Will people who have encountered this person (or something similar) please report it to the appropriate Police Safer Neighbourhoods Team. They each have a webpage and an online contact form (although I suspect the contact form is the same across the whole site - warning: it is LONG and requires a lot of information).
I once reported the bins outside the flats up the road where i live, being used as a drugs drop off/pick up point. Did it via one of those links. That was over a year ago. Still waiting for a response. I also emailed a certain police sergeant who will remain nameless, but who used to pop up on this forum now and again. No reply. I even sent a reminder a few weeks later. Nothing, Nada. I think we need to face up to the fact that there are no police really. Not for day to day anti social behaviour issues like this where law abiding folks are being intimidated on their way home or’ low level’ drug stuff and theft. If this was a hate crime then it would probably be a lot different. They are interested in all that stuff while it gets headlines and makes them look good.
And this is the reason why. I have worked in the ‘justice’ system for 25 years now and I can tell you with my hand on my heart that every word of this is true.
I have found it quick and effective to use twitter to DM the police on @MetCC. If people log things in real time, then even if individual concerns aren’t resolved, they are able to recognise a pattern of issues, and pursue the problem another day.
I got a very quick response, asking for more details, then confirming they had logged my report. This is in contrast to using the non-emegency phone number; when I used the online form to report having been hit (in slow motion) by a car, I never heard back from them at all.
It is time effective to report, and know that you’ve done your civic duty in creating a formal record. This makes me feel better, knowing I have done the right thing, and hold evidence that they were properly notified. If something awful happens, and it transpires that they failed to act, then I can submit my evidence.
Although it is good to see that someone at the Met responds to tweets (assuming it is “someone” who has responded as opposed to a “bot” of some description) I think what matters is whether anything tangible happens as a result. Something that makes a difference to our day to day lives. If the article is right that only 7% of reported crime results in a criminal charge ( and that is not the same as a conviction), then we have a great big problem on our hands. One that we can see playing out on our streets day in day out.
I can’t say I agree that the police systematically deal only with crimes that attract headlines. My husband is a police officer and it’s very hard listening to the extreme lack of resourcing and what they have to deal with. Picking and choosing cases? Simply not true.
And the number of COVID related offences that have been created must have significantly increased their work too. But dealing effectively with this individual now would be better for residents and also better for him, if he needs professional help, so it’s a shame if resources aren’t available. To be honest I wouldn’t describe what I’ve read about him as anti social behaviour, given how intimidating he seems to be, but that’s just my view.
By definition, his behaviour is anti-social.
Don’t get me wrong, probably like you, I can sympathise if this guy has mental health issues, but intimidating and frightening people is unacceptable and he needs to be taken somewhere that’s better for him and for other people until he is capable of being civil in a public place.
What I mean is that I don’t class demands for money accompanied by apparently deliberately threatening behaviour as anti social, because while it is anti social, it’s not only anti social in the same way that the clientele from the pub at the end of the road urinating in my neighbours garden is anti social. My criminal law knowledge is too rusty to pin point precisely the offence that it might be . Begging used to be an offence under some 19th century mendicancy act or other, from what I vaguely remember, but this is more than just begging. this is intimidating people in order to get money and it seems even more than anti social behaviour. But I don’t know what the formal definition of anti social behaviour is.
Ha - I get it now!
And I apologise.
You were saying that it’s MORE than anti-social behaviour, which I totally agree with (but in this new WOKE and overly politically-correct society that we now live in I didn’t want to say what I REALLY thought about neighbourhoods having to live with this type of scourge)
You are both right. The thing is that proper mental health services are non existent in this part of London. All they do is give drugs. I know this because my partner is a local mental health professional. In addition, a member of my family had a breakdown and was admitted as an impatient. When she was discharged from the ward there was no help put in place other than being rung up now and again for a chat. A year later she remains on the waiting list to go on the waiting list for psychological therapy. Yes, you read that correctly, the waiting list for the waiting list. There is no proper help any more. Full stop. So the poor old police get lumbered with the people who would in the past get referred to properly functioning local services. The criminal law is not the right tool for dealing with people who have complex needs, but that is what we have been reduced to doing. It’s dangerous, inhumane and it’s not right. This aggressive beggar may have health problems or he may just be a villain who needs his collar feeling or maybe it is a bit of both. Who knows. One thing I think we do know is that given the lack of local mental health services to help him, and given the thinly stretched thin blue line, we had just better get used to this sort of thing.
Yeah, it seems like turds like him are being enabled by local virtue signallers who’re keen to be seen as ‘right-on’ when in actual fact they’re simply attempting to demand money with menaces. This whole ‘mental illness’ card needs revoking when they clearly have the presence of mind to approach those they believe to be weaker.
I’m not sure where your reference to ‘virtue signallers’ comes from; perhaps some folks just don’t immediately assume malice. And perhaps you could call these people some kind of optimist, or at worst naive, but I don’t think they are the problem here.
I’m no expert in psychology and I’ve never come across this individual but it seems to me that this individual’s modus-operandi fits the description of an opportunistic bully. He doesn’t make a direct threat but he implies it with additional harassment on refusal. He’s clearly targeting lone individuals who even straight goers like you and I would identify as potential targets if driven to it. He clearly preys on who he believes to be the weaker targets. Based on that whoever implies that he suffers from mental illness - in my eyes - is enabling such behaviour.
I don’t think it’s helpful or our place here to diagnose either mental illness or a crappy aggressive attitude – we just don’t know.
What we do know is that unfortunately we have to be vigilant around the areas flagged, (safely) look out for any neighbours we see being troubled by this guy and his cohort, and notify the police if we’re disturbed or concerned by behaviour we experience or witness.
Thanks to the people above who’ve helped out with a number of ways of doing the latter
