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.

Is it all too Good to be True in Dudley

Every week in the Dudley Police Control Room we get a range of calls from local residents who in one way or another have become victims of fraud. Fraud is not new. Offences committed by fraud have been around for a long time but we seem to be getting an increase in the calls and also the type. Many of them are related in one way or another to the Internet, either responding to an e-mail or purchasing goods. Generally the caller has received an offer of something or seen an item that they may want.

For many of the cases when you sit back and look at the ‘offer’ it immediately strikes you that this is just ‘too good to be true’. Many of the victims also recognise this as well, frequently commenting ‘yes, I thought it didn’t seem quite right but then I thought maybe it is.’ I’m not talking here about the fake e-mail from your bank requesting details, etc but that item on some selling sites that is such a ‘great bargain’. Often when we speak with the caller you realise that they have already spent significant amounts of their money either buying non existent shares or releasing money from non-existent accounts abroad.

Earlier this week I received a call from my bank wanting to tell me about a great offer they had but first they needed to check that they were talking to the right person and could I just confirm some security details. Well, as my kids will testify, a Cold Call alone is enough to start me off on a rant but a cold call asking for my security details had me well and truly in Victor Meldrew mode.

Now I would never be rude to someone but I pointed out that as a responsible Bank they could not expect to phone up out of the blue and ask for my security details, clearly I had no idea who they were and whether it was a genuine call or not. This seemed to pass my caller by as he continued to believe it was a genuine request on his part because he couldn’t be sure I was who I said I was!  The caller finally gave up, with both of us saying that we were going to speak to his supervisor!

Anyway having checked with the bank later that it was a genuine call they were apologetic insisting that the caller should not have asked for security details ‘if I did not want to give them!’ The moral here really is that you should not give out your details to anyone, whether by phone, E Mail, post or any other method unless you are 100% sure who they are (and a cold call is not 100% sure!!!).

There are many support systems out there if you think that you may have been the victim of Fraud or feel that you want to take some precautions and while such crime is an increasing area of activity it does remain rare and certainly is generally easily prevented if you ask yourself a simple question – Is this too good to be true?

Popularity

Watching the queues developing outside some of our High Street clubs this weekend had me thinking again about the popularity of one club compared to another. Its one of those great mysteries of life – no, not why all those people would queue on the coldest night of the year but why for that particular place. It’s always one of those things, one week Bar X is the ‘in’ place then by next week the crowd have moved on to Bar Y with no real sign of anything changing.

Nice Day for a white wedding

We had a busy night at the end of last week and it was only as I was heading home in the morning that it dawned on me what an extraordinary night it had actually been. Unlike our counterparts on TV programs day-to-day policing can be very repetitive and if you have been following our Twitter posts you may have picked up on some recurring themes. But this night clearly had something different. It was busy yes, but nothing serious, nothing that stood out, just lots of calls and demands to get officers to different places. It kept everyone very busy and as I said it was only as I was going home that some of the Incidents came back to mind.

I suppose a word of warning is required here – any resemblance to real people in any of the posts is, unfortunately entirely real!  These are real people’s lives and while I may be a little bit flippant here and there about the incidents, each and every incident that we deal with is somebodies personal tragedy (we don’t tend to get called to the good bits!).  Often the incidents are not of the persons own making, being entirely outside their control but too often there are times when you just think…..

Early in the night we got a call to an address where there was a family gathering to celebrate some occasion. I don’t know what it was and it doesn’t really matter but somebody said something about somebody else that somebody took exception to before long all the family members were involved and Coleslaw was flying around the house. Yes, literally everywhere, carpets, walls, clothes, hair, everywhere! It was fortunately one of those times when the arrival of the officers immediately calmed everything down and brought a degree of sense and embarrassment to everyone.

Then there was perhaps one of the oddest calls of the night, if not all time. A dispute over plans for a ‘White Wedding’. Apparently one family wanted it and the other didn’t.  Ok so far, planning weddings is a very stressful thing and I guess it’s not an uncommon discussion point between those involved. But to reach the point of calling in the police to solve your wedding plans does not really point to a harmonious future. Police officers have many skills but Wedding Planing is not too high on our list of required training so both families were told that if they felt the need to sort out their plans by fighting they would all have the opportunity to discuss it at length in our cells.

Anyway having had the night start off with this dispute it was even more alarming to find ourselves called at 4:30 in the morning to a couple fighting on a car park, particularly as they had only gotten married the previous evening and this was the start of wedded bliss. Perhaps the shortest lived honeymoon period ever.

In among all of this we received a 999 call from a lady saying that she was babysitting her Granddaughters while their mother was out for the night but that the girls (17 & 14) were playing up. She had called the mother but she had said to call us to ‘teach them a lesson’! The only lesson that was taught was what an emergency call is, what the police are for and what a mothers (and fathers) responsibilities are. We did not go!

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