Going into Hibernation

You hit a point when you realise this isn’t going the way it was all meant to be at the start. Looking back – two relaunches and still no consistent udates ……. and then the realisation that I have three drafts started but none finished – all in all it’s telling me something, something very clear! I have been struggling time wise to keep the blog regularily updated, no shortage of stories and issues, just a shortage of time. I don’t want to close it down completely as I intend to come back to it in the near future and build on some of the ideas but for now as the winter really begins to bite it’s time to go into a partial hibernation. There will be occasional updates as circumstances allow and these will be ’advertised’ through our Twitter posts so keep in touch with us there and as always if there is anything particularly that you do want me to include in future blogs then let us know.

Policing a Little Bit of Everything in Dudley

A re-launch of a re-launch ….. I’m saying nothing more about it but back up and running properly again now!

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for us policing the Dudley Borough. While policing is never routine there is a certain pattern to it; as the week goes by things tend to get busier as we approach the weekend, no great surprises there I guess. Every so often though a week comes along that changes that and that’s what happened this last week.

As an emergency service we deal with a wide range of incidents.  At the start of the day you just don’t know whats going to come your way but so that we can manage our response effectively we need to grade our calls according to the risk and danger involved. To help us manage these calls we colour code them, it’s not rocket science, an Immediate Emergency (the sort of thing that you will see or hear a police car responding to with blue lights and sirens) is shown on our screens as red, next grade down as yellow, so you get the idea. It’s impossible to predict when these emergency calls may come in, yes, Saturday night, chances are there will be a few but earlier this week in the space of a minute we had four such calls come in. The screen just turned red and you just see everyone’s heads drop for a second! Each of these calls set alarm bells ringing as all indicated that someone had been stabbed or had a knife and was threatening others, or in one case was threatening to stab himself. But it was heads back up immediately and staff were quickly moving officers around the area to get to all of these incidents, completing checks on background history and any other information that could help the officers going there, even where in the street the house is helps so they can concentrate on driving.

It all sounds very dramatic and lawless but in the end the man who was threatening himself with a knife was taken safely to hospital for treatment under the Mental Health Act, one of the persons who had been stabbed hadn’t been, it was a bloody nose from a drunken fall, two of the others were the same person (although magically, in different places!), so in the end nobody had any real injuries and nobody else was at risk.  But then there was also all the rest of our calls still coming in.

What do the Police do?

I often feel that many people’s perceptions about what we do are formed by TV programmes, after all for the majority of people that is their only involvement with us. Every so often something comes along and you think where did you get the idea that the police will deal with that?  This week brought more than its fair share of these.

We took a call from one resident wanting to make a complaint about Police Officers who had gone to her house because her window had been smashed but the officers had not repaired it.  When I explained that we don’t repair windows but that we could call someone out for her she was just a little bit irate with me and could not understand why we would not repair it.  When I suggested that maybe she or her partner might do it she replied ‘why should we, it’s the police’s job’.  The conversation ended there – we don’t do window repairs.

Then there was a very confusing call that seemed to indicate that there was some sort of disorder inside a house, arguing and shouting could be heard. When we managed to get some sense it turned out that one tenant wanted a friend of the other tenant kicked out and we ‘were to do this’. I explained that if she was the guest of the other tenant that we really had no powers to do anything. We could prevent a Breach of the Peace and disorder but couldn’t force the co-tenant to kick his ‘friend’ out.  I explained that the best course of action was probably to speak with his co-tenant and sort it out between themselves but apparently they couldn’t do that because ‘they weren’t talking anymore’.  Advice about using mutual friends, mediation, Citizens Advice, Solicitors, being grown up and talking to each other all fell on deaf ears with the insistence that the police had to ‘sort it’. A difficult position for the caller to find himself in but not a police job!

If you have followed this Blog for a while or kept up with our Twitter posts you will have noticed that I am prone to repeat myself with stories that you may feel ‘I’ve heard that one before!’ Well here we go again!  A while back I mentioned a family who called us in a dispute over the sons continued use of his X-Box; yes, you’ve guessed it, they were back in touch with us again as they were once more arguing, this time over tidying up around the house (son is a teenager after all!).  We didn’t go out to them, much to the caller’s annoyance with us but as we pointed out to her again, police are not there to make children tidy up their room. Genuinely, we have had other similar calls from parents to ‘have a word’, ‘give them a fright’, ‘threaten to lock them up‘… we don’t do that either.

Domestic Violence

We have another regular lady caller with a very ‘complicated’ life; underneath it all though she is very vulnerable.  The other evening brought another call from her but she cleared off the phone before we could find out exactly what was wrong and where she was. I managed to get through to speak to her later, it was a little bit sad I suppose -

Me: Can I speak to J….

J…: Are you the police?

Me: Ahhhh, yes, how did you know?

J…: Nobody else calls me!

We did manage to find out where she was and what happened so got some officers out to her but much to their bemusement she took an exception to them and threw them out of her house. A quick change around and we sent some more officers who she thought were ‘lovely’ and told them all about the Domestic Assault on her. All the details, photos etc were taken and the offender later found and arrested.  A bit later on though she called us again to say she wasn’t going to support a prosecution and wanted the charges dropped. We said no as there was too much risk to her and her ex-partner needed to be placed before the court.

Domestic Abuse remains a real and concerning issue for us and our partners right across the Borough. Despite a lot of good work going on just about every shift we do we will deal with a number of such incidents. The scale of them can range from drunken arguments through to serious assaults. There is no one particular area or group or ‘type’ of person that can be a victim, it can be anyone. We do take it very seriously and there is a lot of support now in place for Domestic Abuse victims (female and male, young and old).  I will come back to this over the coming weeks as we approach one of the periods of the year where victims are at greatest risk – Christmas.

Despite the hiccup of the last couple of months the aim of the Blog remains the Psame – to give communities across Dudley Borough a little bit of an insight into what we are doing.  There are many things we cannot include because they are part of ongoing investigations or are being dealt with by courts but I hope that you get some flavour of whats happening across the borough. If you like what you have read please let others know by using the buttons below (if you don’t like something then let me know). You can follow what we are doing through our Twitter posts.

Missing Blog Found in Dudley!

Ok then, the evidence is fairly heavily stacked against me, so I guess its hands up time, I admit it, I have failed miserably haven’t I? No updates for eight weeks! A bit like a New Year resolution, going great guns for a while but then other things start to take over and suddenly those great intentions seem so lost and….. At this point I should be able to give you a whole host of reasons why I neglected the Blog, I could talk about the technical issues, the other time consuming commitments, the great summer weather … ok, now you know it, there isn’t an excuse, it’s just one week slipped, then another and before you know it you’re thinking ’what happened to that Blog thing I used to do!’ So, time to move on and get some writing done,

For one reason or another our last few weeks seem to have been dominated by incidents where we are concerned for the welfare and safety of some of our local residents. I’ve talked about some of the issues around this before, actualy its one of the recurring themes. Just about every day we have a range of calls either from family or friends expressing concern about a relative, friend or neighbour that they have not seen or their behaviour is giving them cause for concern. We also get calls from our partner agencies relaying concerns that a patient or ‘client’ is at risk. We have to look at each and every one of these calls and risk assesses it on a rang of criteria whether its the first time this person came to notice or the tenth time. Frequently a little bit of digging around, a few phone calls and the matter is sorted – missing person found, patient into medical care, back with family.

Every so often though the risk assessment starts ringing alarm bells, this person needs urgent help and needs to be found as soon as possible. We had one such incident during a recent night. We took a call from a very worried lady, her husband had gone out very distressed making comments that he had had enough and ‘to say goodby to the children’. He had also taken a significant amount of medication with him. A check was made with the hospital as to the consequences of taking the mix and quantity of tablets but the consequences were all too clear to us anyway and time was of essence – buses, taxi firms, shops, CCTV were all checked for sightings but to no avail. Colleagues from neighbouring policing areas were sent off to check some locations on them.

Time really was critical and we got every officer we could into the area along with a dog to track and the Police Helicopter. There then followed a hectic half hour as the helicopter spotted a number of different individuals trying to hide! For a short while we wernt too sure who we were following, our Missing Man or Burglars! In the end we eliminated (not literally) one of these persons when we caught up with them and found that they were actually wanted for failing to attend court – he was bit upset when he realised the helicopter and dog wasnt looking for him!

Meanwhile the search continued and between a combination of the helicopter, good investigative background work into the gents favorite places and a bit of luck we found the man safe. Altogether it was only about an hours work but it was one where every minute counted. Some quick work by the officers and Ambulance staff meant that we were able to get him off to hospital, medical care and safety.

The other ‘found’ person went to court the following morning!

Another missing person reported to us recently also raised serious concerns for a couple of reasons; the circumstances were very worrying (comments made about what she was threatening to do, the medication that she had taken combined with her drugged state) but also the name immediately rang bells with everyone, we had searched for and found her earlier in the year in what at the time was a fairly traumatic incident and she was threatening musch the same again. This time though it was nothing so dramatic. Officers had to force their way into her house to search for her but no sign of her, other than empty medication packages. Fortunatly she was found at the second place we thought she might have gone to, safe and well.

Managing our response to these incidents is just one part of what we do here. Just as significant is taking the calls and dealing with whatever comes from the caller. In the vast majority of times we are able to help someone in need but there are other times …..!

The other evening we took a call from a very drunk man, not an unusual occurrence in itself but he then went on to be very abusive to our call takers. He was making some worrying allegations in between his rants and we needed to be sure that there was nothing actually happening. After we visited some of the areas he said he was in we were satisfied that there was nothing in what he was trying to report and he also stopped calling, presumably he fell asleep. We were unable to find out who he was but at some stage in the future when the number comes up again then we will be able to identify him and take action.

We had another caller one of the mornings this week who got very ‘upset’ when the Call Taker told him that we would not be sending out any Police Officers because it was nothing to do with the police, he needed to sort it out himself. I’m not going into the detail of what his problem was but it was nothing whatsoever that warranted police involvement but when our Call Taker told him this he became very abusive to her. Our staff member quite rightly ended the call but then I got a call from him as he wanted to make a complaint about her and ‘he paid our wages so we had to do what he wanted’. Having listened to the recording of the call I told him the Call Taker was perfectly right to end the call and we would not be taking such abuse. His reply was ‘oh, its recorded, is it?’ and ended the call to me! We are an emergency service, we take thousands of calls from upset and distressed people but we dont take abusive calls and we dont use valuable police resources on things that are nothing to do with the police.

Well thats the story this week. Time to draw this to a close or it will be another eight weeks before I finish! Feel free to comment on any aspect of the Blog or Policing by using the comments buttons below. You can follow what we are doing on a day by day basis on our Twitter Posts and if you like what we are doing then you can let others know by using the buttons below (or you could just tell them!). If you dont like something then please let me know.

Thats What Good Neighbours Are For

I’ve been very remiss and not published anything for the last few weeks. In my defence but I think I’ve used this one before, I have been very busy recently at work and at home. The vast bulk of these posts are done away from work and the last few weeks has seen my ‘spare’ time taken up with a hundred and one other priorities, it’s always priorities, how come everything is a priority? Besides this has been one of my more traumatic and frustrating posts as I have lost the content three times already!

Most of what I have being doing was influenced by the great weather we had recently (we did) and that weather is the common theme running through everything this week. The sun and warmth bring all sorts of issues for us in policing, very few of them anything positive I’m afraid. Open windows cause real problems for one reason and another and the migration of many local residents from the sofa to the garden often brings misery for their neighbours.

So I suppose the starting point this week is that relationship with our neighbours, particularly where the relationship has broken down.  If it has gone beyond the quick chat -

“Do you mind not …., Your kids are ….. ” “Oh sorry I didn’t realise , I’ll sort it out.”

- then we’re already in difficult territory and there aren’t too many quick fixes; to be honest if there were I guess we wouldn’t be talking about it here. In a nutshell then, one of the more demanding problems we find ourselves confronted with in day-to-day policing are disputes between neighbours.

We get calls about disputes between Neighbours on a daily basis, sometimes from one party, sometimes from both sides and I guess I probably thought I had seen, heard or dealt with just about most things. We’ve had disputes over Fence Panels being removed, Fence Panels painted (pink in one case), trees which were Trimmed, Pruned, Cut Back, Topped, even Cut Down. Then there are all the noise issues, boundary disputes, parking and a hundred and one other things that can make life miserable for many neighbours. Every so often though along comes a surprise and a call the other night was a surprise. A frequent caller, both parties were actually regular callers, complaining about each other – we effectively were being used as their ‘leverage’ in their problems with each other. We’ve had calls complaining about just about anything and everything – vacuuming, drugs, singing, litter, parking, smells, friends, feeding birds, etc. but this was a new one – the neighbour was testing his Motorbike in the kitchen downstairs! On this occasion our call operator was able to confirm it as they could also hear the engine roaring! This was pushing it just a bit.

Trying to achieve some sort of solution to these issues is not easy and is not going to be solved in one go. In this particular case we already had the involvement of the local Neighbourhood Police Team and the Council who were working very hard to get some sort of compromise between both parties. There are Mediation services available for these sorts of issues but both sides have to agree to take part first of all. As is often the case in these circumstances though, getting compromises is very difficult when both parties feel they are doing noting wrong!

There are of course some neighbours who just wont ever get on but even then they often reach a point of ‘understanding’! As I said at the start, if the quick solution worked then we wouldn’t have reached the point that we have with some of these situations.

I’ve mentioned this before but a reminder never goes amiss, everything here is real, these are people’s real life situations and I in no way wish to demean those involved, merely to point out some of the situations we find ourselves confronted with. Its difficult at times writing about these problems and yes I know they may often seem odd but that is the nature of working in the Emergency Services, we deal with the odd! Everyday I look at some of the calls coming in to us and think ‘how did it get to this point, why the police?’

Memories of Summer

I know the weather has changed and the balmy days of summer are long forgotten now, there still remains though another significant Window Issue for us and if I don’t mention it now I may not get the opportunity to write about it again this year if I wait for the next bit of sunshine. Even with the current chill wind and driving rain blowing across the area some people continue to persist with their Open Door Policy to assist offenders. There is admittedly something pleasing about having a door or window open to allow the sounds of the birds or the smells of The Black Country to come wafting in (ok, I know, but it’s just to make a point!). It’s not a good idea though to head off to bed and leave the windows open downstairs or the doors open while you doze off in the garden. It does seem common sense but we still get reports of thefts from houses, even where offenders have just reached in an open window and helped themselves to bags, phones, wallets, food (yes food!), anything that’s lying around. Please just take a moment to consider what you have left open and where you will be. There is no need for Fort Knox type efforts, just a little thought can prevent the majority of crimes.

Been on Holidays?

Leaving the country on holiday? Planning on coming back? Got something to hide? One person this week found out that just like the Mounties, Dudley Police Officers always get their Man. Ok, so it wasn’t a case of trudging on horseback across the Frozen North, more a matter of good investigative work and identification of the offender coupled with a healthy sprinkling of technology and co-operation across the country. As this man returned from a trip abroad he found that the long arm of the law (and the Police National Computer) extended to Heathrow Airport (it actually extends to all entry points, Air and Sea). His return to the UK from the sun was greeted by alarm bells and flashing lights. In reality its more a case of a discreet message on the computer screen – Seat 16A!!!! So following his trip to the sun he had his own personal taxi back to the West Midlands and into Custody and a lot of questions to answer.

Box Lady of Dudley Town

An odd moment the other night; CCTV was ‘feeding’ through some footage of an incident as it unfolded in Dudley town centre. In the end fortunately it was nothing serious but in the corner of the screen I noticed someone moving about in the background, wasn’t too sure what she was doing but she was certainly acting very strange. A little while later the cameras caught up with her again, now walking down a street carrying what appeared to be every ‘stray’ box in Dudley. Clearly she had spent quite a bit of time gathering up a lot of boxes and I do mean a lot. She had gathered them all together and managed to carry them (with great difficulty) down the street. So why? Was I missing something? You’ll have noticed from previous posts that I’m fairly confident that I have a reasonable idea of whats going on across Dudley but gathering up all the boxes in the Town?

Ok I have to stop now or this will never get posted! If you want to see what we are up to on a daily basis across Dudley then you can follow our Twitter posts. If you want to comment on anything on here or our policing then please do use the comments section below and if you like what we are doing then, again, feel free to let others know, you can use the buttons below, or just tell them, thanks.

The Power of Communication – Dudley Calling

We have had a particularly busy few days this week. If you have been following the Blog or our Twitter posts you will have picked up on how I like to say “nothing happened” … “Its been a quite week …. ” and so on! Our aim, I guess, is to be boring, to have nothing happening – Ok, so the reality of life is nothing like that but we are striving to make sure as little as possible actually happens. This week though, a lot happened, from gun reports in Halesowen, to chases over back fences in Pensnett, shopping trolley dash in Amblecote and Domestic Violence reports across the area. But the good news is that these are uncommon (except perhaps the Domestic Abuse) and all had very positive results with arrests and safety.

Every one of the incidents above came in to us as a phone call and we organised our responses, gathering information, getting officers to scenes and ensuring everyone’s safety by radio. Communications are key to everything we do.

Whats in a call?

Everything really, it could be anything from an immediately life threatening incident to the most mundane of things. When that call flashes up on the call handlers screen they have no idea what the content will be. The technology that we use to handle these calls has changed over the years but the nature of the calls has changed very little. The biggest change has been in the volume; predominantly calls come in now from mobile phones numbers. This is great because we can get instant information from incidents and it increases access to us but a it’s also a bit of a problem when the caller then keeps on moving and we are left trying to find them. Every morning we have a range of incidents to follow up from overnight where the caller wasn’t where they said they were. Frequently this is a call made after a few drinks and then caller lost interest / changed their mind but we still need to check out their safety.

We have come a long way from the early days of policing, from our early Control Rooms to our current Contact Management Centre where everything from phone calls and visitors to the management of all police resources across the Dudley Borough are dealt with. The technology we have now allows us to stay in touch with staff wherever they are. It allows them to speak with colleagues anywhere in the country, which is particularly useful for us in a policing area where we share borders with two other police forces (West Mercia Police and Staffordshire Police). We can talk instantly with them to inform them of incidents, the movement of offenders, request help and a hundred and one other things that make everything more effective. All this new technology though seems to have led to a surge in the number of Computer Screens required! I have manged to reduce mine down to four screens.

101 National Police Call Number

Earlier in the year we transferred our contact number from 0345 113 5000 to the new national number 101. This means that wherever you are in the country you get through to the local police for where you are. If it is us you particularly want to speak to, wherever you are, just tell the operator and they will connect you to West Midlands Police (or any police area you want).

The 999 number is still there for use in an emergency.

Range of calls

As a bit of taster of the calls we get below is a selection of some of the incidents we had come through on the phones in the course of an hour recently.

People using an Air rifle in public in Dudley. A little bit more on the implications of this and guns generally later.

Alarm at a Commercial Premises in Dudley. Turned out it was a ‘False Activation’ but it still initially required officers getting there and securing the site (surrounding it in other words) before the key holder could confirm nothing was wrong.

Dispute between Neighbours over parking in the street outside their houses in Stourbridge. Unfortunately this is not an uncommon occurrence particularly in some of our smaller streets which were never designed for two and three car households, in fact the were never designed for cars.

Domestic Violence Dudley. A little bit of a problem with this one, because when officers got there the circumstances were nothing like the caller had said on the phone. She said she had exaggerated things to get us there! The problem we had was that there was a genuine history of Domestic Violence involving her and her Partner.

Domestic Violence Lye – offenders arrested, yes, that’s right, it was offenders. He brought his mate as ‘support’, both arrested.

Fight in street, Quarry Bank, Domestic Violence linked and offender arrested.

Safe and Well check in Dudley. The level of concern we had and the circumstances of the report to us meant that we had to force entry to the house, person not there, a relief in one way but more enquiries to find where they were (quickly).

Fight between brothers, Stourbridge

Fight between Brother and Sister, Pensnett, both were over 50 years of age. Spoke to the Sister on the phone to see what was actually happening and she claimed (proudly) that she’d put him down twice last year but didn’t want to have to do it again…and her chips were getting cold!

Assault on Pub manager, Brierley Hill after he refused to serve someone.

Theft of a delivery van – offender found and caught by officers, using a combination of technology (tracking systems), speaking with witnesses, quick thinking by officers and even quicker running – there’s a lesson here, don’t leave your keys in the van outside while you deliver inside!

Domestic Abuse related harassment.

Missing person, very vulnerable due to mental age. Caused real concern when we got the call and searches were in the process of starting when she returned home stating she had been out to play.

Search for Missing 12-year-old boy in Foster care – last seen climbing out the bathroom window!

Firearms

Incidents involving firearms across the Dudley Borough are rare but we treat each and every report seriously. We had a couple of such incidents this week, one of which caused us real concerns;  during the incident because of what we were told and afterwards, on reflection, for what could have been a very different outcome.

We received a call from a lady to say there was a young man on her neighbours driveway walking around in circles with two guns in his hands. She said he looked very agitated and kept pointing the guns at the houses. She didn’t know who he was but was really worried. Then he walked off down the road out of sight but still with the guns!

As with any such call we had assistance from Firearms officers, Police Helicopter, Police Dogs and our own officers. A search of the area produced no sign of this ‘gunman’ and some door to door enquiries in the area produced another witness who said “oh yes, that was just J…. across the road, he’s filming a project for school”. J…. was found eventually and all was confirmed. Luckily for him it ended this way, not so for the young man in the CCTV footage – A Scary Moment.

That’s it for this week, if there are any areas or topics that you would like me to have a look at over the coming weeks let me know and I will see what I can do to include them. In the meantime if you want to comment on anything then please do use the comments section below or if you like what we are doing then, again, feel free to let others know using the buttons below (or just tell them!), thanks.

Heart Stopping Moments in Stourbridge

I finished off last weeks Blog with the comment that there is no such thing as ‘normal’, that every policing day is different. Generally everyday is different, bringing new challenges but we returned to duty this week to find that everything appeared to be normal, almost a case of Déja vu! We literally started our week off where we had finished the previous one, on some railway tracks in Stourbridge, looking for a vulnerable Mental Health patient who had run off threatening to go on to the railway line.

trespassers on the Line

Railways and railway stations are policed by British Transport Police (BTP) but as with everything in policing (and indeed right across the emergency services) there are no boundaries to helping out in emergencies.  We quickly set up searches, including using the Police Helicopter, of the tracks and open areas around Stourbridge and fortunately found this person before they came to any harm and got them back into treatment.

So rewind to our last Night on duty, when we got a call in the early hours of the morning about a distressed lady in a dangerous position on a local railway bridge to which we immediately responded. As it became clear that the officers would need to go on to the railway line we arranged for all the trains on that line to be stopped for their safety and that of this lady.  After a little bit of difficulty she was found by the officers and ‘escorted’ to safety.  That was the plan anyway but this lady didn’t really want to be escorted anywhere let alone back down a steep embankment. So the officers took the sensible decision to ‘walk’ her back along the track to the station. This ment that they would be going onto a different line so we called up the Rail Control again to request that the trains be stopped on this line too, to be met with the response “I can’t, there’s one coming through NOW. It’s too late to stop it!”  This was followed almost immediately by a call (a shout actually) over the radio from the officers that “there’s a train coming, get it stopped” as they continued to struggle with a very reluctant lady on the track. We knew we couldn’t stop the train, there was nothing we could do about it, a genuinely Heart Stopping moment.

From where the Rail Control had told us this train was going though, I was happy that the officers would be safe so long as they were where I thought they were! I was satisfied that I knew where everyone was and that they were all safe and in no danger BUT what if they weren’t where I thought they were……! There was absolute silence in our Control Room (a rare feature) as the officers continued to call over the radio that the train was coming and that they were still struggling with this lady on the track. All we could do was tell them to stay exactly where they were and wait!

After what genuinely felt like minutes of silence but were just seconds the radio came back to life with the officers saying the train had gone off onto a different track and all were safe! The lady was escorted back along the remainder of the track to the station and the care of the Ambulance Service and hospital for assessment.

We get these sort of situations from time to time but the coincidence of these two coming so close together was a little bit worrying (and dangerous).

Not only is going on to the railway lines a criminal offence it is also an incredibly stupid thing to do. Trains take a long time to stop and unlike cars cannot swerve out of the way, it most cases by the time the driver sees you it will be too late for them to do anything.

Domestic Abuse

Issues surrounding domestic violence seem to form a regular element of the Blog but I’m afraid that this just reflects the reality that we face daily. For years we and partners have been working hard to tackle domestic abuse. Our approach and the support available have changed dramatically over the years but there are still people out there who continue to abuse and assault their partners.

Almost immediately after officers finished dealing with the railway incident above we got a call to say that there was a women being assaulted at a local address by her partner. The same officers who a short time earlier thought they were going to be run over by a train got to this lady very quickly and arrested the offender, getting the badly injured women away to hospital and safety. It was only as things were calming down in the house that the officers noticed a very strong smell of gas. It turned out that the offender, besides abusing his partner had diverted the gas supply, by-passing the meter, to avoid payment. Trouble is he had not done it particularly well and the house was now full of leaking gas! So he was arrested for that as well as the assault.

Meanwhile the gas ‘board’ were called and everything made safe, at which point an examination of the electricity supply showed that he had done exactly the same there, so another arrest to add to his growing list!

There are serious consequences to messing around with the electricity and gas supply and not just a criminal prosecution! On reflection looking back at each of the incidents above they do all have one thing in common, they all have potentially lethal consequences (and I include Domestic Violence in that).

Finally the usual reminder, you can follow what we are doing in the Dudley Contact Management Centre (Control Room!) and whats happening across the Dudley Borough on our Twitter page. You can subscribe to this Blog using the buttons on the Menu on the right and if its your first visit then please take a moment to explore previous Posts and some of our links. If you like what you’ve seen then let others know by using the buttons below, if you don’t like something then let me know! As always please feel free to comment on any aspect of what we are doing.

The Very Greedy Heron of Dudley Town

Its been a busy week for us here in the Dudley Control Room with all the ‘normal’ things coming in along with a few more notable events. Whats ‘normal’ though? Was it the Burglary arrests, the Robbery arrests, the shoplifting arrests? Or was it the Hoax calls, the disputes with neighbours, the “I’m lost and drunk, will you get me home?” Or was it the hour of peace and quite? Perhaps it was the Mental Health patient helped into treatment, the missing persons found or the Domestic Abuse offenders arrested and put before the courts? Or was it just the peace and quite that is Dudley?

Raiders in the Night

Continuing on from last weeks garden theme, we took a call the other day from a local resident reporting the theft of some fish from his pond. While we always remain open-minded about incidents we were a little bit sceptical whether this was a criminal offence, not the theft (theft of fish is an offence) but more a case of ‘who dunit?’

This man had raised the fish from young over a number of years and was clearly devastated about the loss. He had taken all the garden security advice literally, including barbed wire along the fence by the canal; the Garden was impregnable but someone had got in and stolen all his prized fish! However, he had an immaculately cared for garden but there was not a footprint in sight, nothing disturbed so how could ‘they’ have stolen the fish. It was with some sadness that we had to point out that nobody had been in the garden and that he really ought to put a net over his pond if he didn’t want a Heron to take any more of them. There is a lot of wildlife out there across Dudley (the genuine sort!), much more so than many people realise, from Badgers to Foxes and Hawks to Herons and all are very active during the night. The Heron may seem an odd and ungainly bird at the best of times but is a very voracious overnight feeder.

Metal Theft

I posted before about some of the issues we are faced with around the theft of metal. It continues to be an issue facing all of us although there are some good initiatives underway to tackle the ‘market’ side of things. One of the latest will see Scrap Dealers taking the fingerprints of some of the persons trying to sell scrap to them. We also run frequent operations targeting the offenders and yards.

With the continuing high resale value of scrap metal however there are still offenders out there who will try. Some of these came a bit unstuck earlier this week when we received a report of people breaking into a house. We got officers there very quickly and surrounded the area. This in itself can be a bit tricky because with the network of paths, alleyways and canals around Dudley it can take up a lot of staff to do this. Sometimes because of this network we have to place officers quite some distance away on a tow-path for example. There is no better feeling though when you’ve studied the map, looked at possible escape routes and maybe half an hour after the event the offenders are caught trying to flee along one of the routes you identified.

Anyway this time the offenders were seen to run off over garden fences but some of our finest ‘trackers’ were off after them over the fences as well. In the winter sometimes we are able to follow footprints in the snow but on this occasion all we had to do was follow a trail of water splashes and the officers quickly caught up with and arrested some very wet offenders. One of the problems with ripping out a boiler without turning off the water is that you get very wet! So it was off to custody and a change into one of our very fetching white suits while their clothes dried.

Road Closure

One of the constants within the Control Room is that you never know what the next minute will bring. Sometimes what initially seems very worrying and a serious risk turns out to be very minor while at other times it works in reverse with initially minor incidents/calls suddenly become much more serious. We had one of these the other day when we received a report of a minor collision. But when officers and ambulance got there it became apparent that the casualty was very seriously ill. This then lead on to a full road closure, initially for the safety of the ambulance crew and police officers working at the scene and then to allow for a full investigation to be done. It also led to some very confusing Twitter messages from me – ‘Road is Closed’, ‘Road is Open’, ‘Road is Closed’!

You may hear on Traffic News “road closed for accident investigation”, well that is what this was all about. After serious collisions (we don’t use the term ‘accident‘ anymore!) we treat the area exactly the same as a Crime Scene. The area is closed off and a full Forensic investigation takes place. It used to be a pen and paper, some chalk and a measuring tape but it is all very high-tech now with digital and laser equipment for measurements calculations and photographs including from Police Helicopter and a lot of witness interviewing. We try not to keep the road closed for long but it is essential to close it to ensure the best possible investigation is undertaken. One of the reasons for keeping the road closed is to ensure we capture all of the evidence available. Once the road is reopened then all potential evidence is ruined.

Back to the beginning, so what is Normal then? I guess there really is no such thing as normal, every day is different!

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Time to show your Shed some Love!

How time flies! I have been very busy for the last couple of weeks and despite all my good intentions I just never got to sit down and think about the Blog. I blame some of it on the great weather we had because for one of those rare occasions my Annual Leave coincided with what might turn out to be our best weather of the year! So much to be done around the house and each and every job just got bigger and bigger.

Garden shed security

While taking a break from all of that work I was sitting in the sun looking at the garden shed (a bit of a sad life I guess!) and started to think about a blog I wrote earlier in the year about ‘Seasonal Crime’. While on that occasion I was talking about frosts and stolen cars we are now fortunately into a new season – Spring (although with todays snow I’m not too sure where we are!). While the glorious start to Spring ment that I could sit in the garden it also though brings more challenges for us – thefts from sheds, thefts of hanging baskets, etc.

Garden equipment and plants become valuable commodities at this time of year and some people seem not to be too keen on actually purchasing them at full price from the local store or garden centre preferring to go for the too good to be true price down the pub or elsewhere. “Honestly officer, I know its almost brand new but I thought £20 was a fair price for the lawnmower…!”

Have you ever really thought about everything that you store in that shed? Garden equipment, sports gear, cycles, fishing kit, power tools, etc. All in all there is a lot of value in some of those items and sometimes all that is keeping them secure are a few rusty screws. You don’t have to turn your shed into Fort Knox but do have a look at it and give some thought as to what you could do to make it a bit more secure and reduce the chances of some one making money at your expense.  

Our patrols can only do so much to look after your shed but there are a lot of products out there that can make the difference. More importantly there is also a lot of advice, including online, for relatively low-cost / free solutions. So with the Easter Weekend approaching now is the time to do something about it.  So how secure is your shed?

Whats happening in your area?

Having just scared everyone silly about thefts from sheds I guess I now need to take a moment to reassure everyone about the real levels of crime. Frequently when speaking to local residents we hear the comment ‘crime is … very high, its not safe, etc‘. The reality is that crime is actually much lower than most people think and particularly so across the Dudley area. Last year there were more than 2800 fewer victims of crime across the borough, compared to the previous 12 months. Crime levels overall are now lower than at any time since 2002.

While we all accept that not everything gets reported to us, we do capture the majority of what is actually happening in the area so the Crime Map website allows you to see exactly what has been reported in your neighbourhood. Have a look at it when you get a moment.

Domestic ABUSE

I have been away from work for the last couple of weeks but popped in to visit one of my colleagues earlier this week and speaking to her in the Front Office at the station it was clear that I had arrived in the middle of a mini crisis with a very tearful lady being comforted by one of the Police staff. It turned out that she had just left an abusive marriage and was looking to get somewhere safe. Her husband, she said, was on the way down to the station too as he had found out from a friend where she had gone. So we got the lady away and into a safe location and awaited ‘husbands’ arrival!

The circumstances of this ladies arrival in the police station, while dramatic, are not unusual and we regularly support victims trying to get out of abusive relationships. Those coming to us are not always female and are of all ages. In the last few weeks we have had victims come to us for help in getting away from such abuse aged from 15 years to 70 years old.

We can look to prosecute where possible but the safety of those involved comes first and it is never a simple decision as frequently there are children/school/ financial/family issues that the victim needs to consider and all this tied up in a very emotional set of circumstances. The support though is there, both Police and Community Partnerships, as well as voluntary bodies, nationally or locally such as SODA, Survivors of Domestic Abuse. The simple point is that you do not have to suffer Domestic Abuse.

Messaging Service

Now again, after just explaining how we will do whatever we can to help people I am about to say that there are times when we won’t help! Sounds a bit silly, after all we are a public ‘service’ and that at times causes some people some confusion. While we always want to help and I think we generally do, there are times when we receive calls that you have to say, its nothing to do with the Police. Sometimes it’s because it is in the remit of another organisation (recently we had complaints about a noisy low flying airplane – Civil Aviation Authority) and we will direct the caller to the person or agency best able to help them.

At other times though it is people looking for us to do something that they could actually do themselves; there is no emergency, no crime, no risk, nothing to justify police time. We had one of these recently where a father called us to ask would we visit his long-lost daughter to give her his address. He thought he had traced her through the internet (be careful how much personal information you give away on some of these Social Media sites!) but if he went there she would not speak to him, so could we go ‘as she would have to listen to us!’  As well as some alarm bells ringing as to why she was ‘long-lost’ and ‘wouldn’t speak’ to him it was clearly not something that we were going to do for him. He was most upset with us because we had to do it and there was no other way he could get in touch. When I suggested he write to her at the address I was an uncaring ****! There is a limit to some of the ‘good deeds’ that we can do!

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Has it really been a Year?

Well, this Blog is now a year old; a year of posting! I’m not too sure if that is something very profound but I guess it’s time to sit back and reflect on what it has all been about, what it has achieved (if that’s not too pretentious), how things have changed in the Blog and I suppose to take stock of where we are now with it all and where we go from here for the next year, yes, I will be continuing.

I guess it was never going to change the world but I hope that it has shed a little bit of light on what we do, why we do it and given a better understanding of whats happening across Dudley and the surrounding areas.

Reflecting back on the past year two things in particular stand out; I have learnt that it’s not even worth thinking about trying to write anything after I have been working Nights and secondly that it is certainly a lot easier to write on a sunny summer morning sitting on the patio than a cold dark/damp winter evening! I guess that that is all about motivation and inspiration as there is always something to write about but sometimes trying to avoid prejudicing an Operational investigation or Court proceedings becomes so complicated that you just think I’ll try and write about something else!

The hardest parts of the writing these Blogs during the past year? A number of things stand out. Besides difficulties with maintaining momentum and while not quite producing a Post a week (actually about three a month, which on reflection isn’t too bad I think), trying to think what might actually interest people always complicated writing. In the end it often became simpler to think what did I find interesting from the previous week and hope it was interesting for others!

The really hard part though has been trying to come up with a catchy Headline for each post! There are a lot of other Tweets, Posts, Blogs, etc. out there and I do recognise the difficulty of catching people’s attention in a very busy Social Media world. Looking at this weeks Post heading I’m fairly sure that the Catchy Headline issue is still an area for development!

The other positive thing that has come about at the end of the year has been that I hit my target number of views. I set myself a target at the beginning of the year, totally arbitrary as I had no idea how many people might be interested enough to view the Blog but we all need targets and it was nice to think that so many people took the time to view the pages. While I must thank all those readers from the United States, from across Europe and Australia, from Egypt, Iraq, Indonesia, South Africa and other parts of the world I guess for the coming year the aim has to be to increase the number of local readers from Sedgley to Stourbridge and Dudley to Halesowen and all the bits in between viewing the Blog.

For me one of the biggest changes over the past year in the Blog was the decision to try to link some of the posts into the Illustration Friday themes. This was partly a reflection on my frustration with trawling through the Internet looking for appropriate photos to illustrate the Blogs. I thought why mess around doing that when I could spend the time doing what I enjoy, a bit of drawing/art work. It was a big decision, to some extent opening up something that has always been fairly private and totally separated from my police work but writing the Blog and running the Twitter account has tended to blur some of those boundaries. At this point I do have to post an apology to those real talented artists out there and some of the fabulous work that is used to illustrate other blogs, I can only aspire! Looking back I think that that is just part of what the illustrations are, an aspiration both to improve my standards and importantly also I guess an attempt to take a different and slightly light-hearted but respective look at some very serious and difficult situations. You can view some of the previous Illustrations on the Illustration Archive Page.

One of the common threads running throughout all of the Blog posts for the past year has been that everything I have mentioned is real; everything I have written about has been based on real life experiences and often they are someones personal tragedy. unfortunately that is what we deal in, personal tragedies. Nobody calls us to tell us they have won the lottery, the baby has arrived, they’ve had a great day ……. Whether it’s of their own making or not I do not mean to belittle in any way the situations people find themselves in, the intention I think is quite the opposite. It is to highlight some of the often mundane, sometimes trivial circumstances that we frequently find ourselves involved with. The ‘Big Stuff’ you can get on the news or ‘reality TV’, this is what the rest of us deal with! But we understand that, that’s why we are emergency services, we’re there for when things go wrong, to pick up the pieces. We can live with that.

My daughter has decided that she needed to learn juggling but watching her ‘practice’ it reminded me again of one of the recurring themes across all of the Posts – her juggling is a bit like day-to-day policing in the Control Room, great while you keep everything balancing up in the air but what happens when some one throws in an extra ball? No problem you say, we’ll just keep those balls in sync. But one of them is now a bit more serious than the others, real concerns for someones safety, what do you do? Drop the others? It is one of those perennial issues for us, trying to keep an eye on everything and giving each the necessary support and resources while understanding that everything can change at a moments notice.

Finally (for this bit anyway) its customary at the end of any year to thank lots of people and a bit like an Oscar acceptance speech I have a very long list of those who have made the past year a successful one: my role in all of this is to sit in an ‘Occasionally Hot Seat’ and make decisions, I’m not the one charging around in cars, faced with violent offenders, ‘knocking’ on doors; my role is to manage all of these colleagues, to get them the support they need, to keep them safe, to get officers to wherever they are needed whatever the circumstances, to make decisions about what we can do and, just as importantly, what we can’t do and what others should be doing. None of the past year would have happened without the help and support of my colleagues both in the Dudley Control Room and those outside responding to the needs of the communities across Dudley.

OK that’s it, time to stop, on reflection it’s all getting a bit heavy, time to move on!

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The Sky is no limit to Policing Dudley

Last week was a bit of a difficult week at work for me and I wasnt even at work! After finishing Nights we go on to our Rest Days, a bit like everyone elses weekends, just in the middle of the week! So during these ‘Rest Days’ I was flicking through some Twitter posts and I picked up on one from the @wmpolice account featuring the Photo of the Day. A great idea, really interesting, but this day they posted a ‘historical’ photo from 60/70s. Not an old photo or anything else but one clearly described as ‘historical’ by my colleagues in the Press Office. Well, I stuck my head back under the covers and pretended that I didn’t know anything about the 1970s (or couldn’t remember the 60s but that was age). Then the following day @wmp_helicopter posted a photo of the first police helicopter in West Midlands Police. The sad and difficult point for me was that I actually remember the predecessor when we briefly used an airplane. Clearly I am now of ‘historical’ vintage! Particularly stuck in my memory for some reason was a day spent on the Hawksley Estate in Kings Norton, Birmingham, while the airplane flew around overhead. It was a very different world then. The plane was clearly doing something to help us on the ground but as a lowly PC nobody told me what it saw and directions from the observers onboard about where we needed to go were all a bit laboured. Nowadays it has changed so dramatically as all staff have direct communication to the helicopter and we in the Control Room can even see on the ‘Heli-telly’ what the crew can see, allowing us to be much more effective in managing incidents.

Over this past weekend we had the helicopter out to assist us across Dudley and Stourbridge a number of times, all very successful – either catching offenders or  searching areas for missing people.  occasionally we take calls in the Control Room from people complaining about the noise it makes while hovering overhead. The noise is very familiar to us but I do understand that it can very loud particularly at night, keeping people awake.  The other evening  unfortunately while putting the bins out at home I could hear that familiar sound off in the distance and see the navigation lights hovering over a neighbouring area. If we have the helicopter out there it is out there for a reason and will be as quick as possible. It allows us to very quickly search an area either where we are concerned about somebodies welfare or safety, or we are searching for an offender.

Strange Things over Halesowen

Continuing the aerial theme we had a call the other evening reporting a strange light in the sky over Halesowen. The type of call is not totally unusual, we get many many calls about all sorts of strange things (and not just from Halesowen!) some of which clearly are overactive imaginations, while others may have some degree of sense in them. Whatever the circumstances of this call there were no police issues in it. Calls to us about strange lights floating across the night sky nowadays tend to be Chinese Lanterns let off for some celebration/remembrance or other. This one though had the added ‘concern’ that they had seen it on previous nights. Whilst I always have an open mind I do tend to rule out UFOs very quickly but the power of Twitter quickly solved this mystery for us as several people pointed out to us that the International Space Station had passed over the area at this time and makes for a very impressive sight in the night sky.

Plumbing Skills for Police

If you have been following the Blog you will be aware that a while ago I made a bit of a rash promise to try to tie something from our previous week policing into the Illustration Friday weekly theme. You will also have noticed that this has been achieved to varying degrees of success both in terms of the illustrations and regularity. Given my now confirmed ‘historical vintage’ I tend not to cope particularly well with the ravages of working Nights so periods of inactivity on the drawing and Blog fronts tend to follow working nights!

This weeks Illustration Friday theme is ‘Fluid’ and while much of day-to-day policing could be described as ‘fluid’, ‘ever-changing’, ‘the situation is fluid’, etc. it was a particular incident again this week that sprang to mind.  Due to the current high cost of metal we have found that theft of metals for scrap is a big issue for us and while we have a number of plans and Operations in place to target the offenders and dealers there still remain some who continue to offend. One of the offences we face is the theft of boilers and plumbing from vacant houses. This is not done with any finesse, the boiler is just ripped out leaving the water flowing through the pipes. Generally we will get the call from a neighbour telling us about the water pouring out of the house (or in worst cases coming through the ceiling). This isn’t too great a problem if we can find an owner or if we can find the stop cock but frequently officers are often left trying to be emergency plumbers, sometimes with finger plugging the hole. Once again this week we found ourselves in this position trying to find owner for a vacant property while preventing further damage to neighbouring houses.

That’s it for this week but if you want to comment on anything then please do use the comments section below or if you like what we are doing then, again, feel free to let others know, thanks.