Why Bother Reporting to the Police - What's the Point

The below message is from the Police:

Sometimes we hear – Why do I bother!

As some residents believe that it’s just not worth reporting, as they mistakenly believe we sometimes do nothing with the information. I’d like to reassure everyone that reporting to police is very important and although we may not be able to attend straight away, or indeed at all, the information is used and valuable to many different departments within the police.

We know calling can be a challenge sometimes and we are working on that. You can of course report online at –
hampshire.police.uk/ro/report/

When you call 101 or 999, you will be put through to trained staff, whose job it is to record the details of the incident. The call is assessed by the staff and decisions will be made if deployment is necessary based on the information you give. Please tell the call taker exactly what you are seeing and hearing. It is vital to be clear about your concerns. The call taker will ask a number of questions as they are trying to find out the urgency and risks posed and if there are any lines of enquiry we can follow up on, such as witnesses, CCTV and forensics.

If the incident is not urgent, there may still be a need for other enquiries, or follow up work and so other departments, including the Neighbourhood Policing Teams, would then be tasked to do these enquiries in line with their current workload and shift pattern. There are many other departments that review, assess and work with the reports that come in too.
 
As with all agencies, we need to prioritise our resources. A sporadic report, not requiring any follow up, will be filed – but having the report logged is still valuable. NPT regularly read the reports for each area, so we are aware of what has occurred and can plan our duty and patrols. The number and frequency of reports is vital information for us to plan and prioritise. Especially when it comes to extra resourcing and involvement from other agencies – it is CRITICAL that we can evidence there actually is a problem affecting multiple residents – without the reports, we cannot do that.

How to Report –
PLEASE DO NOT REPORT INCIDENTS BY POSTING ON FACEBOOK OR TWITTER, emailing officers direct, or replying to a Hampshire Alert. Email, Facebook, Twitter and Hampshire Alerts are not monitored 24/7, officers work shift patterns and could be committed with an incident, on rest days, annual leave, or off sick and your message would not be seen by anyone else.

We do need you to report incidents, but it needs to be done in the right way. None of these types of media can record the report into our records system or deploy police officers – that is the role of the call takers and the control room.

PCSO Mica.
Message Sent By
Mica Woodcock (Police, PCSO, Eastleigh District)