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Police fail to catch thieves red-handed
Reporter: JANICE BARKER
Date online: 29/04/2009
A Chadderton businessman has made a formal complaint to police after his children confronted aggressive thieves who stole a £10,000 generator — but no officers answered their frantic calls.
Roy Tindall, owner of Reddish Vale Insulations, of Under Lane, said the vehicle’s tracker device alerted them that the generator had been stolen.
His son Roy (24), and daughter Gemma (19), used the internet to track the generator and called police to give them its location.
But when Gemma and Roy arrived at a lock-up in Middleton, the generator and four men in their 20s were there — but the police weren’t.
Eventually Roy convinced the thugs that officers were on their way and, after verbal abuse, the thieves drove off.
Mr Tindall snr said: “I have had a very apologetic phone call from an officer who said they had a lack of resources.
“My son’s call was downgraded from category one, which should have a 15-minute response, and was passed from Oldham to Middleton.”
The theft took place at 5.30pm on Saturday when the gang cut the locks off the Reddish Vale gates.
CCTV cameras captured them getting a large black 4x4 to tow the generator and trailer away.
Mr Tindall added: “It took them about 15 minutes.
“We get a text message to alert us when the generator’s moving. I know my son probably shouldn’t have gone to Middleton, but once he had phoned them he fully expected the police to be there.
“My son yet again phoned the police and they turned up at our office at approximately half seven, two hours after the theft was reported.
“We are very disgusted at how this situation has been dealt with and feel let down by the police.”
A Greater Manchester Police spokesman said: “We will be looking into his complaint and doing everything we can to get to the bottom of what happened.”
Comments
Typical useless police. Criminals caught red handed and they can't be bothered to turn up. They're too busy running diversity workshops or pandering to "communities" than actually DOING THEIR JOBS PROPERLY. They then wonder why trust in the police is rock bottom. People only report crimes when they need crime numbers for insurance.
they'll have been to busy doing paperwork and targeting motorists as the easy pickings.
people just do not respect the police today because they dont seem to be doing what they're supposed to.
Sounds like the usual standard of service! I had to call them on 99 it took 40 minutes for them to arrive, they then told me the day after they though the complaint had been exagerated(ie we'd lied) even though they got here so late the trouble had moved on.
Utterly useless & ripe for privatisation, couldn't get any worse!
The downgrade of the call would have been done by a civilian in the communications room.
If an incident is not urgent, it will not immediately be given out.
Police officers can't respond to an urgent incident if they don't know about it.
They should never have civilianised any of the police force.
5:30 on a Saturday evening. Now lets see where would all the Police be? On the fortnightly football picnic ensuring that Southend hooligans did not cause trouble!! Now all the criminals will know when to do the pilfering.
I'm glad folk are finally beginning to wake up & see how far, our once respected police force has fallen. Political & social agendas have taken the place of old fashioned crime detection & prevention. Behaviour is at times on a par with the anti social element they are supposed to protect us from. 44 serving officers have criminal records. We've had reports in recent months of cases of Drunkenness, violence, lying & thuggish behaviour, against officers of GMP. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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Sounds about right, but the stats will say diffferent 'What Call'
By Keith @ 29/04/2009 12:44:04
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