Keep it Civil

It's always annoying when people I deal with think they know the Law, Especially those who are undoubtedly and categorically wrong. More often then not these are usually with Civil issues. These are things that are not a criminal matter but there are a few examples of people who will not take no for an answer and insist the police do something.

The first example of this was an incident I went to whereby we received a call from a caretaker, for the purpose of this I will call Mr. Care. Mr Care called us about his beloved Transit Van that had been parked in a car park for the best part of a year as he was on a driving ban. Mr.Care noticed one day his van disappeared.

I completed some enquiries and it seemed it had been scrapped. I managed to do enquiries with the scrap yard and I got details for the person who removed the van from the car park who told me it had been left there and the owners of the car park got a 14 day removal notice on the van which was ignored so it was sent for scrappage.

Mr. Care wasn't happy and was adamant that they stole his car. He wouldn't listen to me no matter how many times I told him it was a civil matter that he needed to speak to the people who own the land. So it turned into a complaint that was quashed as unfounded!!! The next I can think of was a call we received of theft. A female, for the purpose of this we will call Mrs Grub. She was calling us to say that her husband, who lives at a separate address has been coming over to her address for the night and eating her food. The two of them are still together and still married, they just live in different houses. Mrs Grub was annoyed as her husband didn't ask her permission to eat any of the food or make himself a drink. As if that wasn't enough he also borrowed her Hoover and keeps forgetting to bring it back. Well you can imagine what I thought. So when people call 999 and try to report a theft of these items when they know they are not actually stolen surely there should be the option of a payment scheme for wasting police time!!