I've been reading Winston Smith's excellent blog for some time, and I couldn't help thinking of him while this incident was going on. I'd have loved to hear his take on it. His chronicling of the failures in our system of "care" for young people has a direct link to policing as so many of our frequent fliers come from the "care" system.
So. Imagine you're the manager of a care home in Shitsville. Two of the young men in your care, aged 15, are well-known to police for a variety of minor nuisances and Anti Social Behaviour, possession of drugs and the odd theft and burglary. You happen to know that these two owe money to a local drug dealer at the moment, so when they calmly walk into the care home's lounge, remove the 40" flat-screen TV and walk out with it, you immediately call the police.
Not to the report the theft though (although the call-handler does her job well and creates a crime report for that). Oh no. You're reporting the pair of them missing.
I can only assume this must have been down to one of a care home policy because surely no sane, rational human being would react to the theft of £700 worth of taxpayer-funded hardware by reporting a concern for the safety of the thieves.
One of our policies states that all mispers have to be managed by the duty Response Inspector, so I gave him a phone call. He's new to the division, having transferred over from a part of the county where there aren't any care homes. By coincidence they all seem to be on Y Division, so he's new to all this nonsense. I haven't met him yet, but he seems to have a sense of humour so I succumbed to the temptation to give him the details completely deadpan. He got the joke, but was a bit baffled as to what to do with the job, his view being that they were surely wanted rather than missing. I get the impression that he wanted to simply ignore the "missing" aspect and leave CID to crack on with investigating the theft of the TV and arrest them at their leisure. You can't just ignore the fact that someone's been reported missing though, so we let CCTV know, put out their descriptions on the radio (although the response team all know them well) and kept the job open to await developments. The Inspector's last sentence to me on that phone call: "Surely they won't be stupid enough to go back, will they?"
I had a private bet with myself that he was wrong on that, and I awarded myself a chocolate bar when I won it. Towards the end of our shift, the care home called back: the two miscreants had returned, clearly under the influence of cannabis and minus a flatscreen telly.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the county, another customer from one of the Y Division care homes is calling 999 (because he hasn't got any credit left on his phone) to ask if he's been reported missing, because he's missed the last train, he hasn't got enough money for a taxi and the home will usually send a car to collect him. He hasn't been reported missing, but the call handler phones the home anyway to ask them to pick him up. Sadly they don't have any drivers available. The temptation is to leave it at that and let him take his chances... but he is only 16, and anyway the local NSO happens across him at this point. His hands are tied: he doesn't want to be a taxi, but we have a duty of care to under 18s. Sure enough, we end up transporting him home. Country's finest taxi service, we are.
