Run-ins With The Police

[lupestripe]

Over the weekend just past, we had two encounters with the police.

The first one came on Saturday night when, after the meet, Wolfie, Tonks, Ponpon and I were enjoying several craft beers in our local Wetherspoons. At tipping out time, one of the patrons became violent towards a bouncer, and the guard did his thing. As we had phones on us, we were told to call the police, who didn't know where the only Wetherspoons in town was and insisted on us providing a postcode. We left before they arrived.

On Sunday, after my work shift, I met up with Wolfie, Ponpon and Rushy in the centre of Leeds. We were showing our southern friend the range of craft beer options in the city, including The Pit and the newly revamped North Bar which looks like you're drinking in a giant crate but it has opened up the space somehow. It's a nice effect. After Ponpon left to catch his train, the remaining three tried some new bars in town - Atlas Pub and Decadence - the latter of which has only been open a fortnight. Both are typical places really but I enjoyed the range of drinks on offer as well as the atmosphere (although we were the only ones in Atlas) so we will probably go back.

At 10pm we headed home via the pizza shop to discover that the police had closed our road. On closer inspection, someone had crashed into a telegraph pole which had come down in our garden. There were wires everywhere and the wall has been slightly damaged although it surprisingly withstood most of the impact it would appear. Thankfully the house is set quite a way back from the road so this escaped unscarred. I don't know what time the accident happened but the car had already been towed away bad the police had called an engineer to clean everything up. We met him as we were heading to bed and by morning our garden was clear, although the pole is still lying on the side of the road and there is still a lot of broken glass on the pavement.

The mending of the wall is not a huge job but as I don't know who crashed into the pole and who is to blame, I imagine we will have to pay for it rather than the insurance. For the nominal amount of time and money involved, this may be less hassle anyway as my experience with insurance companies has been overwhelmingly negative when it comes to getting pay-outs. Furthermore, my gut feeling is that this was caused by someone driving too fast and swerving, which means they may have no insurance anyway if its a typical boy racer type. Still, it's another job we could have done without.

Comments

[bhgobuchul.livejournal.com]

Weird the police don't know where that is, don't blame you for leaving.

We had a driver crash through the garden wall here a few years back, driver going to fast round the corner. Fortunately the guy had insurance though, but not fun :X

[alexf0x.livejournal.com]

As we had phones on us, we were told to call the police, who didn't know where the only Wetherspoons in town was and insisted on us providing a postcode. We left before they arrived.

We got this situation explained to us when I did a minor first aid course at work (not a full one). The reality is that it's more than likely that your call went to a central control unit at the police that rather than look at the town was working for the whole region. The person in the control room won't have full local knowledge of the area, buildings or places, they may not even send a police car or patrol that is really local to your area or town, they may even be the first cops nearby, who in reality might be from a town or two over, thus have little local knowledge.

I know that this is certainly the situation with the ambulance service who just direct paramedics around a region rather than locally. Ask for an ambulance in Cambridge, the one that might show up will come from Norwich. Sometimes crews will get lost going though streets that they have poor knowledge of, or duped by a piss poor GPS fix, or stuck in traffic since they didn't know that road X gets busy at a certain time of the day. Oh and yes, and getting to the point more than once or twice crews have been told to go one place only to muddle it up or get it wrong due to hazy directions, or more local names given to some locations.

Oh and yes this HAS cost lives, our local rag ran a story recently relating to an inquest concerning the death of a Local ATC cadet who die after an asthma attack on local camp. Ambulance got sent to the wrong RAF station due to a postcode fudge, and regional mixup (the ambulance ended up on a station some 50 miles away to the casualty).

You may now have to tell a 999 or 101 operator the EXACT location, address, and POSTCODE, to report an incident.

Welcome to the world we live in a cost effective system, that saves neither cost nor lives.

[fargowolf.livejournal.com]

I hear ya... Even then, giving the physical address and how to get there isn't that big of a help. =/

[lynx-vilnensis.livejournal.com]

Ouch... Weird people, as well as people with no self restraint, can be a big problem no matter where. But the pole to the wall - that's crazy. I hope that at least it is not that much of a work and money to fix the garden and surroundings. :(

[fargowolf.livejournal.com]

Check with the police. They should be able to point you in the right direction, given that the guilty driver will be required to pay for all damages, through his/her insurance company. As the property owner, you are entitled to compensation for the repair of the wall.