Ok, final post before I delete my profile and leave you all to it, as you clearly don’t welcome outsiders or opposing views (I was surprised you didn’t seem to already have any Police on here as members, to offer advice/answer Qs etc. - a few posts in I quickly realised why, at least you’ll have nobody to disagree with you now or point out problems with incorrect assumptions) so will leave you to your anti-Police rants (you may want to explain how the prisons got so full if we are all so useless and lazy - if you Google ‘prisons full’ you will see articles from different dates over the last few years about prisons being 99% capacity, told to take more, full in 2 months and so on)
There are clearly issues with load/fuel thefts, just as there is issue with burglaries and various other crimes - whilst crime across the board has risen (ignore the spin the Gov try and put on it with the crime survey using selected opinions/areas and look at the actual figures, with many not bothering to report meaning its even higher in reality) and population/demand has also risen, we have lost around 24,000 officers with the same amount again in PCSOs and admin staff who were doing some of the support functions but now replaced by full officers. At the same time we are taking on many of the other agencies work due to not enough Social Workers, Ambulances or mental health workers meaning we spend at least 25-30% of our time dealing with issues which aren’t Police matters (this is some of the time when we could be attending the jobs you criticise us for).
With load thefts, in most cases our attendance after the fact won’t actually solve anything as there is unlikely to be any forensic opportunities so we would just record it along with the items taken so we can potentially match it with any found on arrests/warrants of known gangs doing this, and provide a crime number - this can all be done over the phone. Its like people reporting their car stolen from the drive, with no CCTV or witnesses - in the past we would have attended in person, for reassurance at least and would like to do so now but with so few resources against demand we have to prioritise, so turning up to say “yep, you’re right, it’s gone” won’t provide any additional benefit to a civvie dealing over the phone (whilst we look for the child reported missing for the umpteenth time). If we attend the load theft (and many we will), then we have to choose another job to NOT attend instead.
With the thefts from your vehicles - we DO patrol services and key areas, however unless you see us passing between the lanes of vehicles or checking laybys (which is when we started noticing the bill board issue) in the few minutes we’re there (when you may be asleep or eating etc.) you assume we don’t do it. We DO catch people for these crimes - I already mentioned the Brentwood A12 multiple fuel theft example and we have also sent several people from the same gang to jail, its just we do work in the background on intel of vehicles/criminals in the area and sometimes have to play the long game - two local examples below but there are many, many more. (my favourite was when they took a gamble by taking boxes without knowing what was in them and had actually stolen 3,000 pregnancy testing kits!!)
http://www.barkinganddagenhampost.co.uk/news/crime-court/dagenham-gang-member-jailed-after-stealing-from-parked-lorries-1-4715124
http://www.braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk/news/south_essex_news/11236396.M25_lorry_thieves_jailed_for_5_years/
As mentioned in a previous reply above, we can never please everyone and not cover all demands, so have a generic response team to try and respond to 999 calls and general demand, then specialist teams to deal with specific crimes, i.e. the Child Abuse team will only deal with these crimes and not RTCs or give out speeding tickets etc., the same applies for the Burglary and Gangs teams, CID, community team, Domestic Abuse, Modern Slavery, Cyber Crime, ■■■ offenders and so on - Roads Policing however (the clue is in the title), deal with Traffic offences and problems and try and reduce casualties on our roads (halved from the 3,000+ deaths per year we used to get, partly due to better vehicle safety but also enforcement, education and engagement). We won’t generally deal with burglaries etc. (although are called and respond if nearby when its happening/just happened) just as the other teams would for a serious crash nearby, so suggesting we should go and catch ‘real criminals’ rather than giving out tickets or dealing with drivers is like someone else suggesting the drugs team should leave people to it (as if they want to kill themselves through drugs, who cares) and deal with speeding in their village instead. For those who would say “i still think your priorities are wrong”, you have clearly never been affected by, or spoken to anyone who has experienced a road death/serious injury. The numbers of dedicated traffic officers is already at a record low (very approximately 1 per 100,000 people, less in some areas with lots of forces having NO dedicated Roads Policing officers) and we are the first to be cut when numbers reduce as other more political areas such as crime and burglary (which don’t kill anywhere near as many combined) are seen as more important
The plane crash in Iran has been towards the top of the news pages for a day or so due to 66 people killed - on average 66 people die on our roads every 2-3 weeks however that is just taken for granted (fatal accidents rarely make National news). That’s pretty much the equivalent of a 737 crashing every month, killing everyone on board. Can you imagine that being accepted? Well that’s what’s happening, and we (Road Policing) are the only ones dedicated to trying to bring the number down even more, and I will never apologise for that or be made to feel i’m not doing ‘proper Police work’.
To the mods, thanks for being fair in your approach and thanks anyway - I’ll delete my profile now as there really is no benefit in remaining and leave you to it and wish you luck - no doubt there will be ‘teddy in the corner’ or ‘couldn’t take it’ comments, however as there are so few on here with an open mind willing to have a sensible conversation/debate and accept certain things, life is too short. I could probably count on one hand the amount of replies which were (A) relevant to the actual post and (B) helpful, with the rest of the 10 pages being anti-police rants or presuming I’m a troll (without actually clarifying how or why my polite posts were winding people up or being rude/unreasonable as a troll would)
A parting thought - for all the comments about crap police and individual examples, I have had MANY experiences with truck drivers driving in cruise with their feet on the dash, using a laptop, watching films and even cooking a meal on a gas stove in the middle, yet I haven’t grouped all drivers together and assumed you’re all ‘knobheads’ (as a previous poster put it), because i’m an adult and can differentiate between people rather than label everyone within a wide group - maybe some on here should try it?
No, really it is!
, not sure about what that’s supposed to mean,… but never mind 
)
) myself, including 2 occasions I have pointed out on this thread.