Catching criminals? File that under pending...

Jonathan Brocklebank

YEARS ago I showed up at the front desk of my local police station and made a full confession. I told them I’d let anger and impatience get the better of me and this was the explanation for what I had done. What I had done was their job for them.

Eyeing me suspiciously, the desk sergeant ushered me to an interview room, a plain clothes officer was summoned and I was told to start from the beginning. And so I did. It felt good to get it off my chest and, I’ll admit it, to tell a real detective how clever I had been.

The information I had gathered in the course of my inquiries had the offender bang to rights, I told him. In fact, this would probably be the easiest collar of his career. All he needed to do was exactly as I advised and justice would be served.

The 90 minutes I spent in that interview room trying to persuade the police to apprehend a villain in their midst sprang to mind this week as Police Scotland published a list of its seven ‘priorities’ for the future.

Getting a mention at number four is catching criminals, which is nice, but that is lower down the list than something called ‘localism’, something else called ‘inclusion’, and ‘prevention’ at number three, which I think I understand and am all for if they mean stopping people breaking the law.

Catching bad guys was next, under the heading ‘response’ while, below that, we have ‘collaborative working’, ‘accountability’ and ‘adaptability’.

Buzzwords

(You can just see the PowerPoint presentation, hear the human resources development geek reel off the buzzwords, feel the energy drain from the conference room.)

So there were have it – the seven most important things Police Scotland will be doing going forward.

Had I known this potpourri of management speak was the direction of travel back when I was a victim of crime, I doubt whether I would have been naïve enough to ask the police to step in.

Someone I had never met had gone on an internet shopping spree using my bank card details, blowing almost £1,500 on toys, as well as an SLR camera, and leaving me with the sum of £8.12 to survive on until pay day.

I was put out, to put it mildly. This was my money and I had other plans for it.

Fortunately the thief had left one or two clues for the attentive sleuth. These included his name and address, which he had helpfully given the companies so that they could deliver their wares to him.

Now, we must beware of telling professionals their job but I think I may have mentioned that, if I were a policeman who solved crimes, I would consider paying this gentleman a visit.

Indeed, I think I went further. I told the detective that I happened to know for a fact a consignment of goods fraudulently purchased on my card was due to be delivered to this man’s Glasgow address the very next day. It was an open goal. All that they had to do was be there. Days passed and there was no news of how the sting had gone down.

The detective I had spoken to did not return my calls. At length I was told another station was dealing with it but, naturally, when I called them they knew nothing about it.

Not until I had explained everything from the beginning again did another detective finally put me straight.

He told me I had been looking at this all wrong. My first mistake was to think of myself as the victim of this crime when, in fact, it was my bank which had been defrauded.

Most banks, he said, tended to return the customers’ money and write these incidents off because credit and debit card fraud is notoriously time consuming.

‘So the bad guy just gets away with it?’ I asked, incredulously. I was looking at it all wrong again. The bad guy should not be my concern, the detective replied. I was not the victim of this crime.

In fact, he added, the crime was not really his force’s concern either since, technically, the frauds occurred at the addresses in England of the firms which sold the thief the goods.

Was he serious? A man living in Glasgow, less than half a mile from the station where the detective was talking to me, sits at his computer and fraudulently spends my money.

Wronged

And it is up to individual police forces in each of the areas of the vendors to launch separate investigations into his crimes?

Yes, he said. I had understood him correctly.

This was a lot to process. My bank account was emptied but I should not feel wronged? The criminal was getting away but that should not bother me?

This newspaper carried a picture of the crook a few days after that. We told readers he was a thief police had little interest in catching. A form of justice was done.

Today I scan the Police Scotland priority list and find the business of catching crooks, solving crimes and stopping them from happening buried in a morass of PC-obsessed flummery.

But word comes from a Government spokesman that we may be looking at this all wrong. Apprehending criminals is not less important than localism, inclusion and the rest, says he. All these priorities carry equal weight.

The plot thickens. Can they, then, be priorities?

We live in interesting times. We occupy a land where ‘collaborative working’ is as central an objective for the national police force as crimebusting – and where even things like priorities get equal treatment, even if it means denuding the word of its definition.

I had an apologetic call from the police shortly after we exposed my fraudster. They were on his case, they said. Stand by for justice.

It went quiet after that.