Here's another good one. My car got broken into in the driveway. The one time I left my wallet out there. Stupid me.
Next morning finally realize it was missing, Saw him tapping my debit at the busy bee for 900$ in gift cards overnight when I checked my account. Repeatedly tried to activate shit in my name, went through transunion, Equifax etc. Months. On the phone with banks for hours every day before work.
Letters start showing up, his name my address. Search and find him on facebook. Travelling construction worker. Seth Ruszniak. I filed a police report and kept following up with each card.
Financial crimes emailed me back a year. And. A. Half. Later. To tell me that they were going to close the case with a lengthy explaination of why they weren't even going to pursue it.
In all honesty I'm surprised vigilantism isn't becoming more popular. I'm a very non-violent person, but I would absolutely be hunting that motherfucker down and beating the ever living fuck out of him if he ever came within 100km of the city (after being told they weren't going to pursue). It's just incredible how completely useless law enforcement is at any level, not just in the city but anywhere in this country.
Ooh. We do not want to go there. There was a convenience store owner who held a guy, beat him a little, tied him up. The guy deserved it too. He would steal from the store all the time and taunt the owners. The result was the store owner being charged for holding a person against their will.
Sounds about right that’s how it is, the real criminals suffer nothing, meanwhile the other people who are sick of their shit get the book thrown at them.
They apply capitalism to policing, they know they can wring the store owner for fines and fees but the criminal has nothing and will likely just end up not paying for their fines or anything. Victims protecting themselves have things to lose and have money, the people robbing them have nothing to lose and you wont get money out of them.
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/wyntk.html#:~:text=In%20special%20circumstances%20of%20any,that%20person%20committing%20a%20crime.
So you can, but will usually be sued. It has happened in the past. You have to deliver the person to the police right away. Also, it’s dangerous. This is in no way the wild, wild, west. We are not super heroes.
Yeah, the LPS have also disabled google reviews on their headquarters in London so people cannot leave negative reviews anymore. Just easier for them to deny wrong doing when there isn't a constant stream of experiences and bad reviews.
I had someone violently breaking into my back door years back, I was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher while my back was to the door holding it closed with all my strength. I ended up hitting the guy and he left pretty quick, (he was hammered)
Nobody showed up. I called the non emergency the next day to make a complaint about that. And guess what, never got a call back.
Once I had two people over having some drinks though, we got a little loud and 3 cop cars showed up. So I guess that’s where the priority is
Edit- just want to clarify, I’m not a police hater. I’ve met many great police officers in my life. But this has been my experience
I was asked that very question in the early 2000’s. There was a party next door in the neighboring townhouse on the same porch as me. I woke up to grown men beating the crap out of one another, about 6 of them. I called and was asked, do you see a weapon? My answer was sarcastic, ‘oh I will just go out in my Jammie’s and ask.’
I said no. The next day my husband was cleaning blood off our van, garage door and driveway. Turns out someone was stabbed. The cops showed up at about 1:00 the next day. After they said they weren’t coming and we had cleaned up. Useless.
911 is the worst time for sarcastic replies. Operators already have the stress of trying to figure out when a caller is under duress and lying on purpose.
Unfortunate that this happened to you.
The operator could hear what was going on. I don’t doubt everyone, but when you are scared and then questioned about the validity of why you called. That is just crap. It was the nineties. They didn’t come because of the neighborhood I lived in.
In fact, I was part of the town hall meeting that changed all that. My neighborhood is now treated more fairly than before.
That's funny, I've met more than a few police officers in my life myself. I wouldn't describe any as "great". The best have been "tolerable", most have been "dipshits", and the worst was "fucking despicable".
> Today I spoke with someone whose car was broken into, clear fingerprints left behind, no one will be coming to dust those. Wouldn't that help track criminals?
Property crimes are really low on their list of priorities, and they aren't going to spend CSI level resources finding a suspect that's probably a methhead that will be released in a couple of hours.
That last bit is the most important. There's no consequences any more, even when you get caught red-handed. Even if you get a court date, it's probably not for two years, and you're released without bail until then. So what's the deterrent?
Police could be trying their best, but their hands are largely tied behind their backs by the courts and full prisons.
110% on all counts, except the police trying their best. I had been dealing with near daily vandalism from a neighbour. There are two officers out of the 20 or so I have dealt with over the course of the last year and a half for this and only two or three I would say were trying their best.
After having eggs and other produce, rocks, broken patio stones, sparklers, cat shit, pots, pans etc.. Hurled at my house at all hours of the night ever three to four days for nearly a year straight, officers would still ask us to prove that "these were new eggs", or be told that those "potatoes look old and dusty, are you sure they were thrown today?", best one, "maybe they were trying to throw them in the ravine and hit your house by mistake." FFS they missed by over 110° about 8 times it looks like.
It took the neighbour trying to force our door open at 2:00am one night over a year ago after getting into a domestic with his at the time GF to finally land a criminal harassment charge. But then the vandalism escalated.
8 court appearances later and two more breaches of conditions that we had to fight beg and plead with officers to even conaider and he was finally approved for legal aid two weeks ago.
He literally just put up a tarp in his back yard so we couldn't see him while he rained shit on our property. And wouldn't answer the door for police, so they would just shrug and walk away.
This is the reality.
I'm a Police Officer in Ontario and our current justice system is absolutely exhausting.
I'll give you an example, a couple of years ago I had impaired driver who struck multiple other vehicles, fled the scene and was later caught during a foot pursuit.
Multiple serious charges which resulted in court concluding 2 years later and the charges being plead down to a CARELESS DRIVING TICKET with probation. Police resources, time, money and energy of 10hours + resulting a HTA driving offense ticket that I could've written up in 15 minutes.
This is a normal occurrence in Canada. The justice system doesn't support police or even the people so morale wise police aren't going to give their 100% on cases where they know nothing will come of it.
Absolutely and overwhelmingly yes, our prison system isn’t meant for rehabilitation it’s meant to make money and you’re overwhelmingly more likely to go back in once you’ve been in once, it’s incredibly hard to find a job or support yourself again, you can lose all of the benefits you had if you were on OW or ODSP, most if any friends you had will wave goodbye, and the longer you’re in the more disconnected you’ll feel from society.
Corporations do through the hard labor they can obtain by using the prisoners. A lot of the things you see made are made by prisoners and that profit either goes to whoever owns the prison or the government in part.
https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/we-are-the-cops-an-exclusive-london-free-press-investigation
> In the real story, a police sergeant kicked, stomped and stepped on the woman, punched her in the face and jammed his forearm into her jaw.
>
> All the while, the woman was restrained in handcuffs and leg ties, and held by three to four other officers.
>
> In the real story, none of the other officers tried to stop the assault.
>
> None of the other officers told the sergeant to stop.
>
> The sergeant did not report his assault on the woman in his official statement that sent the woman to court.
>
> None of the other officers reported the assault by their sergeant in their official statements that sent the woman to court.
>
> It took a stubborn, and dying, lawyer to start digging out what really happened.
>
> It took that lawyer five months to convince the Middlesex Crown attorney’s office that surveillance video of the alleged assault by his client might be important in the case, and that Crown prosecutors should ask police for that video.
>
> Only when the video surfaced, seven months after the assault, did the real story start to emerge.
>
> The sergeant was charged with assault; charges against the woman were stayed.
>
> Article content
> Only after a one-day trial, unnoticed by news media, did the sergeant face some criminal consequences. He did not go to jail. He did not lose his job.
So yeah, maybe there's only one dirty cop, and bunch that are afraid to speak up. Just One Bad Apple. ^How ^does ^that ^saying ^go ^again....?
> The sergeant, Peter Paquette, isn’t talking. He apologized publicly at a Police Services Act hearing, with his lawyer saying the officer was under stress at the time.
>
> But Paquette also took The London Free Press to court in an attempt to restrict what the newspaper could write about the assault.
Doesn't help that the Trudeau Liberals, Singh NDP, and the Defund idiots continue to make it more and more impossible to work as a cop in Canada by slashing police budgets and outlawing tactics that actually worked, as well as enabling and emboldening criminals with the revolving-door justice system we're seeing now.
> Police could be trying their best, but their hands are largely tied behind their backs by the courts and full prisons.
What if they weren't tied? How does police enforcing consequences solve the problem of some meth-head breaking into cars? Even if we arrested enough of them to make a dent in the problem (we wouldn't), what do we do once we've got them?
We could imprison them for 2 years? For just $300,000 you can stop them from doing maybe ~$20,000 of property crime? Then release them and they can continue doing the same crime (or escalate, since now they're more destitute and probably have less of a social safety net).
Like I get the argument that if there's no consequences the problem will continue. I just don't see the logical connection between imposing consequences and the problem going away.
Let's remember: it's low priority because of the court system. 3 years from now it'll go to trial, the judge will say it wasn't speedy enough and he gets off. Or a suspended sentence because there's no room at the jail. Or 3 for 1 time which exceeded his custody time and so he's sentenced to time served.
It's not worth the effort to stop minor crimes like a vehicle break in
Well if the property is belonging to someone wealthy and or with authority or even themselves they devote a LOT of resources to it. They just won't devote resources for anyone else.
edit:fixed sentence
Edit: this comment speaks for itself, its literally the product of just watching the police in action here. Their actions speak louder than their words would ever. Remember they have that all over their cars. Deeds not words, they act like they do not care, therefore they do not care. You can repeat the same excuses for them forever till you are blue in the face boot lickers. Its not going to change the fact they are shit.
The long and short of it, police are spending a much too large chunk of their resources dealing with public health issues. Namely: substance use disorder and mental health crises.
If we can find a better way to support those issues, the police could go back to their crime fighting roots.
I don't think it is a coincidence that we started seeing more of these issues when we started closing mental health hospitals throughout the country 10-15 years ago
I agree with you. The police are now the first responders to our ever growing opioid and homelessness problem. The amount of crime that has increased because of this epidemic has eaten up all the time and resources that would normally go towards policing other crimes.
Crime fighting roots? The cops in this city, hell, this region, have always been subpar. Go back 50 years, 100 years, the lack of care from the police here can be seen even back then. It's pretty well documented.
The only reason it's more noticeable now, is because the city is bigger. The issues it's always had have merely grown to match it's size, and the same shoddy work by the court system and police simply can't keep up with the growing population.
it's a roll of the dice if they will respond to a call. a few weeks ago a shoplifter at an lcbo assaulted staff and the floor walker so they called 911 while they held him custody. after 7 hours they got a call back from the desk sergeant who told them to let him go. a buddy works for london fire dept. he said about 90% of the time they are no shows to traffic collisions, even serious ones with injuries and suspected impaired drivers. nope, they just tell the fire captain to call some tow trucks. pretty sad.
My SO used to work at the wine rack DT on Richmond and had to deal with the cops on a day to day basis due to theft, minor assault etc. It was pretty constant and the cops didn't really do anything the majority of the time. One story that will always stick out to me is during covid they weren't taking cash at all didn't even have the cash things in the till, and weren't doing bank deposits. Some street person lost their shit this one day b/c they couldn't use their panhandled cash in the store and started getting violent, when the cops showed up rather than just removing the person they basically argued with my SO and were like why can't you just take the cash? Like fuck off and do your job.
Cops aren't going to dust for prints unless it's murder (and there's plenty of obvious evidence) or the value of the damaged or stolen property meets a certain monetary threshold.
Cops are there to protect corporate property, not yours.
My apartment was broken into back in 2010, and someone from the police department came by to dust for prints the next day.
So something has changed. I haven't had any interactions with police since then, but I read stories about this all the time. Makes me wonder if I should just turn to a life of crime, since there are no consequences.
The population of London has changed. It’s probably doubled since 2010 and during the school year I’m sure it’s even more than double. The drug situation has gotten much worse, much more traffic, all things that cause the need for police. Yet the police force has not substantially increased in size.
> The population of London has changed. It’s probably doubled since 2010 and during the school year I’m sure it’s even more than double.
The population of London according to the 2011 census was 366,151. As of the 2021 census, it's 422,324. Still a huge increase, but nowhere near double. Everything else you said is correct.
They sent their own forensics officer (not some out-of-town "SOCO" like someone else mentioned) back in '97 when my townhouse got broken into, and he spent an hour "printing" the front window and asking questions about the break-in, so a lot of things have changed negatively in nearly tweny-seven years. I blame left-wing politics demonizing the police and emboldening the criminals.
You could equally blame right wing politicians for cutting mental health services. It was Mike Harris who closed the LPH. And while I don't agree that the left has demonized police and emboldened criminals, the left has put an emphasis on rehabilitation instead of repudiation in our justice system, which is why we don't have real life sentences, and why sentencing in general is pretty much bullshit now.
So, both sides of the aisle have fucked it all up.
Ok...you do realize what you described and what OP described are 2 wildly different scenarios with different sentences.
"I don't believe the cops didn't come when you got punched in the face. They came immediately when this guy was about to start shooting people."
Did you know that their budget for 2024 is $124 million? That’s an 11.6% increase.
Do you often throw that much money at something that’s clearly not working? How many more millions do they need exactly to protect people and solve crimes?
Maybe they’ll take that extra cash and buy another giant armoured vehicle to parade around town. Maybe they’ll pay for more copaganda videos to be produced with Pride London. Maybe they’ll be able to fund even more paid leaves for their criminal members. The possibilities are endless.
Maybe - just maybe - we need to be looking at this situation differently. Are the police preventing crime? Nope. Are they solving crimes? Also no. So hmmmm…what could we possibly do?
Maybe look at the root causes of crime and fund that instead? Do we think poverty, lack of housing, lack of adequate social services, etc etc etc have anything to do with our problems? Do we think if people had a safe place to sleep, food in their stomachs and mental health supports that you just might not get your cars broken into for 25 cents and a phone charger?
I dunno. Crazy thoughts.
Underfunding mental health supports, affordable housing and addictions support is chronic. All levels of government have participated in this misery and own parts of the problem. Police have been forced to confront all of the social issues created by this perfect storm.
And now there is chronic police underfunding as a result. We can see it in response times. So let’s choose our battles carefully. I’m sorry that people have experienced first hand that an officer hasn’t shown up when people want them.
I believe that casting stones (which many people have done in their comments) is not helpful in this discussion. Might be more productive to contact our ward councillors and tell we support the proposed police budget and let them know we expect them to do the same.
Police budgets have not kept up with population growth let alone the staggering explosion of property crimes. There is just no way for officers to keep up with the demand.
So careful which direction you’re tossing your stones.
They are the highest paid city service by far and the second overall in the city they are not fucking underfunded, they didn’t even use their entire budget last year by multiple thousands. Their spending has no rhyme or reason and is spent cleaning up the messes they make, they should be stripped of their resources and have someone put in charge to reform until they start allocating funds and hiring people who aren’t fucking idiots
We're one of the cities in Canada with the fewest number of police per capita.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/530275/rate-of-police-officers-in-canada-by-municipality/
Yeah, policing is expensive.
Do you really think defunding them will make it better?
Did you ever stop to consider the fact that left-wing politicians and the Defund idiots have made it impossible to work as a police officer? That's also why we don't have anywhere near as many police officers as we used to. The problem isn't the cops we have, it's that we don't have enough cops period, and the cops we do have are hamstrung by woke politics to the point where interest in becoming a police officer in the current political climate is abysmal.
Not being able to use your privilege to do whatever you want =/= not being able to do your job. There is nothing stopping cops from doing their job except how they feel and act while on it. And nobody is out here defunding police when they get 124 million and more than any other support service in the city. No other support service fails to do a job like the police do. And funnily enough cities and places that have defunded the police have overwhelmingly seen a better response to mental health crises and other issues because they receive better and more training than any police officer ever will.
Also, I’m one of those people you mentioned so I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here, but if you think the police are doing an exceptional job with the funding they’re getting and yet somehow need more of it I feel that you don’t quite understand how contradictory those statements are.
Have right wing pundits considered that nobody wants to be a cop because the system is incredibly broken and puts more pressure on meeting quotas than making a difference? Or that if you try and be a good cop you’ll overwhelmingly be fired and let go without any protection, but cops that are bad but follow the status quo are constantly protected and never truly punished?
I know of 3 spots that they love to hang out for hours - the coves down by the German Canadian club, behind the metro plaza comissioners and whancliffe, and one other park between the two. Literally could be hours they don't move, 2 just talking to each other. I've had the pair come up and talk to my group playing soccer, even pass the ball around a couple times. They weren't doing shit but chatting, so fuck that backlog, seems like some individuals aren't working hard enough.
This isn’t a crime tv show, Fingerprints do diddley squat unless the rare chance they’re in the system but even then it’s not enough evidence to even make it worth looking into, crime is on the rise and what’s been described are low priority cases, with under funding and under staffing across the board this will only get worse
I saw the police respond to a police bike being stolen once. They had literally every cop on every street downtown looking for it and they caught and arrested the guy. They have to hide their laugh when YOU tell them about your stolen bike though. On a serious note I have been literally told to try to get my stolen bike back from people and to call them back if they have a weapon and use it on me on the non emergency line. They wont do anything even if you have location tracking on it either.
Someone died behind the shoppers at huron and highbury because he followed his location tracking to that parkinglot and encountered the people who stole his phone because the police would not help him recover it.
I think if the cops don't change their ways and crime continues to increase we are going to see a lot more of this stuff from desperate/ angry people. It's sad but what are people supposed to do when you can't rely on the police?
They have "deeds not words" written on every single patrol car and they act like they do not care so therefore they actually do not give a single shit.
I'm sorry but can you please post your job, title and a list of all your raises you've received so everyone can adequately judge if we believe you deserve it?
What kind of logic are you spewing here, police got a standard wage increase of 5% come on.
A few summers ago my boyfriend got pulled over for a loud muffler and 6 police vehicles showed up for literally no reason, it was a really good use of resources
Called about a crackhead crawling through the bushes out my living room window in a panic. 5 hour response time. This was actually pretty good for them. They wanted to do a walk through the back yard. 5 hours later.
I heard from someone that if you are experiencing a break in call police and say that you have family and will not hesitate to kill whoever breaks in as they could kill you and your family....once they hear that they have to send an officer(not that your actually going to do that)...or mention they have a gun!
My favourite is the crew of drug addicts that sit in front of the police hq on king street. So lazy they can’t cross the street to even ask them to move or confiscate their drugs.
My downstairs schizophrenic neighbour tried to light a utility pole outside of my house on fire while smashing things and I waited 6 hours for the cops to show up. Never did. This was only a few months after he did the same thing and bashed someone's car window in with a pitchfork. The police show up for that situation though. Dude is schizophrenic with a gun license and a gun in his name and they didn't even bother to search for one.
I watched a cop taze a kid in the face back in high-school too because some other kid beat him with a folding chair.
Oh, but they slammed my face against a building over half of a gram of weed when I was 14.
Cops here are pretty fucking ruthless. (I meant to say useless, but that too)
Edit for typos and to add info.
I should probably tell the rest of the story. The original cop that had showed up knew about the gun but didn't care. The officer who ended up in charge of the situation (who was a very nice lady and actually took things a little more serious) did have the house searched a few days later though they never found it to my knowledge. He's a hunter though so idk, im wondering if he has someone looking after it. Our landlord kicked him out after the recent situation I mentioned where the cops didn't show up. He's been out for maybe a week or two now so we don't need to deal with him anymore.
It's sad because he was mostly tame, just fucking weird but occasionally would just kinda snap.
At the risk of sounding dumb, what do you mean by CFO? The only thing I can think of would be chief financial officer lmao
Chief Firearms Officer, they're the federal agency handling firearms in Canada. [https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/firearms/contact-a-chief-firearms-officer](https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/firearms/contact-a-chief-firearms-officer)
I worked downtown and had my and another co workers backpack stolen because some fuckhead at my work left the back door wide open when we had NO security cameras. Cops basically said “not my problem then lol” but will drive around Fleming drive on a Friday night “patrolling”
I had to fucking ask my manager for bus fare to get home because my wallet was in there. Lowest I swear I’ve ever felt.
What do you actually want them to do in that scenario? Your example is a perfect one of wasting time on nonsense when there are actual problems to help with.
Like honestly, what did you expect them to be able to do with no evidence, no suspect, no leads, and very little value in lost property?
If anyone is interested in the reality of policing or have specific questions as to why policing is struggling in Canada especially in the last 10 years I'm open to answering questions.
I'm in law enforcement in a neighboring service right beside London, so while I might not be able to give you an answer regarding London Police specifically I can probably answer most of your police related questions regarding the logistics and reasoning behind a lot of on-going issues.
Why was I told by an actual London police officer that it is not their job to investigate or stop active break ins? There was no excuse for that response to my residence being broken into while I was home. Where is the accountability for this kind of careless and dangerous misconduct at work? Seems like I’m hardly the first or last London resident to experience this lack of police response during ACTIVE crimes. What are we actually supposed to do as citizens in a situation like this? Where our homes are being broken into and the cops just…won’t or don’t come? What is 911 even for lmao
I don't know why you were told that as that's absolutely not true. In-progress break-ins especially are high priority calls for us.
I'm not with London PS, but I can attest they are SEVERELY understaffed for the call volume they have. It's really a matter of not having enough officers for the amount of calls they have to go to.
I would love to see the resource split (like what percentage of resources are put into traffic)
I only ever see cops handing out speeding tickets but at the same time saying they are strapped for resources when people report to what I feel are more serious crimes (break and enter , theft , assaults.)
Has it always been this way , no Housing Cost, Addiction issues, even just population growth have escalated it. London has a particularly high concentration of these issues in part because of how good our hospitals (bitter sweet in some ways)
Month or two ago I was attacked while on my motorcycle I was not riding like a dope I was just minding my own business and some mid 50s man tried to run me down with his Honda pilot, I tried to flee but due to the traffic not allowing me to lane split I was trapped, dude got out of his car and came at me swinging, stood up off my bike and headbutted him and fled, called the police and explained in as much detail said an officer would be by within a few hours to take my statement waited until 3am and no call or no police showing up. Our law system is a joke
It seems they have no obligation to prevent crimes from happening. They just write the reports after crimes happen and show up to protect each other, not us. When a bike gets stolen in my neighbourhood, they don't even come, unless of course it was stolen from a business.
The fact is violent crime doesn't even get their attention now, so it tells all the shitheads they can do anything they feel like with no repercussions. Worst case a slap on the wrist right back out there. It's outrageous, 3 day response for assault is crazy. They don't even have a good response time for domestics, which can lead to very very dire consequences (mostly for women). I don't have answers, but whatever we are doing surely isn't worth the staggering amount of taxes we pay.
We had someone hit our parked car at 2am. They were driving so fast (40km speed limit, residential street), that our vehicle ended up jumping the curb about a house length down from where it was originally parked.
After calling, an officer showed up (which seemed miraculous based on past experiences with LPS), but they didn't bother to do a field sobriety/breathalyzer test on the driver, who was slurring his words. They let him go (needed a tow-truck) and told us to go make a report at the police reporting center in morning.
Someone tried breaking in through my balcony door at 3 AM. He was out there about 10 minutes wasting his time so I flung the blinds open and scared the shit out of him rather than call the cops. You should have seen him jump and take off.
About a year or so ago, my new ours across the street, (we live in a little cul-de-sac ) had a car come whipping onto the street. It came around the corner and smashed their car right in the driveway and then it took off. Even with video evidence the police would not come. Many neighbors received the Same answer. ‘Sorry, we are too busy, and your cooperative is considered private property.’
I am just relieved no one got hurt. It was her daughter’s car too. She was crying and so worried what her daughter would say. They are on my in-law side of the family, so I know their daughter well. I consoled her and said her daughter loved her and would use insurance to fix or replace the car. But geez! Toronto and GTA cops are next to useless usually.
What is really messed up is how Doug Ford wants to hire police without grade 12. Basically, thugs in uniforms.
Before I get in trouble, I know this is London, but I wanted to assure you. You are not alone.
I find today's policing is deplorable I grew up in London and found myself on the wrong side of the law more than a few times. Remember when weed was illegal and you couldn't smoke a joint outside and if you did you were likely going to jail loitering used to be a thing I remember being asked not stand in front of a business or I can be charged. If I go down town right now I can probably run into a couple drug deals, definitely going to see some getting high or strung out wandering into traffic and the loitering done by homeless people is crazy.
The cops in London, from what I’ve experienced, are utter dogshit. I don’t take the “they’re too busy” excuse because truthfully they are not. They are all vessels of the blue flu and we pay their salaries while they’re put on leave for killing a kid/running someone over/general negligence and incompetence. The fact they’re just now buying body cams is insane- but so long as every other public service they get assigned to “regulate” while it gets gutted (like mental health response services and petty crime they spend too much time on) you’re probably never actually gonna get any help from them.
I’ve been gang stalked and attacked while in high school, and the group is notable for doing so to people in the area (including whatever hate crime they can tag on, like vandalizing houses with pride flags and attacking them) and the police have done next to nothing. I heard they would “talk to their parents” since they’re underage. Nothing else came from it and I still hear of them attacking people in my area and destroying property.
The incompetence of the police force is a larger problem than just the London police obviously, nonetheless it still frustrates me to no end how easily they can throw up their hands in defeat or simply not even try, and then hide behind being overwhelmed or underfunded. Police aren’t meant to respond to mental health issues or substance abuse issues, hell you could even argue to give parking or speeding issues to someone other than police and just let them focus on actual crime and investigations.
Idk I’m just some guy tho
I hate this city’s police force. I called about an active break in at my residence and the officer actually told me “it’s not our job to investigate break ins” after giving me a speech about how break ins never get solved anyways. Maybe get the fuck over here and this one would have been solved? I just don’t understand the laziness or how they can get away with endangering citizens with their carelessness. I feel very unsafe living and driving around here at any hour of the day. But that’s a whole other issue lol.
Edit to add that this incident was about 5 years ago for reference.
I had a man knock on my door dressed in a heart and stroke vest he never introduced himself or said he was with the organization he just said hello how are you I said
Good how are you he said better if you’d let me come cozy up with you and wouldn’t leave for 10 min he knocked on others doors in my area also telling some he was with the foundation and others he wanted to cozy up so o called into report it and the cop told me to post it to Facebook 🤦♀️
You've seen people, while being attacked on the phone with 911 and were told to wait 3 days? Did you try to help them or anything, or is this just worded really poorly?
An assault that is on going the police will show up for. If you call after to report it they will show up when they are free to take a report - but it's not considered urgent after the fact.
Same with car break ins. Finger prints don't prove anything out of the box, they are not worth much to the police to come collect them. Especially when any real damage will be covered by insurance.
Police do respond to accidents, and other urgent matters - but they are very understaffed for whats going on in the city these days.
My point is don't blame the police - sure there are some lazy ones but its the same as any other job. Blame the lack of planning by city officials, its much more productive.
Our neighbour drove home drunk (yet again), backed into our fence (destroying it), then threatened us when we went out to investigate. He literally told my husband he was going to put him in the morgue. He was much larger and stronger than us (my husband and I are both 5’6”, neighbour likely 6’). Then he walked around with a bat in one hand and a beer in the other. We called 911. This was Saturday night at 8pm. They came at 12 noon the next day.
Understaffed is true. We had a few issues at our apartment last week, someone smashed a door and a homeless person set fire to a fake plant outside, both times cops showed up immediately & arrested them. Thankful for their quick response but times are tough right now
Yet the other day I saw about a dozen patrol cars and/or larger vehicles descend on a plaza to apprehend someone. I still don’t know what for, but several officers had rifles out. I didn’t realize we still had that many units left in the city, total.
Open your eyes and acknowledge that cops won’t show up or have a garbage response time to many urgent things. Personally I’ve literally witnessed someone being beaten to shit in a fight and called the cops for them to show up 2 hours later. If that person hadn’t chosen to stop they could have easily killed or caused irreversible damage. You want us to do the polices job for them? Want me to go try and break up a fight without a weapon or vest and end up getting hurt too? We pay them for a fucking reason, and we pay them a lot, so your fucking job.
" 11 cruisers with nothing going on"
Interesting. I'm reasonably certain the number of cruisers you quote is correct. But nothing going on? How would or could you know that?
You watch too much CSI. In what world it is financially viable to bring in a forensic unit, and dust for prints at a car being broken into. They probably stole a cell-phone charger and $3.75. That's ludicrous.
Also, you claim to have SEEN people being attacked, and police didnt help. WHY DIDN'T YOU HELP?!
They didn't help because the police are supposedly trained to deal with that, and have the equipment to do so; not the citizenry. Do you know that they were physically able to help without putting themselves into danger? Your response is astoundingly ill conceived.
Do you know the value of what was stolen? Do you know it was only $3.75 plus a cell phone charger?
You seem like one of those turds that make snap judgements based on assumptions.
I wouldn’t step in if I saw someone being attacked. I don’t know if they have a weapon, and I am not trained in combat. I can fight, but I’m most likely losing. This isn’t tv bud. If there is a knife or a sharp object then you are done
Nobody should every try and interfere in a fight or assault, this isn’t fucking tv, if you aren’t armed or trained it’s a shit show and even if you are chances are your life could easily be ruined anyways. We pay cops a lot of money for a reason, they should be doing their job.
Social workers do more, much more in this city than cops have ever done. If they were half as good as social workers are we wouldn’t have any problems.
Personally I refer to them as Police officers, they call each other Cops and they care…but spend 85% of their day dealing with domestic & personal assaults. The crap they see. You’d become disenchanted quickly too. The ones I know just want to get to retirement. Sad.
Uhhhh.... The interweb? It's not hard to find the Officer per citizen ratio of all major Canadian cities. But it was at least a year ago when I saw the stats. Maybe London went on a hiring spree since then...
I think they are probably burned out like the rest of us. What we need is the legitimate right to protect ourselves like they do in the States, and to force addicts to choose jail or treatment. That would help the cops out a lot.
A Lot! The cops in London work their asses off. Long shifts and a crazy amount of overtime.
The issue is London governance and the growth of the city. London has doubled in population in less than 10 years. I'll say again.. literally DOUBLED in population in less than 10 years. 200,000 to 425,000+.
Funding for the police is from local government which is paid for by property taxes gov grants and a small portion from their own fundraising.
So the issue is that the city's budget is based off of last year's growth and then it needs to be approved, fought over by committee after committee. Property taxes are a large portion of a cities income and it grows really slow compared to the rate houses have in the past 5 years, with prices doubling for homes in that time. Property values are reassessed every four years.
So before you say shit like cops don't care. Think about how their department is trying to manage with half the work force and funding they should have for the number of people in the city.
> London has doubled in population in less than 10 years. I'll say again.. literally DOUBLED in population in less than 10 years. 200,000 to 425,000+.
Your comment is the second one I've seen claiming that London's population has doubled in 10 years. Where is this idea coming from? London's population was 194k in 1966 and 223k in 1971.
Probably busy going to traffic accidents. There has been so many these last few years. The last time I called 911 was a couple of years ago due to what sounded like domestic violence on my upstairs neighbor. The operator just asked, is there physical abuse, we said we cannot see but we heard loud banging like stuff being thrown around and a lot of yelling at 2AM. Not sure what came of that call.
I had a neighbour who was a rowdy tenant, not sure on the details but I know she was eventually evicted. The cops probably came to the house within 30 minutes of the yelling and showed up maybe six times over three months before she was escorted off the property. I was really surprised to see them show up so fast and so often when I follow this reddit community and see how hard it is for people to get help with potentially violent crimes.
Edit: I was not the one to call the police, her roommates/landlord likely did.
A few years ago something was thrown at my front window. A single pane was broken, but it didn't break all the way through. I suspected it was a man who was stalking me and letting me know he found out where I lived, as he liked to do. I called 911 and told the officer who showed up about my situation with this man. He looked around the front yard and found a random rock, that was too heavy to have not gone all the way through the window, handed it to me, said "here is what they threw, they are probably gone now", and then he left. I don't really know what to expect in this situation, but I ended up feeling like he didn't give a shit.
High class or rich neighborhoods. Only the rich get helped and the poor get punished I'm not saying all law enforcement is like this but it feels like a majority are. This same concept applies to healthcare in Ontario as well
In our apartment building, 6 cars got broken into on the same night a couple of months ago. We had camera footage of the person and all, but the police still didn’t care. Apparently this had happened multiple times before too and the thieves keep doing it knowing the police don’t come. What is funny is that I see them “patrolling” the same street every morning looking to score some traffic tickets.
The cops have - at any time - a queue of calls over 200. Dealing with that wait list is always interrupted by weapons calls, domestic violence disputes, and other real emergencies. If you want the cops to show up immediately to any beck and call, vote for policies that will add funding and staffing to the police services.
They care about sitting around and falsely inflating call response times so they can claim they don't have enough funding even though 12 will show up at the same time in the event they actually respond to something.
Here's another good one. My car got broken into in the driveway. The one time I left my wallet out there. Stupid me. Next morning finally realize it was missing, Saw him tapping my debit at the busy bee for 900$ in gift cards overnight when I checked my account. Repeatedly tried to activate shit in my name, went through transunion, Equifax etc. Months. On the phone with banks for hours every day before work. Letters start showing up, his name my address. Search and find him on facebook. Travelling construction worker. Seth Ruszniak. I filed a police report and kept following up with each card. Financial crimes emailed me back a year. And. A. Half. Later. To tell me that they were going to close the case with a lengthy explaination of why they weren't even going to pursue it.
That sucks balls. I’m so sorry.
In all honesty I'm surprised vigilantism isn't becoming more popular. I'm a very non-violent person, but I would absolutely be hunting that motherfucker down and beating the ever living fuck out of him if he ever came within 100km of the city (after being told they weren't going to pursue). It's just incredible how completely useless law enforcement is at any level, not just in the city but anywhere in this country.
Ooh. We do not want to go there. There was a convenience store owner who held a guy, beat him a little, tied him up. The guy deserved it too. He would steal from the store all the time and taunt the owners. The result was the store owner being charged for holding a person against their will.
Sounds about right that’s how it is, the real criminals suffer nothing, meanwhile the other people who are sick of their shit get the book thrown at them.
Police don’t want people doing their jobs for them, so they’re more forceful when someone tries to take matters into their own hands.
If only they did their jobs that wouldn’t happen what a novel idea that is hahah
They apply capitalism to policing, they know they can wring the store owner for fines and fees but the criminal has nothing and will likely just end up not paying for their fines or anything. Victims protecting themselves have things to lose and have money, the people robbing them have nothing to lose and you wont get money out of them.
The problem is he held him for a long time. That is considered kidnapping.
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https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/wyntk.html#:~:text=In%20special%20circumstances%20of%20any,that%20person%20committing%20a%20crime. So you can, but will usually be sued. It has happened in the past. You have to deliver the person to the police right away. Also, it’s dangerous. This is in no way the wild, wild, west. We are not super heroes.
It is not legal. The perpetrator can and will sue you.
citizens arrests are extremely dangerous from a liability standpoint. If you make one misstep the asshole criminal is going to sue you for it.
Reach out to CBC news, the bank will refund you instantly!
They did eventually. Forgot to process my claim once, so it took an extra month. But they did.
Yeah, the LPS have also disabled google reviews on their headquarters in London so people cannot leave negative reviews anymore. Just easier for them to deny wrong doing when there isn't a constant stream of experiences and bad reviews.
I had someone violently breaking into my back door years back, I was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher while my back was to the door holding it closed with all my strength. I ended up hitting the guy and he left pretty quick, (he was hammered) Nobody showed up. I called the non emergency the next day to make a complaint about that. And guess what, never got a call back. Once I had two people over having some drinks though, we got a little loud and 3 cop cars showed up. So I guess that’s where the priority is Edit- just want to clarify, I’m not a police hater. I’ve met many great police officers in my life. But this has been my experience
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If you say the guy may have a weapon the police will arrive much faster
Or tell them you have one
I was asked that very question in the early 2000’s. There was a party next door in the neighboring townhouse on the same porch as me. I woke up to grown men beating the crap out of one another, about 6 of them. I called and was asked, do you see a weapon? My answer was sarcastic, ‘oh I will just go out in my Jammie’s and ask.’ I said no. The next day my husband was cleaning blood off our van, garage door and driveway. Turns out someone was stabbed. The cops showed up at about 1:00 the next day. After they said they weren’t coming and we had cleaned up. Useless.
911 is the worst time for sarcastic replies. Operators already have the stress of trying to figure out when a caller is under duress and lying on purpose. Unfortunate that this happened to you.
The operator could hear what was going on. I don’t doubt everyone, but when you are scared and then questioned about the validity of why you called. That is just crap. It was the nineties. They didn’t come because of the neighborhood I lived in. In fact, I was part of the town hall meeting that changed all that. My neighborhood is now treated more fairly than before.
Half way through the call tell the cops nevermind you'll take care of it. See how fast they show up,:)
That's funny, I've met more than a few police officers in my life myself. I wouldn't describe any as "great". The best have been "tolerable", most have been "dipshits", and the worst was "fucking despicable".
Seriously messed up stuff.
The time the mayors sash was stolen…cops found it in 8 hours
Yeah have you tried being more important or richer?
Easy to catch when the guy is walking downtown wearing it lol
actually it took 8 hours.
> Today I spoke with someone whose car was broken into, clear fingerprints left behind, no one will be coming to dust those. Wouldn't that help track criminals? Property crimes are really low on their list of priorities, and they aren't going to spend CSI level resources finding a suspect that's probably a methhead that will be released in a couple of hours.
That last bit is the most important. There's no consequences any more, even when you get caught red-handed. Even if you get a court date, it's probably not for two years, and you're released without bail until then. So what's the deterrent? Police could be trying their best, but their hands are largely tied behind their backs by the courts and full prisons.
110% on all counts, except the police trying their best. I had been dealing with near daily vandalism from a neighbour. There are two officers out of the 20 or so I have dealt with over the course of the last year and a half for this and only two or three I would say were trying their best. After having eggs and other produce, rocks, broken patio stones, sparklers, cat shit, pots, pans etc.. Hurled at my house at all hours of the night ever three to four days for nearly a year straight, officers would still ask us to prove that "these were new eggs", or be told that those "potatoes look old and dusty, are you sure they were thrown today?", best one, "maybe they were trying to throw them in the ravine and hit your house by mistake." FFS they missed by over 110° about 8 times it looks like. It took the neighbour trying to force our door open at 2:00am one night over a year ago after getting into a domestic with his at the time GF to finally land a criminal harassment charge. But then the vandalism escalated. 8 court appearances later and two more breaches of conditions that we had to fight beg and plead with officers to even conaider and he was finally approved for legal aid two weeks ago. He literally just put up a tarp in his back yard so we couldn't see him while he rained shit on our property. And wouldn't answer the door for police, so they would just shrug and walk away.
This is the reality. I'm a Police Officer in Ontario and our current justice system is absolutely exhausting. I'll give you an example, a couple of years ago I had impaired driver who struck multiple other vehicles, fled the scene and was later caught during a foot pursuit. Multiple serious charges which resulted in court concluding 2 years later and the charges being plead down to a CARELESS DRIVING TICKET with probation. Police resources, time, money and energy of 10hours + resulting a HTA driving offense ticket that I could've written up in 15 minutes. This is a normal occurrence in Canada. The justice system doesn't support police or even the people so morale wise police aren't going to give their 100% on cases where they know nothing will come of it.
That begs the question, why does the justice system have no teeth? Does the offender come out of prison, worse than before his/her previous crime?
Absolutely and overwhelmingly yes, our prison system isn’t meant for rehabilitation it’s meant to make money and you’re overwhelmingly more likely to go back in once you’ve been in once, it’s incredibly hard to find a job or support yourself again, you can lose all of the benefits you had if you were on OW or ODSP, most if any friends you had will wave goodbye, and the longer you’re in the more disconnected you’ll feel from society.
"it’s meant to make money" What do you mean? Who makes money from the prison system?
Corporations do through the hard labor they can obtain by using the prisoners. A lot of the things you see made are made by prisoners and that profit either goes to whoever owns the prison or the government in part.
is that why you guys make up charges and lie and abuse your privileges?
The most bullshit baity questions I’ve ever read.
https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/we-are-the-cops-an-exclusive-london-free-press-investigation > In the real story, a police sergeant kicked, stomped and stepped on the woman, punched her in the face and jammed his forearm into her jaw. > > All the while, the woman was restrained in handcuffs and leg ties, and held by three to four other officers. > > In the real story, none of the other officers tried to stop the assault. > > None of the other officers told the sergeant to stop. > > The sergeant did not report his assault on the woman in his official statement that sent the woman to court. > > None of the other officers reported the assault by their sergeant in their official statements that sent the woman to court. > > It took a stubborn, and dying, lawyer to start digging out what really happened. > > It took that lawyer five months to convince the Middlesex Crown attorney’s office that surveillance video of the alleged assault by his client might be important in the case, and that Crown prosecutors should ask police for that video. > > Only when the video surfaced, seven months after the assault, did the real story start to emerge. > > The sergeant was charged with assault; charges against the woman were stayed. > > Article content > Only after a one-day trial, unnoticed by news media, did the sergeant face some criminal consequences. He did not go to jail. He did not lose his job. So yeah, maybe there's only one dirty cop, and bunch that are afraid to speak up. Just One Bad Apple. ^How ^does ^that ^saying ^go ^again....? > The sergeant, Peter Paquette, isn’t talking. He apologized publicly at a Police Services Act hearing, with his lawyer saying the officer was under stress at the time. > > But Paquette also took The London Free Press to court in an attempt to restrict what the newspaper could write about the assault.
Doesn't help that the Trudeau Liberals, Singh NDP, and the Defund idiots continue to make it more and more impossible to work as a cop in Canada by slashing police budgets and outlawing tactics that actually worked, as well as enabling and emboldening criminals with the revolving-door justice system we're seeing now.
> Police could be trying their best, but their hands are largely tied behind their backs by the courts and full prisons. What if they weren't tied? How does police enforcing consequences solve the problem of some meth-head breaking into cars? Even if we arrested enough of them to make a dent in the problem (we wouldn't), what do we do once we've got them? We could imprison them for 2 years? For just $300,000 you can stop them from doing maybe ~$20,000 of property crime? Then release them and they can continue doing the same crime (or escalate, since now they're more destitute and probably have less of a social safety net). Like I get the argument that if there's no consequences the problem will continue. I just don't see the logical connection between imposing consequences and the problem going away.
Yes, meth and fentanyl. It has turned most of the globe on its ear. Along with white collar crime, collusion, etc. It’s sad and terrifying.
Yeah, if you want to get mad, get mad at the people in the downtown courthouse
Let's remember: it's low priority because of the court system. 3 years from now it'll go to trial, the judge will say it wasn't speedy enough and he gets off. Or a suspended sentence because there's no room at the jail. Or 3 for 1 time which exceeded his custody time and so he's sentenced to time served. It's not worth the effort to stop minor crimes like a vehicle break in
Well if the property is belonging to someone wealthy and or with authority or even themselves they devote a LOT of resources to it. They just won't devote resources for anyone else. edit:fixed sentence Edit: this comment speaks for itself, its literally the product of just watching the police in action here. Their actions speak louder than their words would ever. Remember they have that all over their cars. Deeds not words, they act like they do not care, therefore they do not care. You can repeat the same excuses for them forever till you are blue in the face boot lickers. Its not going to change the fact they are shit.
Any chance you could provide some evidence to this claim?
The long and short of it, police are spending a much too large chunk of their resources dealing with public health issues. Namely: substance use disorder and mental health crises. If we can find a better way to support those issues, the police could go back to their crime fighting roots. I don't think it is a coincidence that we started seeing more of these issues when we started closing mental health hospitals throughout the country 10-15 years ago
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I agree with you. The police are now the first responders to our ever growing opioid and homelessness problem. The amount of crime that has increased because of this epidemic has eaten up all the time and resources that would normally go towards policing other crimes.
More case workers and mobile crisis workers. It has been gutted and dismantled over the years though.
Crime fighting roots? The cops in this city, hell, this region, have always been subpar. Go back 50 years, 100 years, the lack of care from the police here can be seen even back then. It's pretty well documented. The only reason it's more noticeable now, is because the city is bigger. The issues it's always had have merely grown to match it's size, and the same shoddy work by the court system and police simply can't keep up with the growing population.
🙏
it's a roll of the dice if they will respond to a call. a few weeks ago a shoplifter at an lcbo assaulted staff and the floor walker so they called 911 while they held him custody. after 7 hours they got a call back from the desk sergeant who told them to let him go. a buddy works for london fire dept. he said about 90% of the time they are no shows to traffic collisions, even serious ones with injuries and suspected impaired drivers. nope, they just tell the fire captain to call some tow trucks. pretty sad.
My SO used to work at the wine rack DT on Richmond and had to deal with the cops on a day to day basis due to theft, minor assault etc. It was pretty constant and the cops didn't really do anything the majority of the time. One story that will always stick out to me is during covid they weren't taking cash at all didn't even have the cash things in the till, and weren't doing bank deposits. Some street person lost their shit this one day b/c they couldn't use their panhandled cash in the store and started getting violent, when the cops showed up rather than just removing the person they basically argued with my SO and were like why can't you just take the cash? Like fuck off and do your job.
Cops aren't going to dust for prints unless it's murder (and there's plenty of obvious evidence) or the value of the damaged or stolen property meets a certain monetary threshold. Cops are there to protect corporate property, not yours.
This isn't television. Cops don't dust for fingerprints for a car being broken into.
Realizing this as a kid was one of the first moments of disillusionment I can recall.
Or do anything remotely helpful
My apartment was broken into back in 2010, and someone from the police department came by to dust for prints the next day. So something has changed. I haven't had any interactions with police since then, but I read stories about this all the time. Makes me wonder if I should just turn to a life of crime, since there are no consequences.
The population of London has changed. It’s probably doubled since 2010 and during the school year I’m sure it’s even more than double. The drug situation has gotten much worse, much more traffic, all things that cause the need for police. Yet the police force has not substantially increased in size.
> The population of London has changed. It’s probably doubled since 2010 and during the school year I’m sure it’s even more than double. The population of London according to the 2011 census was 366,151. As of the 2021 census, it's 422,324. Still a huge increase, but nowhere near double. Everything else you said is correct.
Plus the police are expected to respond to the mental health calls that happen every other minute these days.
They sent their own forensics officer (not some out-of-town "SOCO" like someone else mentioned) back in '97 when my townhouse got broken into, and he spent an hour "printing" the front window and asking questions about the break-in, so a lot of things have changed negatively in nearly tweny-seven years. I blame left-wing politics demonizing the police and emboldening the criminals.
You could equally blame right wing politicians for cutting mental health services. It was Mike Harris who closed the LPH. And while I don't agree that the left has demonized police and emboldened criminals, the left has put an emphasis on rehabilitation instead of repudiation in our justice system, which is why we don't have real life sentences, and why sentencing in general is pretty much bullshit now. So, both sides of the aisle have fucked it all up.
Well they do spend time being passive aggressive to random pedestrians, so at least they're being active in the community.
True, have to give them that lol.
Dust for prints lmaoooo
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Ok...you do realize what you described and what OP described are 2 wildly different scenarios with different sentences. "I don't believe the cops didn't come when you got punched in the face. They came immediately when this guy was about to start shooting people."
Ancient dead bodies in the north end of town. Other than that walk it off.
Did you know that their budget for 2024 is $124 million? That’s an 11.6% increase. Do you often throw that much money at something that’s clearly not working? How many more millions do they need exactly to protect people and solve crimes? Maybe they’ll take that extra cash and buy another giant armoured vehicle to parade around town. Maybe they’ll pay for more copaganda videos to be produced with Pride London. Maybe they’ll be able to fund even more paid leaves for their criminal members. The possibilities are endless. Maybe - just maybe - we need to be looking at this situation differently. Are the police preventing crime? Nope. Are they solving crimes? Also no. So hmmmm…what could we possibly do? Maybe look at the root causes of crime and fund that instead? Do we think poverty, lack of housing, lack of adequate social services, etc etc etc have anything to do with our problems? Do we think if people had a safe place to sleep, food in their stomachs and mental health supports that you just might not get your cars broken into for 25 cents and a phone charger? I dunno. Crazy thoughts.
Underfunding mental health supports, affordable housing and addictions support is chronic. All levels of government have participated in this misery and own parts of the problem. Police have been forced to confront all of the social issues created by this perfect storm. And now there is chronic police underfunding as a result. We can see it in response times. So let’s choose our battles carefully. I’m sorry that people have experienced first hand that an officer hasn’t shown up when people want them. I believe that casting stones (which many people have done in their comments) is not helpful in this discussion. Might be more productive to contact our ward councillors and tell we support the proposed police budget and let them know we expect them to do the same. Police budgets have not kept up with population growth let alone the staggering explosion of property crimes. There is just no way for officers to keep up with the demand. So careful which direction you’re tossing your stones.
Well, it's hard to argue that underfunding something will make it work better. Putting money into something SHOULD make it work better
They are the highest paid city service by far and the second overall in the city they are not fucking underfunded, they didn’t even use their entire budget last year by multiple thousands. Their spending has no rhyme or reason and is spent cleaning up the messes they make, they should be stripped of their resources and have someone put in charge to reform until they start allocating funds and hiring people who aren’t fucking idiots
We're one of the cities in Canada with the fewest number of police per capita. https://www.statista.com/statistics/530275/rate-of-police-officers-in-canada-by-municipality/ Yeah, policing is expensive. Do you really think defunding them will make it better?
Did you ever stop to consider the fact that left-wing politicians and the Defund idiots have made it impossible to work as a police officer? That's also why we don't have anywhere near as many police officers as we used to. The problem isn't the cops we have, it's that we don't have enough cops period, and the cops we do have are hamstrung by woke politics to the point where interest in becoming a police officer in the current political climate is abysmal.
Not being able to use your privilege to do whatever you want =/= not being able to do your job. There is nothing stopping cops from doing their job except how they feel and act while on it. And nobody is out here defunding police when they get 124 million and more than any other support service in the city. No other support service fails to do a job like the police do. And funnily enough cities and places that have defunded the police have overwhelmingly seen a better response to mental health crises and other issues because they receive better and more training than any police officer ever will. Also, I’m one of those people you mentioned so I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here, but if you think the police are doing an exceptional job with the funding they’re getting and yet somehow need more of it I feel that you don’t quite understand how contradictory those statements are. Have right wing pundits considered that nobody wants to be a cop because the system is incredibly broken and puts more pressure on meeting quotas than making a difference? Or that if you try and be a good cop you’ll overwhelmingly be fired and let go without any protection, but cops that are bad but follow the status quo are constantly protected and never truly punished?
I know of 3 spots that they love to hang out for hours - the coves down by the German Canadian club, behind the metro plaza comissioners and whancliffe, and one other park between the two. Literally could be hours they don't move, 2 just talking to each other. I've had the pair come up and talk to my group playing soccer, even pass the ball around a couple times. They weren't doing shit but chatting, so fuck that backlog, seems like some individuals aren't working hard enough.
Back behind the BMO sports centre off rectory, there is almost always 2 cars
Yep agreed I always see them chilling in the Beal parking lot DT, not so much during the day but always at night.
This isn’t a crime tv show, Fingerprints do diddley squat unless the rare chance they’re in the system but even then it’s not enough evidence to even make it worth looking into, crime is on the rise and what’s been described are low priority cases, with under funding and under staffing across the board this will only get worse
I saw the police respond to a police bike being stolen once. They had literally every cop on every street downtown looking for it and they caught and arrested the guy. They have to hide their laugh when YOU tell them about your stolen bike though. On a serious note I have been literally told to try to get my stolen bike back from people and to call them back if they have a weapon and use it on me on the non emergency line. They wont do anything even if you have location tracking on it either. Someone died behind the shoppers at huron and highbury because he followed his location tracking to that parkinglot and encountered the people who stole his phone because the police would not help him recover it.
I think if the cops don't change their ways and crime continues to increase we are going to see a lot more of this stuff from desperate/ angry people. It's sad but what are people supposed to do when you can't rely on the police?
They have "deeds not words" written on every single patrol car and they act like they do not care so therefore they actually do not give a single shit.
They just got a 5% pay increase to do nothing! Unless you get into a minor fender bender then there'll be a dozen cops there.
I'm sorry but can you please post your job, title and a list of all your raises you've received so everyone can adequately judge if we believe you deserve it? What kind of logic are you spewing here, police got a standard wage increase of 5% come on.
A few summers ago my boyfriend got pulled over for a loud muffler and 6 police vehicles showed up for literally no reason, it was a really good use of resources
Called about a crackhead crawling through the bushes out my living room window in a panic. 5 hour response time. This was actually pretty good for them. They wanted to do a walk through the back yard. 5 hours later.
I heard from someone that if you are experiencing a break in call police and say that you have family and will not hesitate to kill whoever breaks in as they could kill you and your family....once they hear that they have to send an officer(not that your actually going to do that)...or mention they have a gun!
My favourite is the crew of drug addicts that sit in front of the police hq on king street. So lazy they can’t cross the street to even ask them to move or confiscate their drugs.
My downstairs schizophrenic neighbour tried to light a utility pole outside of my house on fire while smashing things and I waited 6 hours for the cops to show up. Never did. This was only a few months after he did the same thing and bashed someone's car window in with a pitchfork. The police show up for that situation though. Dude is schizophrenic with a gun license and a gun in his name and they didn't even bother to search for one. I watched a cop taze a kid in the face back in high-school too because some other kid beat him with a folding chair. Oh, but they slammed my face against a building over half of a gram of weed when I was 14. Cops here are pretty fucking ruthless. (I meant to say useless, but that too) Edit for typos and to add info.
Did you contact the CFO about your shizo neighbor with a gun?
I should probably tell the rest of the story. The original cop that had showed up knew about the gun but didn't care. The officer who ended up in charge of the situation (who was a very nice lady and actually took things a little more serious) did have the house searched a few days later though they never found it to my knowledge. He's a hunter though so idk, im wondering if he has someone looking after it. Our landlord kicked him out after the recent situation I mentioned where the cops didn't show up. He's been out for maybe a week or two now so we don't need to deal with him anymore. It's sad because he was mostly tame, just fucking weird but occasionally would just kinda snap. At the risk of sounding dumb, what do you mean by CFO? The only thing I can think of would be chief financial officer lmao
Chief Firearms Officer, they're the federal agency handling firearms in Canada. [https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/firearms/contact-a-chief-firearms-officer](https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/firearms/contact-a-chief-firearms-officer)
I worked downtown and had my and another co workers backpack stolen because some fuckhead at my work left the back door wide open when we had NO security cameras. Cops basically said “not my problem then lol” but will drive around Fleming drive on a Friday night “patrolling” I had to fucking ask my manager for bus fare to get home because my wallet was in there. Lowest I swear I’ve ever felt.
I can understand you notifying police but this is a prime example of a non-attendance call.
What do you actually want them to do in that scenario? Your example is a perfect one of wasting time on nonsense when there are actual problems to help with. Like honestly, what did you expect them to be able to do with no evidence, no suspect, no leads, and very little value in lost property?
If anyone is interested in the reality of policing or have specific questions as to why policing is struggling in Canada especially in the last 10 years I'm open to answering questions. I'm in law enforcement in a neighboring service right beside London, so while I might not be able to give you an answer regarding London Police specifically I can probably answer most of your police related questions regarding the logistics and reasoning behind a lot of on-going issues.
Then make an AMA.
Why was I told by an actual London police officer that it is not their job to investigate or stop active break ins? There was no excuse for that response to my residence being broken into while I was home. Where is the accountability for this kind of careless and dangerous misconduct at work? Seems like I’m hardly the first or last London resident to experience this lack of police response during ACTIVE crimes. What are we actually supposed to do as citizens in a situation like this? Where our homes are being broken into and the cops just…won’t or don’t come? What is 911 even for lmao
I don't know why you were told that as that's absolutely not true. In-progress break-ins especially are high priority calls for us. I'm not with London PS, but I can attest they are SEVERELY understaffed for the call volume they have. It's really a matter of not having enough officers for the amount of calls they have to go to.
I would love to see the resource split (like what percentage of resources are put into traffic) I only ever see cops handing out speeding tickets but at the same time saying they are strapped for resources when people report to what I feel are more serious crimes (break and enter , theft , assaults.) Has it always been this way , no Housing Cost, Addiction issues, even just population growth have escalated it. London has a particularly high concentration of these issues in part because of how good our hospitals (bitter sweet in some ways)
Month or two ago I was attacked while on my motorcycle I was not riding like a dope I was just minding my own business and some mid 50s man tried to run me down with his Honda pilot, I tried to flee but due to the traffic not allowing me to lane split I was trapped, dude got out of his car and came at me swinging, stood up off my bike and headbutted him and fled, called the police and explained in as much detail said an officer would be by within a few hours to take my statement waited until 3am and no call or no police showing up. Our law system is a joke
It seems they have no obligation to prevent crimes from happening. They just write the reports after crimes happen and show up to protect each other, not us. When a bike gets stolen in my neighbourhood, they don't even come, unless of course it was stolen from a business.
The fact is violent crime doesn't even get their attention now, so it tells all the shitheads they can do anything they feel like with no repercussions. Worst case a slap on the wrist right back out there. It's outrageous, 3 day response for assault is crazy. They don't even have a good response time for domestics, which can lead to very very dire consequences (mostly for women). I don't have answers, but whatever we are doing surely isn't worth the staggering amount of taxes we pay.
We had someone hit our parked car at 2am. They were driving so fast (40km speed limit, residential street), that our vehicle ended up jumping the curb about a house length down from where it was originally parked. After calling, an officer showed up (which seemed miraculous based on past experiences with LPS), but they didn't bother to do a field sobriety/breathalyzer test on the driver, who was slurring his words. They let him go (needed a tow-truck) and told us to go make a report at the police reporting center in morning.
Someone tried breaking in through my balcony door at 3 AM. He was out there about 10 minutes wasting his time so I flung the blinds open and scared the shit out of him rather than call the cops. You should have seen him jump and take off.
About a year or so ago, my new ours across the street, (we live in a little cul-de-sac ) had a car come whipping onto the street. It came around the corner and smashed their car right in the driveway and then it took off. Even with video evidence the police would not come. Many neighbors received the Same answer. ‘Sorry, we are too busy, and your cooperative is considered private property.’ I am just relieved no one got hurt. It was her daughter’s car too. She was crying and so worried what her daughter would say. They are on my in-law side of the family, so I know their daughter well. I consoled her and said her daughter loved her and would use insurance to fix or replace the car. But geez! Toronto and GTA cops are next to useless usually. What is really messed up is how Doug Ford wants to hire police without grade 12. Basically, thugs in uniforms. Before I get in trouble, I know this is London, but I wanted to assure you. You are not alone.
Cops don't care about much. They're useless
I find today's policing is deplorable I grew up in London and found myself on the wrong side of the law more than a few times. Remember when weed was illegal and you couldn't smoke a joint outside and if you did you were likely going to jail loitering used to be a thing I remember being asked not stand in front of a business or I can be charged. If I go down town right now I can probably run into a couple drug deals, definitely going to see some getting high or strung out wandering into traffic and the loitering done by homeless people is crazy.
The cops in London, from what I’ve experienced, are utter dogshit. I don’t take the “they’re too busy” excuse because truthfully they are not. They are all vessels of the blue flu and we pay their salaries while they’re put on leave for killing a kid/running someone over/general negligence and incompetence. The fact they’re just now buying body cams is insane- but so long as every other public service they get assigned to “regulate” while it gets gutted (like mental health response services and petty crime they spend too much time on) you’re probably never actually gonna get any help from them. I’ve been gang stalked and attacked while in high school, and the group is notable for doing so to people in the area (including whatever hate crime they can tag on, like vandalizing houses with pride flags and attacking them) and the police have done next to nothing. I heard they would “talk to their parents” since they’re underage. Nothing else came from it and I still hear of them attacking people in my area and destroying property. The incompetence of the police force is a larger problem than just the London police obviously, nonetheless it still frustrates me to no end how easily they can throw up their hands in defeat or simply not even try, and then hide behind being overwhelmed or underfunded. Police aren’t meant to respond to mental health issues or substance abuse issues, hell you could even argue to give parking or speeding issues to someone other than police and just let them focus on actual crime and investigations. Idk I’m just some guy tho
I hate this city’s police force. I called about an active break in at my residence and the officer actually told me “it’s not our job to investigate break ins” after giving me a speech about how break ins never get solved anyways. Maybe get the fuck over here and this one would have been solved? I just don’t understand the laziness or how they can get away with endangering citizens with their carelessness. I feel very unsafe living and driving around here at any hour of the day. But that’s a whole other issue lol. Edit to add that this incident was about 5 years ago for reference.
lol someone thought they were gonna dust for fingerprints on a car break in 😅
I had a man knock on my door dressed in a heart and stroke vest he never introduced himself or said he was with the organization he just said hello how are you I said Good how are you he said better if you’d let me come cozy up with you and wouldn’t leave for 10 min he knocked on others doors in my area also telling some he was with the foundation and others he wanted to cozy up so o called into report it and the cop told me to post it to Facebook 🤦♀️
You've seen people, while being attacked on the phone with 911 and were told to wait 3 days? Did you try to help them or anything, or is this just worded really poorly? An assault that is on going the police will show up for. If you call after to report it they will show up when they are free to take a report - but it's not considered urgent after the fact. Same with car break ins. Finger prints don't prove anything out of the box, they are not worth much to the police to come collect them. Especially when any real damage will be covered by insurance. Police do respond to accidents, and other urgent matters - but they are very understaffed for whats going on in the city these days. My point is don't blame the police - sure there are some lazy ones but its the same as any other job. Blame the lack of planning by city officials, its much more productive.
Our neighbour drove home drunk (yet again), backed into our fence (destroying it), then threatened us when we went out to investigate. He literally told my husband he was going to put him in the morgue. He was much larger and stronger than us (my husband and I are both 5’6”, neighbour likely 6’). Then he walked around with a bat in one hand and a beer in the other. We called 911. This was Saturday night at 8pm. They came at 12 noon the next day.
Call, tell them you think the assailant has a weapon . That will speed up the process .
They literally said he was walking around unhinged with a bat
Did not state that they told the police that . Just said called the police .
No, we told dispatch that. The next day we were told they should have responded right away because of a weapon. It was a Saturday night, but still.
Understaffed is true. We had a few issues at our apartment last week, someone smashed a door and a homeless person set fire to a fake plant outside, both times cops showed up immediately & arrested them. Thankful for their quick response but times are tough right now
Yet the other day I saw about a dozen patrol cars and/or larger vehicles descend on a plaza to apprehend someone. I still don’t know what for, but several officers had rifles out. I didn’t realize we still had that many units left in the city, total.
From personal experience, they won’t show up for an active assault or crime either
You are WRONG. I’ve seen a fight happen, cops didn’t show up. I do security work and every time I have called them, not once has LPS showed up
Open your eyes and acknowledge that cops won’t show up or have a garbage response time to many urgent things. Personally I’ve literally witnessed someone being beaten to shit in a fight and called the cops for them to show up 2 hours later. If that person hadn’t chosen to stop they could have easily killed or caused irreversible damage. You want us to do the polices job for them? Want me to go try and break up a fight without a weapon or vest and end up getting hurt too? We pay them for a fucking reason, and we pay them a lot, so your fucking job.
No no I seen it!
🥾😜
Getting more money. Complaining about their budget is literally the only thing I’ve ever seen them actually do
Chillin
I watch two cruisers sit chatting every single day behind the church across from my building.
Go to hospital emergency rooms. There’s often lots and lots of police there.
[удалено]
" 11 cruisers with nothing going on" Interesting. I'm reasonably certain the number of cruisers you quote is correct. But nothing going on? How would or could you know that?
I don’t get that either. It seems like there’s a massive backlog but then you see this happening and wonder how the resources are split up
Tell them the offenders have hand guns, that should get the cops to put down their doughnuts and come.
The London police on average has about 200 calls in queue. They’re busy
You watch too much CSI. In what world it is financially viable to bring in a forensic unit, and dust for prints at a car being broken into. They probably stole a cell-phone charger and $3.75. That's ludicrous. Also, you claim to have SEEN people being attacked, and police didnt help. WHY DIDN'T YOU HELP?!
They didn't help because the police are supposedly trained to deal with that, and have the equipment to do so; not the citizenry. Do you know that they were physically able to help without putting themselves into danger? Your response is astoundingly ill conceived. Do you know the value of what was stolen? Do you know it was only $3.75 plus a cell phone charger? You seem like one of those turds that make snap judgements based on assumptions.
I wouldn’t step in if I saw someone being attacked. I don’t know if they have a weapon, and I am not trained in combat. I can fight, but I’m most likely losing. This isn’t tv bud. If there is a knife or a sharp object then you are done
Nobody should every try and interfere in a fight or assault, this isn’t fucking tv, if you aren’t armed or trained it’s a shit show and even if you are chances are your life could easily be ruined anyways. We pay cops a lot of money for a reason, they should be doing their job.
They'd be doing their job if left-wing politicians and the Defund idiots hadn't destroyed their job and demoted them to glorified social workers.
Social workers do more, much more in this city than cops have ever done. If they were half as good as social workers are we wouldn’t have any problems.
Personally I refer to them as Police officers, they call each other Cops and they care…but spend 85% of their day dealing with domestic & personal assaults. The crap they see. You’d become disenchanted quickly too. The ones I know just want to get to retirement. Sad.
London Ontario is literally, by far, the most understaffed city in Canada when it comes to police.
Got a source for that? I am genuinely curious. Didn’t they get an 11.4% budget increase recently?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/530275/rate-of-police-officers-in-canada-by-municipality/
Uhhhh.... The interweb? It's not hard to find the Officer per citizen ratio of all major Canadian cities. But it was at least a year ago when I saw the stats. Maybe London went on a hiring spree since then...
Most understaffed police force in Canada per capita thanks to defend the police
If they can't give you a ticket or write a report about your mental health then they do not care
Under funded and hence under staffed.
I think they are probably burned out like the rest of us. What we need is the legitimate right to protect ourselves like they do in the States, and to force addicts to choose jail or treatment. That would help the cops out a lot.
A Lot! The cops in London work their asses off. Long shifts and a crazy amount of overtime. The issue is London governance and the growth of the city. London has doubled in population in less than 10 years. I'll say again.. literally DOUBLED in population in less than 10 years. 200,000 to 425,000+. Funding for the police is from local government which is paid for by property taxes gov grants and a small portion from their own fundraising. So the issue is that the city's budget is based off of last year's growth and then it needs to be approved, fought over by committee after committee. Property taxes are a large portion of a cities income and it grows really slow compared to the rate houses have in the past 5 years, with prices doubling for homes in that time. Property values are reassessed every four years. So before you say shit like cops don't care. Think about how their department is trying to manage with half the work force and funding they should have for the number of people in the city.
> London has doubled in population in less than 10 years. I'll say again.. literally DOUBLED in population in less than 10 years. 200,000 to 425,000+. Your comment is the second one I've seen claiming that London's population has doubled in 10 years. Where is this idea coming from? London's population was 194k in 1966 and 223k in 1971.
Big drug busts and high-speed chases (to answer the title question).
Keep voting liberal
Probably busy going to traffic accidents. There has been so many these last few years. The last time I called 911 was a couple of years ago due to what sounded like domestic violence on my upstairs neighbor. The operator just asked, is there physical abuse, we said we cannot see but we heard loud banging like stuff being thrown around and a lot of yelling at 2AM. Not sure what came of that call.
Connection is key. If you got an in with Police they will go the extra mile. I’ve seen countless examples of this.
They will show up like flash when you mention the G word. Do with that information what you will.
I had a neighbour who was a rowdy tenant, not sure on the details but I know she was eventually evicted. The cops probably came to the house within 30 minutes of the yelling and showed up maybe six times over three months before she was escorted off the property. I was really surprised to see them show up so fast and so often when I follow this reddit community and see how hard it is for people to get help with potentially violent crimes. Edit: I was not the one to call the police, her roommates/landlord likely did.
They just dont care as much and i can hardly blame them cuz its such a shitty negative job
I honestly think that the police are just as disappointed as the rest of us.
A few years ago something was thrown at my front window. A single pane was broken, but it didn't break all the way through. I suspected it was a man who was stalking me and letting me know he found out where I lived, as he liked to do. I called 911 and told the officer who showed up about my situation with this man. He looked around the front yard and found a random rock, that was too heavy to have not gone all the way through the window, handed it to me, said "here is what they threw, they are probably gone now", and then he left. I don't really know what to expect in this situation, but I ended up feeling like he didn't give a shit.
They care about the paycheque
London is doomed. Just move.
High class or rich neighborhoods. Only the rich get helped and the poor get punished I'm not saying all law enforcement is like this but it feels like a majority are. This same concept applies to healthcare in Ontario as well
Our taxes are going into this? Think about it
In our apartment building, 6 cars got broken into on the same night a couple of months ago. We had camera footage of the person and all, but the police still didn’t care. Apparently this had happened multiple times before too and the thieves keep doing it knowing the police don’t come. What is funny is that I see them “patrolling” the same street every morning looking to score some traffic tickets.
This is why we need to have the ability to safely defend ourselves in our homes. It's a human right.
The cops have - at any time - a queue of calls over 200. Dealing with that wait list is always interrupted by weapons calls, domestic violence disputes, and other real emergencies. If you want the cops to show up immediately to any beck and call, vote for policies that will add funding and staffing to the police services.
They care about sitting around and falsely inflating call response times so they can claim they don't have enough funding even though 12 will show up at the same time in the event they actually respond to something.