A visit in the night

[furnessvale]

Even 20 yrs ago the Police wanted to manipulate crime figures. Our outboard was secured to a boat with a special locking system which fractured when forced to orevent removal. Somebody tried to steal the motor, this device did its job and fractured. Police wanted to call it criminal damage not attempted theft. Better for their stats. Still did nothing ti find culprit.

I know it is fashionable to knock the police, and while the rest of what you say may well be true, you have no way of knowing what checks may have been done in the background.

 

George ex nb Alton retired

[Guest]

furnessvale, on 24 Mar 2014 - 09:34 AM, said:furnessvale, on 24 Mar 2014 - 09:34 AM, said:

I know it is fashionable to knock the police, and while the rest of what you say may well be true, you have no way of knowing what checks may have been done in the background.

 

George ex nb Alton retired

 

A few months back I rang our local force (Cleveland) because I (wrongly as it turned out) believed I had been the possible victim of number plate theft (again).

 

When I rang it in on 101 the person who took my details was adamant to agree a time at which somebody could come out to speak to me about it. This rather took me aback given the triviality of the 'crime' but she was insistent that all 'victims' of crime in the Cleveland area are spoken to by somebody from the force. That to me seems like an astonishing goal to try to achieve but none the less it seems impressive.

 

 

ed. because I can't spell the name of the county I live in.

Edited March 24, 2014 by The Dog House

[Lady Muck]

Perhaps the thieves didn't find anything they wanted.

 

But remember they might tell their scrote mates what was there.

 

So try to minimise any valuables that are on the boat.

We do this. Had an attempted break in one xmas eve. Ours was the only boat they hadn't managed to get into. We now take all our valuables with us when we go away. We never post on social media that we're away. We stay on the boat over xmas, round here there are always break ins at xmas - 9 this year!!

[Wanderer Vagabond]

Just to throw in my threepennorth, as someone who has spent a number of years trying to catch the scroats who commit these sort of crime (now retired so I don't have to be politically correct anymore and CAN call them scroats!). There are misconceptions that it may be worth considering (even you

Joelsanders with your paranoia about leaving your boat '....even for one night.....') which came to mind when I read the title of the thread. The question is how many of these break-in's DO actually take place at night?

 

Think about it from the burglars perspective, he works what hours he wants (tax free!) so why would he want to be creeping around at night when he could be in the pub with his mates spending the results of his crimes. You will probably find, as with house burglaries, most of them happen during the day. Since the burglars are already aware of the reason for this I'm not really giving any secrets away. Think of the logic of it, if you are walking back to your boat at night and you see two individuals trying to force the door of a moored boat are you going to call the Police? I would think so. On the other hand if you are walking along to towpath during the day and come across two people trying to force the door of a moored boat and, as you pass, one looks at you, smiles and shows a broken Yale key and says "Typical, bloody key broke in the lock", now what are you going to do? He seems to have given you a good explanation of what he is doing and doesn't seem 'furtive' most burglars will tell you that they usually seem to be believed. I even had personal experience of this when I went to France to sail with a friend. He came to pick me up from the ferry port but when he locked the boat up (in the middle of a marina) he attached a padlock that he later realised he no longer had a key for. When we got back to the boat he retrieved a set of bolt-croppers from the boot of his car, and in full view of anyone wanting to watch, cut the padlock off his boat. Did anyone question our actions? not a soul, it was so blatant that it was assumed that it was OK.

 

The advice that we used to give to householders was "If you had locked yourself out of your house how would you get in?", because that it probably the same way that a burglar will get in so try to make the place as impossible to break in as you can so that even you can't get in without a key. To slightly digress, the reason that house burglaries often happen during the day is pretty much the same reason that I've given above, added to that fact that the technique is even easier. At night you may walk down a street looking at the houses, you don't know which one's are occupied, you don't know who has a dog, you can't see if they are fitted with a burglar alarm, etc etc. If you walk down the same street during the day you can see which houses are alarmed so you pick one that hasn't got an alarm, and no sign saying 'beware of the dog'. You pick one that looks empty and then go and ring the doorbell to make sure, if someone answers the door you make your apologies saying you were looking for 'Mr Smith, does he live here?'. If it does happen to be 'Mr Smith' who opens the door then it is the wrong Mr Smith and you move onto the next property and repeat the procedure, when no-one answers the door it's party time! Break a window at 2am and see how many people call the Police, break a window at 2pm and almost no-one will.

 

I suppose what I'm saying is be suspicious whatever the time of day, and here's to hoping that my own boat, currently moored on canalside, will still be secure when I get back to it!!

Edited March 25, 2014 by Wanderer Vagabond

[Daiboy]

Chainsaw on our boat = intruders leave without legs.

Crowbar on our boat = intruders leave without teeth.

Doberman on our boat = intruders leave without trousers!

Methylated spirits on our boat = intruders leave without eyebrows!!!

 

Chainsaw a bit ott.

For crowbar read tiller arm, result definitely the same.

Dog on board = it's the scroat's fault they shouldn't be there anyway.

Don't want to set fire to anyone....... it might spread through the boat.

 

carlt, on 21 Mar 2014 - 6:03 PM, said:

No evidence to prosecute them.

 

The only reason I know who did it was that they bragged about it in a pub full of my mates

 

Then you and your "mates" should have had a quiet word with them on a dark towpath.

 

Closely followed by - Police man on our boat=Emerald Fox leaves in handcuffs.

 

Not always, the home and castle spring to mind.

[Laurie Booth]

Even 20 yrs ago the Police wanted to manipulate crime figures. Our outboard was secured to a boat with a special locking system which fractured when forced to orevent removal. Somebody tried to steal the motor, this device did its job and fractured. Police wanted to call it criminal damage not attempted theft. Better for their stats. Still did nothing ti find culprit.

I'm a bit confused by this. Attempted theft would make their crime figures better not worse,

[Daiboy]

I'm a bit confused by this. Attempted theft would make their crime figures better not worse,

 

Not really. As criminal damage is a lower category than attempted theft then not prosecuting anyone will have a lower crime stat.

[Laurie Booth]

 

Not really. As criminal damage is a lower category than attempted theft then not prosecuting anyone will have a lower crime stat.

Now I understand

[Ange]

Another example of the North/South divide then. Our boat was within Lancashire Police Authority at the time and the response from the "Crime Manager", whatever that is, was unequivocally that investigating boat burglaries was not considered worth spending their valuable resources on. Fortunately our next trip will be within the Thames Valley area so it's reassuring to know the constabulary down there take a different view.

Please please stop putting everything down to the north/south divide with southerners being better off. We are talking one regional police force versus another - it's location is incidental and shouldn't feed chips on shoulders.

 

To illustrate - I was raised in Essex and the spent a long time living in Kent. The two hospitals I had the misfortune to visit when required were Southend General and the William Harvey. We knew entering A&E meant hours before we were treated, routine appointments meant that a 10am appointment was likely to be seen at 3pm. I have some dreadful childhood memories of sitting for hours in one waiting room after another.

 

I needed the A&E in Lancaster - Dave dropped me off while he found a parking space for the car - he was absolutely gobsmacked when he arrived in the reception area to find I was already being treated. Since then we've used Nottingham hospital and found the same difference.

 

I know I'm talking NHS treatment rather than police force, but the point I'm making is that when the difference favours the south it's all about southerners being favoured, but when it goes the other way no one mentions it.

 

Oh and we had a burglary in Essex where the biggest loss, which I still get teary about was my engagement ring which my husband spent his entire weeks wages of £100 in 1984 was taken. The police arrived, did a few perfunctory things, but really weren't that bothered and I knew from their attitude that I'd never see my ring again. Essex is in the south.

[Wanderer Vagabond]

 

Not really. As criminal damage is a lower category than attempted theft then not prosecuting anyone will have a lower crime stat.

Not quite sure where you have got this from, if you check the Criminal Damage Act 1971 you will find the maximum sentence (excluding Arson for which the maximum sentence is Life Imprisonment) is 10 years inside. The maximum sentence for Theft under the Theft Act 1968 for Theft is only 7 years. The reason for classifying the incident as Criminal Damage rather than attempted Theft is based upon what you can prove in the absence of any admissions from the offender. If he doesn't say it was his intention to try to steal an item how are you going to prove it? To prove Criminal Damage all that you need to prove is that it was done without the permission of the owner, without lawful excuse and either recklessly or intentionally.

[i love my narrowboat]

It is horrible that in this sad sorry world we live in, nothing is safe anymore. When we go up on the cut for our break we do not leave our boat unattended in remote places. On our break last year, we moored at Yelvertoft and were visited by the local police who were looking for a person who had broken into three boats in a matter of two weeks along a short length of towpath( between the three bridges which all have roads )

We had not seen anything untoward, but it did make us nervous.

We went on to Market Harborough and stayed at the VM so were happy to leave the boat while we went into town.

When we go up on the cut this year I will not be working for the six weeks, so that we can at least relax and not worry about leaving the boat unattended in remote areas or any dodgy looking places.

One year on a trip to Banbury from Rugby, we passed two boats that had been broken into, we informed CRT ( was then BW) who said they would inform the owners.

Unfortunately these kind of things happen and can only hope the victims do not suffer too much damage or loss.

[Daiboy]

Wanderer, I bow to your superior knowledge. I was just going by the layman's attitude to theft as opposed to damage.

[Wanderer Vagabond]

Daiboy

 

Sorry, I wasn't trying to come across as superior, it's just that for years I've heard people telling me how Police are always 'fiddling the figures' whereas to be honest I've always treated the Crime figures as the fiction that they are. My only real interest was to inconvenience Criminals as much as I could but never had any real interest in Crime Statistics since we were always told that that compared to BCS (British Crime Survey) Police under-record everything. My answer was always "Well let's not bother with the Police figures at all, lets just go with the BCS figures and we can all just get on with catching Criminals".. Unfortunately Governments and Senior Officers were obsessed with Police Crime Stats, it was what eventually made the job boring.

[Daiboy]

Thanks Wanderer VAGABOND,

 

My turn to apologise by using the word "superior", as it was not meant to be in any way supercilious. I know exactly how you feel about crime stats, as they can and are manipulated to suit each and every commander of an area. Politics have so much to answer for in the day to day policing of a force and indeed the way the police have to bow down to "human rights" and the rights of individuals that would be better off in custody.

 

Let's just hope that the old codger policeman has not been forgotten and is still patrolling the street somewhere eh!!

[furnessvale]

Not quite sure where you have got this from, if you check the Criminal Damage Act 1971 you will find the maximum sentence (excluding Arson for which the maximum sentence is Life Imprisonment) is 10 years inside. The maximum sentence for Theft under the Theft Act 1968 for Theft is only 7 years. The reason for classifying the incident as Criminal Damage rather than attempted Theft is based upon what you can prove in the absence of any admissions from the offender. If he doesn't say it was his intention to try to steal an item how are you going to prove it? To prove Criminal Damage all that you need to prove is that it was done without the permission of the owner, without lawful excuse and either recklessly or intentionally.

But as you know there is more to it than than that.

 

When I was working, criminal damage under £20 (now I think it may be as high as £1000) generated a totally different statistic when recorded, almost akin to saying it was a misdemeanour rather than a full blown crime. Theft, or the attempt, was always a full crime no matter how low the value.

 

The pressure was always on to record as damage where the facts leant themselves to such recording. Even if the bobby recorded attempt theft, this could be changed in the office to crimdam and the bobby may not even know.

 

George ex nb Alton retired

[Wanderer Vagabond]

Hi Furnessvale,

 

As I posted to Daiboy I always got a bit bored when they started to try to throw statistics at me, I always just recorded whatever I saw, if those in the office decided to change it to something else then it never bothered me. As far as I was concerned it was only really important that the incident was recorded as something, unlike some I've come across who would try to keep the crime stats by trying not to record stuff if they could get away with it. What the purpose of that was I could never really get, why risk being disciplined just to keep some sad statistician happy?

 

If we'd ever got stressed about how stuff gets recorded we'd never have lasted, it gets even worse when you get the little scroats to Court, how many time have we gone to Court with a good ABH for the offender to then plead to Common Assault and CPS to accept it, never worth getting excited about.

[furnessvale]

Hi Furnessvale,

 

If we'd ever got stressed about how stuff gets recorded we'd never have lasted, it gets even worse when you get the little scroats to Court, how many time have we gone to Court with a good ABH for the offender to then plead to Common Assault and CPS to accept it, never worth getting excited about.

How true. 17 years now of happy retirement, coalboating now just pleasure. Can't beat it.

 

George ex nb Alton retired

[Emerald Fox]

Cheap burglar-beware device: I bought a 'Doberman Lives here' sign from pet shop and stuck it up on a pole at the entrance of our yard. My girlfriend laughed - ha ha she said! A few weeks later a neighbour told her a Romanian Gypsy girl (yes, thay are in Finland too, like the plague) saw the sign and walked past our house (having called at those before and after). Then I said ha ha to my gf!

 

I was thinking of making an additional sign with a photo of me gripping an axe and looking wildly violent with the text: "Never Mind the (effing) Dog - I Live Here Too!!!"