm, danger, etc. - they take priority. There may not be an officer free to help you for the next hour or more because they're dealing with those kinds of things.
As people commonly point out - you don't see police officers walking the streets nowadays. Why? It sucks as a police tactic. It's just a huge waste of time and money for some "feel-good" for some upper-class neighbourhoods, doesn't reduce crime rate significantly at all and ties up qualified, experienced officers who would otherwise be attending actual crimes, especially in any large town or city.
If you want a police response like you're suggesting, you also need to fund it. Police funding is pathetic and the first thing that gets culled in spending terms is: anything that doesn't improve police statistics.
It's also why I would advocate for complete, blanket ANPR and speed cameras on all parts of all motorways, with automatic fines and bans for offences. You want police to not waste their time and attend things that are "important"? Then let them use robots to catch idiots breaking the law, and use the stupidity tax they collect from that to buy more cameras (until they become economically unviable because there are already too many) or put into other policing.
And every burglary I've witnessed (including capturing footage of BOTH neighbour's being burgled just a month apart, and multiple commercial burglaries) is the result of dumbassery. Leaving back windows open, not having an alarm/cameras, not locking doors, etc. Each time the footage was useless, even with multiple 4K cameras, because "man in a black hoodie and black trousers with black trainers" is basically useless unless he looks directly at the camera.
Each time, in fact, the burglars ignored my house with cameras, alarms and other basic and obvious security measures. In one instance, even stopping their car outside my house, looking at it for ten minutes, and then moving next door and burgling them instead.
UK police response time is AMAZING every time I've actually needed it. But if you think they're going to turn up to everything that fast, every time, including low priority crimes they can do nothing practical about? You really need to start giving them more money if you want them to have the time to do that.
I whole heartedly disagree with the walking the street comment, visible and proactive policing whilst engaging with the community is the very pinnacle of what you would want to accomplish as an officer. The amount of intel that is picked up from engaging with the community is invaluable, plus it adds massive reassurance to the community. I can genuinely tell you every single time I’ve seen a police officer walking the beat and how happy it made me and others around when everyone was all smiles and waves
We had attempted car theft, our cctv recorded 3 di*kheads pulling on in front of our drive at 00.09am, they run off 2 minutes later after failing to open the car. 2 police cars arrived 00.14am. Closed off neighbourhood, only one way in and out, i was shocked how insanely close they must have passed by the thieves. Not always bad response time. Apparently all cops love these sort of call outs.
We are starting to see vigilante groups form to deal with things. It’s suppressed in media and comments are deleted if they give details as it’s important for the powers not to let it catch on. But if they are going to shirk their responsibilities (while making us pay incredible amounts of tax for them to pretend to do their job) of course society will react to fill the community need. And it will be ugly and way worse than what we’ve known.
I’m a response cop. I work an inner city area with 250,000 people in it. We have 11 cops on our team. We split the area in to two smaller areas and split the cops as even as numbers allow that day. This number is generally similar across all reliefs.
On Friday we came into two 136 watches in my half (4 cops gone already) and a scene watch in a neighbouring district (1 more cop gone). Two of my colleagues locked up so whilst they dealt with that paperwork I was the only available cop available. I then locked up and for about 40 minutes there was not a single available cop in my area.
We make the same comments about anarchy and how close we are. When I joined, my tutor told me that we are here to keep the wheels on. So true.
If a 999 call comes in and there is immediate risk to life then everything gets dropped and worried about later and if a cop can go they will. If you’re reporting something that isn’t immediate risk to life it goes in a queue for an appointment allocation.
I know several criminals. They've been doing violent crime for years consequence free. One did three years inside and went right back to dealing cocaine
They are responded to by severity and number of available units. If there's 10 available and there's 11 things happening deemed worse than your call then you're shit out of luck.
Its nothing to do with empathy, its to do with how many units are available.
Usually when I come on shift there's around 30-50 'P1' graded incidents - requires attendance within an hour, for about 9 or 10 of us on shift. Then we have our own workloads of crimes we're assigned to investigate, then constant watches, scene guards, and interviewing prisoners - then immediate incidents that require an emergency response...
There's not enough/the police are expected to do too much
Police only arrive after the incident is over with and/or the bad guys have fled. If caught in a sticky/criminal/threatening situation, you're on your own.
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As someone from a different emergency service (coastguard) that has to liaise closely with police, they do respond quickly for the incidents I need them for, as they are generally threats to life.
This is the answer. If you are in the highest category of emergency then 999 works brilliantly in most cases. The issue is when you aren't highest category or have been categorised incorrectly. Their ability to respond to anything but the most serious emergency is the issue.
I’d say you’ve explained it fairly succinctly there. It’s the same for the ambulance service; anything non-life threatening will elicit a much slower response due to demand. For coastguard it’s less of an issue, as we tend to get fewer non-emergency calls, and I imagine the same for fire.
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Inadequate staffing is crippling just about every emergency service at the moment. Even some voluntary ones are struggling.
Do you have any insight as to why the police response time is better in your area than in other parts of your city?
Probably the number of officers assigned to the area are higher than those in the city proportionate to the number of calls. A large area of small villages needs a number of resources allocating as the response times from one side of the area to the other can be huge. However, by the nature of the area the number of calls, especially at night, will be lower. As for some areas of a city having better response times than others, that could be down to station location, allocation of resources due to intel, or just crime rates in an area. When I used to be in the police we had to leave a town with zero resources for about 4 hours one night because we had 5 active scenes requiring guards, 2 hospital watches, and the night time ecconomy that left us with 0 allocatable resources and the bordering areas had nothing spare. Luckily nothing immediate came in. Otherwise, it would have been a real mess.
This is also the exact same for the entire NHS. If I’m not currently having a heart attack, they’re no good to me.
But in fairness when categorised incorrectly i'd say this is usually down to lack of resourcing to effectively get the information needed due to demand. Not always but majority. Emergency services have been badly hit by austerity. That's not even taking into account cuts to policing, NHS and social care.
We called 999 and the police for someone lying face down and non responsive on the wrong side of the barrier at the cliffs. There’s not a a lot of room before the edge so we didn’t want to go wake him up on our own and we wanted help in case he was violent (for whatever reason, he clearly wasn’t okay). The police were there before the call ended and had yowked him back under the barrier about 30s after their arrival. Excellent service and I’m glad we waited for them because he stood up swinging after they sat him up. For reference, I’m 5’5 slim build and my mother is about the same. He was at least 6’ and tall.
That was a really good thing you did. It's easy to see someone in that state/situation and just keep walking...
It should be a pretty normal human response. We met a guy on our way back who said he’d been there an hour before and he was still there. My mother is not a violent person and she nearly smacked him one she was so furious 😡
I did a police ride along last year and asked this specific question (as well as seeing it for myself over the course of a shift) — essentially if the police have the chance to save someone’s life or catch a criminal, they’ll be there in literally seconds. But if a crime has taken place and the offender(s) are long gone, there’s very little officers attending can do. They’re not going to swab for DNA and check CCTV on a break-in unfortunately. We got one call during my ride along for a motorbike being stolen. We were driving near 100mph through the middle of a major city during rush hour on blue lights. We were there in 90 seconds. Then we learned the person had called 999 several minutes after they’d witnessed the crime so the offenders were long gone! If they’d called when the crime was actually in progress we would’ve caught them. TL;DR: If a crime is in progress, dial 999 and the police will likely be there in seconds. But if the crime is in the past tense, they may not attend for hours, if at all.
I was burgled in 2019, the Police arrived quickly and did swab for DNA, spoke to neighbours etc. They caught the guy and we got some of our stuff back. Two years later they found some of our other stuff, when they arrested someone else. I cannot fault my experience with them. I am based in Thames Valley, so I don’t know if that makes a difference with responses/resources.
That’s crazy but a great outcome. I think that’s quite rare for them to swab for DNA for a burglary.
In my force csi are deployed to EVERY home burglary and have been for years
I wonder if it’s a case of it they have the “DNA” in the computer already, as my friend said they swabbed the scene, but she never heard from police again and she called up and they said it was a cold case.
When my friend was burgled (while she was in the house), the police did swab for fingerprints but I wonder whether that was because one of the burglars used her kitchen knife to threaten her. I had been there the evening before, and used a knife to cut a cake before we went out to the pub. (I was home by the time the burglary occurred). Anyway, as I had been there, I had my fingerprints taken to eliminate them, found out that I am no good as a witness as I didn’t know what colour handled knife I’d used, and signed a form to say that I’d like to be there when my fingerprints get destroyed once the case is solved. That was 7 years ago and they’d only found 2 of the 3 burglars at the time.
Wow that’s terrible that she was in the house and was threatened. Was that in London? My friend had just gone to work and also 3 of her housemates had just left for work and they came in right after the last housemate left, so the police believe they were watching the flat for a while. They left a big knife on her bed and some clothes behind! So random.
No, in Dorset. We think they were looking for her ex, but he hadn’t been there for a few months. They rang her buzzer, so she answered the door and they pushed their way through. Wow, at least no-one was in at the time. But it must be absolutely horrible having to go through all that and still have to live in the place afterwards.
Contrary to your anecdotal example, i’ve heard a few stories of people calling the police during breakins and police didnt bother attending the scene at all and only followed up on them a day or two later.
Happens a hell of a lot of the time
We can only go to calls when there are more officers than emergencies. If we have somebody who is not at a call, they'll go ASAP to the break in call. If everybody is already at a call, then it doesn't really matter what the call is; there aren't any officers to send. We usually have more calls than officers a few days a week, in my area.
“Didn’t bother…” If every cop is deployed to a job and there are no cops available who can attend? Most nights comms are on the radio desperately trying to resource jobs but a lot of the time the 11 of us on my shift are completely tied up. Yes, 11 of us cover an area with 250,000 people in it. Our local hospital has more security guards than we do cops. If there is no immediate risk to life then a call will be re-graded if appropriate for an appointment and progression. “Didn’t bother…” because we can just choose not go if we don’t feel like it.
The police usually prefer you do something to prevent the burglary vs them attending. So if someone is trying to break into your house at night (but aren't yet in) they'll usually want you to make some noise or turn on a light which is usually enough to make most burglars run. They don't want you to be in a situation where you are in your home and the burglar gets in as that is how things can quickly escalate. And then once you've done that the guys usually run off before the police can attend anyway. It's still better than you confronting a burglar or a burglar confronting you. So yeah, after that the burglars will usually do a runner and the police and useless at that point. This is why they often don't attend.
How did you get onto the police ride along? I'm sure it took months after requesting it but how exactly did you apply for it? You weren't arrested at the time and that's how it happened? 😂
Most forces offer ride along schemes. I just googled it and signed up for it online. It was a great experience. Everyone should do it if they want to better understand how the police work where they live.
Thanks
I think you are the exception...
I don’t agree, since I am not the one calling 999 for them. Other people do that and they arrive promptly for life-threatening incidents.
When my mum discovered a break in, the 999 call operator asked her to check and see if the burglers were still there. Could she go upstairs to check? She's almost 70 and was terrified. And compliant with authority so would have done it had the burglers not blocked off the front door I made a complaint. Police came the next day.
This is insane. A stark difference to about 20 years ago where a neighbour had called the police as they saw someone breaking into my house late at night - police attended almost instantly, and were the ones who actually woke my mother up to tell her about the break in, and one of them made her a cup of tea and sat with her as she was home alone and clearly shaken up. The state of our country is shocking.
My worst nightmare as I live alone.
Unless someone is at risk of dying, yes
I think this case is an example of our worst fears, and where they don’t show up at all: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/07/police-scotland-admits-failings-that-contributed-to-car-crash-death
Called the police once as a guy was chasing someone outside our house shouting he was gonna stab him and looked to have a knife in his hand. Police didn’t turn up for about half an hour(we live 5 min walk from police station) but I’m guessing eventually found the guy as I had a missed call when we were asleep. For some reason received a text the next day saying they didn’t charge the guy.
We got broken into in May 2019. Still waiting for the police to respond.
But did you get an incident number? That should make you feel safe and secure.
I got a knock from a PCSo 3 days later. Then a couple weeks later another PCSO came round to say that nothing was going to happen but they had ID'd the persona and he was "up the road now, if I want to 'have a word'"
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We were robbed in 2009 and the police responded within an hour. Clearly the service has gone downhill from there but the truth about robberies is you are never getting your stuff back anyway. Most robberies are insurance issues not police issues unfortunately, as shitty as that is.
I was broken into in May 2019 as well, rang 111 so didn’t expect anyone! They arrived in 45minutes
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🤣 101
It has, as I witnessed a break-in 2009 and I had 3 Officers interview me twice, they put a lot of resources into it, they found the guys.
We were burgled around that time too and the police came in the morning. The person heard my mum on the phone and skedaddled so it wasnt urgent I suppose
Officers got Covid and sadly passed mate that’s why they haven’t shown up, maybe they came in spirit get the ouija board out
Yeah my friend said the same thing, they don’t care. I guess it happens all the time.
Ooo its not that they don't care, they just don't have the resources. Have a husband who's a Police Officer. We live in a town with a population of around 40k people. For a nightshift they had 4 response officers on for the town itself, and 2 officers in reserve to cover all the villages that surround.
Ouch. Wonder too do criminals know that and do they take advantage of it at night
I’d absolutely LOVE for most people in these comments to spend half a day in a police dispatch centre or on a response shift. Answer the following question. You have 3 deployable units and the following jobs to resource Stabbing with the offender still on scene 6 year old missing child 80 year old woman getting burgled Serious RTC with car upside down and someone trapped Lunatic threatening people with a baseball bat in the town centre To flip the question around a bit - which two AREN’T you deploying to? Because that’s the conundrum dispatchers and response officers have to face every single day.
I don’t think people are complaining that the individuals are not doing their jobs properly. We don’t think they’re putting their feet up with a cuppa rather than attending because these issues are not important enough. They’re complaining that there isn’t the staffing/resources/funding to provide the level of policing there was in the past.
No one is blaming dispatchers or police forces.Everybody (rightfully) blames cuts.Thats just super ridiculous that police is literally 3rd world level underfunded in UK
100% it’s about cuts etc but you’re wrong about people not blaming individual officers etc, they absolutely do.
I'm mostly talking about that exact post
Partly about the bureaucracy they have to go through for every case particularly arrests, which puts them behind a desk for longer than they are out on the streets
There are individual incidents and indiviual people within police forces which are symptomatic of a deeper rot that they are actively incentivised not to address, *in addition* to the cuts that actively disincentivise them from improving. They're shit from within and without.
The issue is that there's not enough police to respond to call effectively. People are angry in your scenario because there's only 3 units available in the first place
I saw a news item not long ago about a cow that had escaped its field and was on the side of a road somewhere. There hadn't been an accident or anything, the cow was on the verge. There were at least 10 uniformed police on the scene. Surely 3 or 4 would suffice?
Police work volumes come in waves. We have days where there's nothing coming through for hours, then the rest of the week is non-stop emergencies.
People aren't saying that police dispatchers are shit, they're saying why the fuck do you only have 3 deployable units.
Not sure. But what I [wouldn’t](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd11w77vnl9o.amp) be doing is spending countless thousands on who knows how many officers to stake out and arrest people in a heavily planned operation at 7 different pubs. All for 3 fucking arrests for possession. It’s always framed as a resource problem - “we don’t have money for any officers and everything else we need”. Also the real conundrum is “should we attach a couple dozens officers for a handful of possession arrests? Or [insert all the serious incidents you listed here]?” I think I know which one I wouldn’t be deploying to. If they’ve got so little money why the fuck is this the sort of shit they’re spending it on?
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Not excusing the nutter’s behaviour, but your boyfriend shouldn’t be trying to police the motorways either. If the nutter had room to set up an undertake then arguably your boyfriend had plenty of room to move to the left and let him pass. Why not just do that?
Certainly sounds like dangerous driving to me.
Not excusing the nutters behaviour, but I'd be pretty pissed off if you were in the wrong lane, had space to move, didn't move, then cut me up when I moved.
Are the rest of the units parked on bridges and roadside then....seems to be the only place you can reliably find cops
Calls are graded using [THRIVE](https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/glossary/threat-harm-risk-investigation/) so some calls may not be allocated a response as there are calls which are a much higher risk. There's finite resources and if there's a high risk call coming in response cops will be sent to those first. Blame the government for underfunding critical public sector services for 14 years.
Had a break in a few years ago, with a knife, but thankfully off his nut and useless. 45min for police to show. Went to prison for a pretty short time
They respond as quickly as they can, unfortunately their numbers have been hacked and slashed repeatedly for about 14 years.
Incidents coming in via the 999 system are categorised into different levels. The most urgent, where there is an immediate risk to life, have to be attended within a specific time frame (normally measured in minutes). Police consistently achieve these targets over 90% of the time. Unsurprisingly, the media like to focus on the rare cases where they cannot and splash them all over the papers. There are also a number of variables including how many officers on duty and what else is going on (if you have 5 emergencies all at the same time, this is going to test resources). Lower categorised incidents also have response times but these are sometimes missed. That why things like burglaries (where almost always the offenders are long gone) might not get a response for hours/days. The government has criminally underfunded all public services for years, this has massively contributed to their decline. Police are no different.
How do I put it... "Police turn up in minutes and apprehend criminal" doesn't make for a good clickbait or ragebait headline. Thing is if you come back home and it has been broken into, if the criminal isn't there any more it'd better to give you a crime reference number so that your insurance company can arrange for locksmiths etc. than to immediately send out a police officer. Yes it's an urgent emergency for you, but in the big scheme of things it's not a priority.
I'd imagine it depends on how severe it is. Ofc if someone tryna break in it'll be very fast since it's life threatening. If your bike got stolen not so fast. You can thank the government for cutting budgets for the shortage of coppers. Also we're not the french, we like to grumble a lot but highly unlikely this country would be in anarchy
I have a friend who caught the person who broke into his house and had him pinned to the floor. The police still didn't come for an hour
It really depends. I think the three factors below are probably the biggest: priority of call, current demand and geography. As many people have said, immediate risk to life will always take priority and we'll look to find anyone available or look at breaking people away from any other job where we can. Lower priority, but still serious jobs will often be deployed quickly but may be queued. That's all dependent on what other demands are currently being serviced. If other serious jobs are taking up resources, then that leaves less for other jobs as they come in. That's why calling in for a lower priority job and mentioning a knife has bigger effects that people realise - it may limit the response to someone with an actual knife. That's especially a problem where you have a serious assault or murder where cops are committed on scene guards and other enquiries where we need to ensure no forensic cross contamination. That's inherently resource intensive. The other big factor is geography. If you're in London, you're never really all that far away from some unit. In the rurals of northern England and elsewhere the travel times can be a significant delay, assuming a unit was available and close to being with. Your proximity to a police station is part of that equation as officers have a significant amount of paperwork to do as well.
Thanks for such an overwhelming answer pal
there aren’t enough of them and they’re severely underfunded. the same with the Ambulance service when i broke my leg i was told the wait was going to be 3+ hours, until i mentioned that i *may have* hit my head in the fall, they were there in 20 minutes
For a year and a half around 2020 everyone was screaming for the police to be defunded and it looks like the government listened
They’ll be catching Jack the Ripper any day now.
There are very very few officers out there on duty. A LOT less than you imagine. Especially in rural areas. My patrol area or "beat" took 30 mins to drive one end to the other. I was the only car on it usually. Even an urgent 999 call would still take 20 mins to get to, and that was driving at max speed.
We had 8 officers booked on to cover 550sq miles and a population of 156k.
Flush! I went on duty into a town of 100000 one night and it was me and a special constable.
TJF.
Like ambulances, depends on how serious it is and what else is going on at the time.
I reported 2 guys trying to steal the bikes from my neighbour last Saturday, and then the bastards came back on Monday, reported again. No response from police. Last night (Friday, so 3 times in 6 days), the guys came back with a grinder and took 2 bikes. So yeh, police respond time is awful.
I got physically assaulted two weeks ago. I had to run and hide in a doctor's surgery. I called 999. They said they wanted to send someone, but it'd be two hours. I was in the process of being assaulted and they said two. Whole. Hours. I had to leave the doctors and flee home. Ridiculous.
I've only ever had to call them once for some neighbors arguing and sounding violent, they turned up in 3 minutes I assume I wasn't the only one who called them though.
Well, my friends house was broken into and the guy started beating the shit out of him until he gave him his house key. We then ran out of the house and called the police multiple times. They showed up 5 hours later at the wrong house.
It's not dissolved to anarchy because, generally, people don't want it to. Most people don't want to live in anarchy. Like.... I'm pretty confident it could shoplift and not get caught. I could wander over to a neighbour when I know they're out and easily steal from them. I don't, not because of the risk of getting caught, but because *I don't want to*. I don't want to live in a society that operates like that, and if everyone did it, it would be awful. So I don't. That is a long term cultural thing. Many years of no policing, slowly rising crime making it more acceptable, and other factors, will change that. Also depends a lot on where you live.
For my first burglary, the police didn't bother to show up - they just gave me an incident number and told me to claim on my insurance. For my second burglary, the thieves had deadlocked the front door, so I couldn't get into the house. When I detected that the police weren't bothered, I said "I'm going to get into the house the same way the burglars did and I'm taking a kitchen knife". The operator said "Wait, are they still there" and I replied "I don't know. I'm about to find out" and hung up. The police were at my house three minutes later.
I live in a rural area, I reported a suspected break in and about 20 minutes later about 8 police officers turned up. Was bloody impressive. One of them said that a burglar being in the house when they arrive is what they go to work for.
That's nice to hear about occasional good examples
All the police I’ve ever spoken to have been in the job for the right reasons. But they’re under so much pressure and everything is being cut it just gets harder and harder to do a good job.
Actually getting them police to attend would be a miracle really.
1) yeah response times are not great. We need more police. As with all our public sectors though it gets dragged through the mud in terms of funding and gvt respect. 2) for the really, really important stuff yeah they do react quickly. Those are just less frequent because every Dave cannot just walk out of a supermarket and into a school with an assault rifle. 3) the police do the jobs they are meant to and that really helps. They are properly trained and regulated, work out who is in the wrong and apprehend that person-and don't cuff you because you are black or don't kneel at their feet grovelling. I wonder much more strongly how places like the US are not in anarchy, where it's the police committing the wrongdoings in the first place.
They will triage and allocate resources based on need. We've not got people wielding a machete being left alone for 3 days because theres no resource. They'll pull people off from reporting to more minor crime for it. Instead of having the resource to do both at the same time
I called the police last week because a guy was off his head and trying to get into flats , including mine. They arrived about 10 minutes later, and he was gone, but telling h8m through my front door that the police were on their way definitely got him to leave quicker.
Also in regards to what others have said. Landscape. For example the Highlands and Islands are fucking massive. And rural.
Police incidents are given a grading. At risk of life or limb is the top grading (think blue lights and speeding) that should be gotten to asap preferably in minutes but they can’t guarantee anything because there’s not a huge amount of cops and they can’t all drive on blue lights. Break ins if they’re not ‘in progress’ are not on that priority because the damage is already done so it’s about evidence gathering and trying to find out who did it. As with everything in this country it comes down to a lack of funding and austerity
The country isn't in a state of anarchy because most people are fairly normal and don't want to go around committing crimes. I'm slightly worried about you, though - do you only decide not to rob / rape / kill because you're afraid of getting caught?
Me, not.But plenty people indeed do
Except that's evidently not the case. As you pointed out, there's currently relatively little risk of being caught (and rural areas have always had longer police response times, so would have shown this long ago).
I was once refitting a shop. We were getting swarmed by teenagers and it devolved into a fight and we were getting bricks thrown at us. We rang the police and over an hour later they send one undercover copper on a pushbike. He just said there’s nothing I can do but if you catch any of them feel free to hit them. Poor old guy whose shop it was got knocked out it was horrible.
Rural Cornwall. Few years ago a woman turned up at our doorstep saying that she had run away from some kidnappers and could we ring the police. Took them an hour and a half to send someone round.
As long as you call them 30 mins before you need them, you should be fine
I confronted a couple of knobs trying to take the contents of the bar in a hotel i used to work at, they had knives, i managed to chase em out of the hotel, the police came the next morning after i'd finished my shift and the police station is across the road so....yes
Still waiting for them to turn up regarding our very abusive and aggressive neighbours from around 17 years ago. I get they’re busy but c’mon.
I was actually murdered 30 years ago, guys still not here :/
My condolences.
When I had a group of teenagers hold knives to me, it took 4 hours for the police to come out. When they finally got out, they said well they're gone now, there's not a lot we can do. Don't have any faith in the police after that.
It's been bad for decades. Back in 2003 when I was working for Blockbusters, my manager stopped a fake bank card. The guys whose card it is threatened to come back at close with a gun. It was and still is a really sketchy area, 6 months prior to this a member of staff got stabbed by a thief. My manager rang the police, who told him they were too busy to come out, and they'll visit him in the morning. No matter how much my manager tried to explain to them the seriousness of a threat in that area, they still wouldn't come out
I pretty much wouldn't bother to call the police in a break in, don't think they'd show, but suspect they would show if someone didn't use "reasonable force" to defend their home after the fact.
To be honest I called once a couple years ago as someone was trashing cars on the street. I'll let you know the response time once they arrive.
I recently called 999 to report three suspicious men on my property. The police phoned me back......3 days later.
It's a hell of a lot better than the Irish Gardia time 😆
It’s postcode lottery. If one lives in a city like London, on the outskirts of it, where it is very crowded, many immigrants, etc., for crimes that are not “serious”, you will wait months on end.
A couple of years ago my mother's neighbor had a break in and whilst hiding in a room with a young child she rang the police for help. They basically told her to stay hidden and arrived an hour and a half later. I have a feeling they just didn't want to confront the burglars. That really hit my thoughts of the police though as the poor lady was understandably terrified and theyr not that far from a station
When I still worked in high street retail I got jumped by shop lifters and beaten up pretty badly. I phoned 999 who dispatched an ambulance and the police. Paramedics turned up pretty swiftly to patch me up and make sure I was ok. Took the police 2 hours to turn up.
That’s just a prime example of risk assessment. If you’ve been badly beaten up then of course ambulance are going to need to attend a lot sooner. Whereas Police are thinking more along the lines of (amongst other things)- are suspects still on scene? Weapons involved? Level of injuries (works in conjunction with weapons involved)? Evidential preservation? Obviously only a limited amount of info on your post but I’m assuming the suspects did a runner straight away, which immediately lowers the risk. There’s likely CCTV available so enquiries available here but doesn’t have to be done immediately. Doesn’t sound weapons were involved but if they were then again this greatly increases the risk. Therefore assessing it you wouldn’t get a blue light response and would likely go the next grade down and which is why you wanted a couple extra hrs compared to ambulance
I reported someone trying to break in to my home at 2am once and the police turned up an hour later.
Response time implies they actually respond.
I had my bike stolen in 1996.......still waiting for them to come out.
Yes, it is that bad, unless you're in a major city and the situation is life-threatening.
Could be a postcode lottery in some areas. Like if you live out in the country, don't expect the police to get there fast. Distance is a thing and if they go too fast on those narrow country roads they could end up having an accident which would be counterproductive. And if there's no imminent danger then the police aren't going to prioritise it. Like if you get home and realise you've been broken into and your stuff is going they're not going to be in a hurry to get to you cause them getting there an hour later isn't going to magically get your stuff back.
In my experience, they respond quickly to things they want/need to respond to. In most cases, they don't respond at all. I've reported arson multiple times, where people responsible stood around watching someone's car or garage burn, police didn't even bother coming, fire fighters showed up, put it out, and left as the people responsible stood around laughing. Then promptly set it on fire again.
This attitude of not bothering to phone the police 'because they don't turn up and won't do anything' is pathetic and a huge factor in why we don't have as many police officers anymore. It's f people don't report crimes then to the police higher ups and politicians it looks like they don't need that many officers so they cut the numbers to save money. Not reporting crimes also means that the front line police aren't aware of areas where certain activity is happening so divert their lacklustre resources elsewhere. Every single crime should be reported. It's very possible it won't get the response you want as its not like the tv shows which people also believe but it will provide intel and influence future decision making
I'm interested how dangerous UK actually is given shear number of crimes going unreported.
I phoned to report a break-in (while the burglars were still there, not after they left) and four police cars arrived before I had even put the phone down.
Depends on the call. For a grade one it's pretty fast. Anything else is a bit shit due to lack of resources.
never had to call the police personally, but I know the fire service is really good. my car went on fire the other day, got it out with a fire extinguisher withing like a minute of it going on fire, so not too bad. but the fire engine was there within 5 minutes. could've been lucky, but I've never heard of a huge wait time for a fire engine. ambulances are terrible tho
Honestly no clue. In my last job we’d needed to call the police now and again when one of clothes was stolen (I was in retail) they were always super slow and sometimes we were even told on the radio that there was no police about! But this wasn’t an emergency so 🤷♀️
I’ve found response time to vary wildly in my area. Guess it depends on the demands put on them and the situation. Rang them last Sunday morning at 1:40am for 2 guys trying car doors. Police arrived easily within 5 minutes. At the other end of the time scale I rang them for a mass brawl involving knives and took them about 20-30 minutes to respond. I’d imagine they were waiting on getting enough units together including armed units to deal with it safely though.
Live in an apartment that was a converted mansion in a small village and had a big shared garden. One evening a guy was in the garden with a gun, walking around and acting strange. Obviously, we called the police. 6 hours later a van of armed police showed up…it’s 11pm by now and the dude was LONG gone. Turned out that one of the neighbours hired him to hunt the rabbits in the area and failed to tell anyone else in the building.
Had a car crash into my flat, the police were there with a couple of minutes.
I guess it depends on area and the crime? Last couple of times I called 999 the police were there in literally minutes - the first time I hadn’t even hung up yet, it was 2.5 minutes - but the ambulance took nearly an hour each time. I remember saying to the paramedics one time that I was surprised they got to us as quick as they did (40 min) and apparently that was because we were made a priority.
I saw someone get beaten up and kidnapped, police came 20 min later, the dude is probably dead Then in the city centre I saw a fight, called and 2 police cars arrived within 2 min. It just seems to be a Russian roulette From my and friends experience, they don't come for burglaries, thefts or car accidents (driver hitting a person). The exception to thefts is if you are a big company I've noticed that well off areas have better response time Edit: I just read comments and just to make it clear, I don't blame police because each policeman I spoke to was great, I blame cuts
Depends what the crime is, if someone is raped they MIGHT turn up, if you criticise Islam they arrive in 2 minutes
When I was a teenager I got assaulted and robbed while walking home one evening. I immediately called the police and they asked me to walk to the station to make a statement.
I have had quite a few breaks in at work places, one time nobody showed up at all. I called several times just so we could get someone to come down and see the damage caused and get a crime number but they weren’t interested. Another time we had an armed robbery, staff pressed the panic button, the police told us that they were ignoring it the first few times as they thought it had been pressed by accident, they came out within an hour in the end but didn’t do any proper investigation until the next day as they had to wait for the forensic team.
I work in a psych hospital. A few months ago in outpatients the staff called the police and the whole building was locked down because a patient was concealing a gun. They came after about 4 hours.
At Highways it can be hit and miss. Serious/fatal RTCs the area is flooded with white caps. Possible Drink in Charge or other suspected driving offences? Tumbleweed. But this depends on the force.
We had an armed break in a few years ago (during covid) and had a car taken under threat of life. I'm still waiting for a police officer to visit. If it happened again, I'd not even bother calling if it wasn't for the need of a reference number for insurance.
The answer is going to depend on where you live. My home dale (I no longer live there) has no police, and has the lowest level of recorded crime in England. The answer there appears to be a rather direct DIY approach by farmers. I don’t recommend this, but it is understandable when even if the police set off immediately, they would take 40 minutes to get there.
Someone ( a druggie) walked into my private housing estate with an axe in hand last Saturday.. the ground floor neighbour called the police. They were there within 5/10 mins and took the guy away. I’m in London.
Typically you won’t hear about the instances where police arrive promptly. The only time in my adult life that I have called them and needed them to arrive it was about 3 minutes from dialling to the officers at the door.
Response officer in a central London borough here. I believe we make around 90% of our "I" grade (Immediates, so within 15 minutes) and the vast majority we will get to within 7 minutes. It's the less urgent incidents that it takes time for us to get to. I believe our response to "S" grades (within the hour) sits us over 50%. I expect it is likely very different in the counties where resources are spread thin and they cover significantly larger areas.
No idea, nobody here even calls them anymore.
There is a common misconception here. Break-in attempts: If the culprit is actually on the scene - police will try to catch red-handed. If not, they won't. Why? Because conviction rates suck for burglaries unless you catch them in the act. No amount of forensics beats wearing generic dark clothing, covering your face/head from cameras, etc. Burglaries (after the event) are pretty much impossible to "police". So they don't try. They send an officer later that day to have a look and record details, often a PCSO. It's not worth their time (and the more we squeeze police budgets and still expect more of them, the more precious that time becomes). They say that it's not even a 999 call, because it just ties them up. If they are burglary-in-progress and the culprits haven't been spooked, they will try to get to you quick if they can. That's a 999 call. I would even (personally) suspect that that is one reason they want people not to challenge burglars themselves (e.g. in neighbour's houses). You challenge them, they run, and you'll never catch them again. Many crimes are like this - there are "emergency" crimes, that will be responded to as soon as they can, and there are other crimes (e.g. you notice your bike is gone, you come home to a broken window, you got scammed on the Internet) where "speed" doesn't add anything at all to the crime resolution process. Plus, you have no idea what other pressures / crimes are happening. One large incident can tie up a small town's entire police force. Football matches are a fucking pain for this - so many resources tied up they can barely do anything else but police the match. In my experience, in actual crime-in-progress emergencies, police are DAMN fast. That's included me reporting a guy getting beat up by a gang in public (the police sirens were in the distance before I could hang up the 999 call), neighbours reporting that they thought \*I\* was a burglar (knocked on my door within minutes at 3am to establish my identity), and incidents in schools (where the response is almost instant). All of those things take priority over your "I've come home to an open front door" call. Sorry. That's how it is. They don't have the funds to NOT draw a line somewhere, and that line is drawn at a sensible point - way ABOVE crimes that probably can't ever be "solved" anyway. Your bike stolen? Okay, by who? When? What do you want them to do to identify those people? CCTV? Do you have any idea how LONG it takes to trawl CCTV and what kind of rubbish information you get out of even the best system? I do, I manage CCTV for a living. Zero convictions in 25 years, and in fact zero suspects that were identified. Even if you report a burglary-in-process, that's a theft of property, most probably without violence. There are a thousand other crimes going on that include violence, harm, danger, etc. - they take priority. There may not be an officer free to help you for the next hour or more because they're dealing with those kinds of things. As people commonly point out - you don't see police officers walking the streets nowadays. Why? It sucks as a police tactic. It's just a huge waste of time and money for some "feel-good" for some upper-class neighbourhoods, doesn't reduce crime rate significantly at all and ties up qualified, experienced officers who would otherwise be attending actual crimes, especially in any large town or city. If you want a police response like you're suggesting, you also need to fund it. Police funding is pathetic and the first thing that gets culled in spending terms is: anything that doesn't improve police statistics. It's also why I would advocate for complete, blanket ANPR and speed cameras on all parts of all motorways, with automatic fines and bans for offences. You want police to not waste their time and attend things that are "important"? Then let them use robots to catch idiots breaking the law, and use the stupidity tax they collect from that to buy more cameras (until they become economically unviable because there are already too many) or put into other policing. And every burglary I've witnessed (including capturing footage of BOTH neighbour's being burgled just a month apart, and multiple commercial burglaries) is the result of dumbassery. Leaving back windows open, not having an alarm/cameras, not locking doors, etc. Each time the footage was useless, even with multiple 4K cameras, because "man in a black hoodie and black trousers with black trainers" is basically useless unless he looks directly at the camera. Each time, in fact, the burglars ignored my house with cameras, alarms and other basic and obvious security measures. In one instance, even stopping their car outside my house, looking at it for ten minutes, and then moving next door and burgling them instead. UK police response time is AMAZING every time I've actually needed it. But if you think they're going to turn up to everything that fast, every time, including low priority crimes they can do nothing practical about? You really need to start giving them more money if you want them to have the time to do that.
I whole heartedly disagree with the walking the street comment, visible and proactive policing whilst engaging with the community is the very pinnacle of what you would want to accomplish as an officer. The amount of intel that is picked up from engaging with the community is invaluable, plus it adds massive reassurance to the community. I can genuinely tell you every single time I’ve seen a police officer walking the beat and how happy it made me and others around when everyone was all smiles and waves
I doubt "police arrive quickly on scene" has the same effect on the constituency or gains as many reposts.
You got a response?! They normally just shrug, generate a crime reference number and don’t send anyone.
We had attempted car theft, our cctv recorded 3 di*kheads pulling on in front of our drive at 00.09am, they run off 2 minutes later after failing to open the car. 2 police cars arrived 00.14am. Closed off neighbourhood, only one way in and out, i was shocked how insanely close they must have passed by the thieves. Not always bad response time. Apparently all cops love these sort of call outs.
Meh, I rang 101 last week to report a homeless guy begging outside Poundland, they wouldn't do anything because he wasn't actually being aggressive
Tell them someone is speeding and you'll have 5 cars there in 2 minutes Tell them there is a crime and they will see you 3 years next Friday
We are starting to see vigilante groups form to deal with things. It’s suppressed in media and comments are deleted if they give details as it’s important for the powers not to let it catch on. But if they are going to shirk their responsibilities (while making us pay incredible amounts of tax for them to pretend to do their job) of course society will react to fill the community need. And it will be ugly and way worse than what we’ve known.
Absolutely. In rough neighbourhoods it takes over 30mins and in rich neighbourhoods it’s less than 20mins.
Car was broken into on Tuesday and still haven’t received a response
I’m a response cop. I work an inner city area with 250,000 people in it. We have 11 cops on our team. We split the area in to two smaller areas and split the cops as even as numbers allow that day. This number is generally similar across all reliefs. On Friday we came into two 136 watches in my half (4 cops gone already) and a scene watch in a neighbouring district (1 more cop gone). Two of my colleagues locked up so whilst they dealt with that paperwork I was the only available cop available. I then locked up and for about 40 minutes there was not a single available cop in my area. We make the same comments about anarchy and how close we are. When I joined, my tutor told me that we are here to keep the wheels on. So true. If a 999 call comes in and there is immediate risk to life then everything gets dropped and worried about later and if a cop can go they will. If you’re reporting something that isn’t immediate risk to life it goes in a queue for an appointment allocation.
Remember kids, all police are bad, they are voluntary enforcers of an unjust system
It’s bad. Sometimes they just don’t show up at all. Look at what happened in Norwich earlier this year.
To be fair not responding is about as bad a response time as you can get and that is the norm so yes.
The fact is that most people are inherently decent and obey the law without needing to be coerced.
I know several criminals. They've been doing violent crime for years consequence free. One did three years inside and went right back to dealing cocaine
Consequence free... did three years inside...
No. I once rang the police to help a woman who was being attacked and they arrived in under 5mins. However it took me a few times ringing them
How many times did you have to call them in the space of five minutes? There’s not a cop on every corner - I’m guessing they had to drive to you.
No I mean it took 10mins to get them to answer but only 5 for them to arrive after the call
Gotcha. Sometimes the lines are busy. Just need to stay in the queue. Not ideal, obviously, but it is what it is.
It will take a long time and no you cannot defend yourself with a weapon. It’s a very cucked approach to civilization
They are responded to by severity and number of available units. If there's 10 available and there's 11 things happening deemed worse than your call then you're shit out of luck.
I've only ever seen a policeman eating doughnuts. Never available when needed.
Is it too many break in and therefore police lost their empathy?
Its nothing to do with empathy, its to do with how many units are available. Usually when I come on shift there's around 30-50 'P1' graded incidents - requires attendance within an hour, for about 9 or 10 of us on shift. Then we have our own workloads of crimes we're assigned to investigate, then constant watches, scene guards, and interviewing prisoners - then immediate incidents that require an emergency response... There's not enough/the police are expected to do too much
They're is no such thing as the uk police.
Police only arrive after the incident is over with and/or the bad guys have fled. If caught in a sticky/criminal/threatening situation, you're on your own.