New Month, New Tea Fund

This caused all Hell on parade today. It's been suggested that if people pay their tea fund a year in advance they can have a £4 discount and then the Sgt who runs it doesn't have to chase them every month. This lead to the obvious "but what about if I'm posted away for 3 months" and "what if I leave the station before the end of the year" discussion.

In the end it was decided that, as it's only £20 this probably isn't worth getting too stressed about.

Once that was out of the way we cracked on with fighting crime. Quite a few of us in today (a Sgt and 4 PC's) so things started well. Unfortunately, one of the PC's had to deal with two prisoners left over from the early shift and another PC had an appointment pre-booked. Still, crack on.

It was the usual disputes and arguments between neighbours and friends. A burglary where a buggy was stolen from a porch.

One of the bobbies is dealing with a criminal damage where the master criminal has signed his own name with his "tag" all over the side of a sports centre. We looked on the internet to see if he's got a personal website and he has, with the same tag on it. So hopefully he'll squirm a bit when he's interviewed tomorrow.

I mean, I'm glad we're not facing an army of criminal geniuses because that would clearly make our job harder. But seriously, if some of them were characters in Cluedo they'd be called "Captain Potatohead" and "Lady Buffoon".

We also got a phone call from a grandfather reporting that his 14 year old granddaughter is having a sexual relationship with her 17 year old boyfriend. This is always a bit tricky to deal with. Firstly, it's going to be really difficult to progress unless the girl admits that she's been sleeping with him, which she's unlikely to do because "I love him and he loves me!"

It's also unlikely that the lad's going to be too quick to admit anything because he knows she's under the age of consent.

There's also sometimes a moral question, as in "should we really be getting involved?" I once dealt with something similar (15 year old girl, 16 year old boy) who both came from supportive, loving homes and had been together for over a year. The girl's father (estranged from the mother) phoned us to make the report, and it was more to get at his ex-wife than any concern for his daughter, who was clearly not in any danger. They (the boy and girl) used contraception and were really careful and obviously had very strong, real feelings for each other. I felt like I was trampling my size 9's somewhere they were neither needed nor wanted because of the allegation made out of malice.

In the end, the case was never pursued as it was deemed "not in the public interest". Sometimes you feel that doing the right thing is a lot more complicated than just following the letter of the law.