I have to wait until tomorrow to report a fraudulent credit card application made from my address (different name). It was rejected but I tried to call the bank on Saturday to be told it is closed until Tuesday. So I got the number for the police action fraud line and that's close too until tomorrow.
I suspect the police will say it's up to the bank to deal with anyway. Thus nothing to add to any crime figures.
Been a while since I worked in Fraud in the bank, but I recall we used to submit figures on the level of fraud so they could be added to the crime stats. Unless it was an organised gang, the police weren't really interested in fraudulent applications, stolen cheques and that kind of thing.
I don't think in 20 years living in post code AL1 I have ever seen a foot patrol and on the 2 times I needed to use the Police (once for handling in a well dodgy passport and visas . flight tickets found in the street - they asked me to deliver it to the nearest open Police Station at Hatfield. Another time it was left to MOP's to do a citizens arrest and detain a person.
You do see police patrolling the town centre on a Saturday - sometimes an officer and a PCSO, sometimes just the PCSOs.
A friend of mine works as a civilian dispatcher in a northern police force. She covers a division which has a population of half a million people and often finds herself with only a handful of response officers on duty overnight during the week. If they arrest someone the officers can be tied up for hours so it's no wonder they are not keen to make arrests.
She told me about one night when she had 3 response cars available, all of which were committed to dealing with incidents. She had to send the force firearms unit to deal with a vulnerable person missing from home as there was nobody else available. When the firearms officers asked for extra manpower to search the local area, she had to resort to begging the fire brigade to turn out because there were literally no police resources available.
In addition she complains that the police, as the last line of defence, find themselves filling gaps in the NHS and Social Services which don't have sufficient out of hours cover.
She fears the day she makes the wrong decision about who to respond to and finds herself having to explain herself to an inquest. She also fears the day an officer presses their panic button and there are no other officers who can assist.
The story above is from several years ago so before the latest round of cuts.
I don't think that we really appreciate how thin the thin blue line really is.