Last night, after several months of concerted viewing, I got to see the climatic final episode of the US TV Show "Breaking Bad." Although I don't want to give away spoilers if you are familiar with the relevant broadcasting rules regarding the glorification of crime - particularly drug use - this should not have been a complete surprise. Despite the clues though I have to say that I found the entire show to be both awesome and awe inspiring. Particularly Aaron Paul's portrayal of that little Jessie character.
With the suspense building even before the start of last night's episode I knew that once it had finished I would need a good 15-20 minutes to compose myself for bed. As the broadcast didn't end until around 00:15 (local) and knowing that I was already long past tired and had a lot of work to do during the following day I must confess that I found this a little frustrating.
However just as I was ready to send myself off to sleep from outside I heard the unmistakable sound of tyres screeching, metal crunching against metal and car alarms going off amid an increasing level of swearing. By the time I'd accepted that this was something I needed to deal with and made it outside to establish visual contact it was apparent that a car had scrapped up against a van parked at the bend in my street and then continued to collide with another car parked on the opposite side of the road.
As I arrived the short but robust conversation between the driver and one of my neighbours was just ending with the driver extricating his vehicle from the collision and driving off. Just as I was debating whether this meant that I would then have to sprint after a moving, albeit damaged car an independent witness appeared confirming that they had noted down what is known to traffic wardens, police officers and other users of shortwave radio as the Vehicle Registration Mark (VRM). It was at this point the owner of the damaged car made himself known so I put him in contact with the independent witnesses and returned home.
As I was returning home another group of independent witnesses presented themselves and mentioned that they had noted down the same VRM. Having also put them in contact with the car owner and established that there was both a strong suspicion that the driver was drunk and that the police had been contacted I decided that it was no longer my problem and went home. I did of course mention this briefly on Twitter because the combination of broken glass, loud shouting and the possibility of blue lights in such close proximity to my home is the sort of thing that I feel I've got to make people aware of in a timely manner.
I gather though that Croydon police's response to all this was their usual "F*ck off, we're not going to bother." Although I think this was just normal crime that happened to impact on my little world rather then something more organised this p*ssed me off for two main reasons;
Firstly although this might just be a case of a young man making a silly mistake his "Act of Guilt" as it is termed under law is that he got into a 1 tonne motor vehicle fully aware that due to drugs/alcohol he was unable to control that vehicle. On this occasion he's only scraped some paint and bent some metal but the other night another neighbour's infant child was unable to sleep so they took them for a little walk to stop them crying. If these two events had coincided I think we'd be having a very different conversation right about now.
The main thing that p'ssed me off about it though is that legally the guy has committed at least two criminal offences in the form driving whilst impaired and leaving the scene of an accident. With multiple witnesses providing an exact description of the vehicle it wouldn't have been too hard to circulate that description on the radio so any patrol units could stop the vehicle if they saw it. Failing that in the UK vehicles are supposed to be registered to an address so it wouldn't have been too difficult for the police to swing by that address and if they saw the vehicle parked near-by knock on the door and make an arrest.
So apart from generally protecting the public this provided the police with an easy opportunity to record at least two crimes and then rapidly solve those crimes. This would be recorded in their performance figures allowing them to demonstrate that they're doing their job and demand a pay rise.
The fact they can't even be tempted by that sort of p*ss easy solve leads me to believe that the police around here have really just given the f*ck up. This of course raises the question of why we're still being forced - by law - to pay around GBP300 per year for the police to nothing whatsoever.
19:20 on 10/7/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 12:10 on 12/7/15 (UK date) to add;
As with the Germanwings crash the above seems to have led to some odd atmospherics locally. As such I should probably expand.
I hesitate to describe the above as an "accident" because with there being UK laws against drunk driving there was clearly an element of criminal intent. However I don't think there was any particular intent to crash let alone crash into specific vehicles in a specific location to further any wider political cause.
Despite this within around 9 hours three people were shot - two fatally - in a drive-by shooting in a sleepy village in Bavaria, Germany which is certainly not the ghettos of Baltimore or Chicago. About 9 hours after that two people were shot - one fatally - in a drive-by shooting in the Wood Green area of north London, UK. The victim who survived was initially reported to be a pensioner although since it's emerged that she is 51 which would only qualify her as a pensioner in Greece. One of the deceased in Germany was an 82 year old woman who was most certainly a pensioner. The deceased in London was a man of - I assume - Turkish origin with the first name "Erdogan." That seems to come up a lot in discussions about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
As such I'm getting the impression of the UK panicking under pressure. If I was relying on them for protection I wouldn't be feeling the most confident I've ever been.
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