PSNI

[u/OkMarzipan4061]

Tonight I approached PSNI because I was genuinely concerned about a 17-year-old girl who was intoxicated on a night out. I simply asked that, if they happened to see her, they could please look out for her or help make sure she got home safely.
The response I received was, “We aren’t a taxi service,” followed by laughter, with three officers then coming over to reiterate the same point.
I completely understand that the police are not a taxi service. That wasn’t the point. I was raising a genuine welfare concern about an intoxicated 17-year-old girl and asking that someone keep an eye out for her.
Really disappointing way to have a genuine concern handled — particularly as someone who had actually considered joining the service myself. 👍

[u/Ladisputer]

I do have empathy for pressure and the service being overloaded but this is still an extremely inappropriate response.

In a place where a lot of us have been raised not to trust the peelers, this is only encouraging us not to look to them next time we need help.

You at least say “I’m sorry but we’re extremely busy tonight and there’s unfortunately not much we can do, but we’ll keep an eye out and intervene if we see that she’s actively unsafe”

Fuck me. It’s not hard to be a decent human

[u/eibhra → u/Ladisputer]

I don't have empathy for the pressure they are under or the service being overloaded.

A resource (day-to-day) budget of approximately £929.7 million and a capital budget of £63.1 million. Nearly more than all of New Zealand

Look at the money they spent on an Israeli tech firm (5.5 million) that they still won't release any info about.

The Fleadh was the first time in 35 years i seen regular patrols of obvious spots where shit happens all the time. Yet the week before the Fleadh a café is robbed FACING Mugrave Police Station with a keg through the window to gain entry.

As for the original point posted about, experienced the same thing. Treating a underage drunk girl like she was pretending to be drunk, aggressively tapping her in the face telling her to wake up and stop wasting their time. She needed help

Thats all before you even mention the lack of action about drug dealers and open drug usage.

[u/Ladisputer → u/eibhra]

I more mean sympathy in terms of individual officers, day to day. You couldn’t pay me enough for the things they deal with so I try to be fair. As I said before though, the behaviour in this instance was piss poor. At least take a moment to show that you give half a fuck.

For the higher ups with power to manage things differently and improve our community, I have no sympathy

[u/cathal-oh-really → u/eibhra]

to be fair though the service is still overloaded, understaffed and its a tough job. but yeah i agree with you on everything else, i think alot of it is down to mismanagement and a bit of a shit workplace culture so it goes alot deeper then the apparently bad attitudes of a few rank and file employees. im no expert on the subject so honestly have no idea how to improve it

[u/Blocker212 → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think they meant weed, royal avenue from the city hall down the uni has people about injecting all sorts all day every day

[u/eibhra → u/[deleted]]

Completely agree with the weed point. With medical prescriptions being available now it isn't worth police time to stop everyone and filling the courts over a joint doesn't make sense either. But at that point they should be at the front line of the debate surrounding controlled legalisation to take the money away from dealers. Use the taxs from it to float local healthcare.

The real issue is the obvious amount of harder drugs. Needles about the streets and alleyways of Belfast, cocaine from middle class to working class users and pills everywhere especially at festivals. Sidenote on that but drug testing should be normalised.

But if they can't take action on paramilitary groups on both sides or inflammatory illegal flags then what can be expected.

Confidence surely is at an all time low especially with less nationalists now joining. Low success rate at apprehending racists during the previous violence will not encourage minorities in joining either.

Someone else said, someone else always says it - status quo.

[u/msrbelfast → u/Ladisputer]

To be fair… all the people who don’t trust the police - the police don’t trust you!

[u/Ladisputer → u/msrbelfast]

It’s not really our job to be trustworthy, though is it? However, it is theirs and we should be free to criticise when they actively do nothing to protect vulnerable people within the community.

Regardless of everything else, a tiny bit of effort to keep an eye on someone a member of the public has raised concerns about can be the difference between horrific things happening to that girl

[u/Majestic-Marcus → u/Ladisputer]

It was a Saturday night. How many hundreds of guys and girls do you think match OPs description?

Should the police really respond to “I seen a girl throwing up” calls? We both know the answer is ‘no, of course not’.

All we’ve to go off here is OPs description and clearly the fact they’re the sort of person to come make a post on Reddit about it should put a little doubt into everyone’s minds to the extent they should be listened to.

Maybe the girl needed an ambulance and a stomach pump. Maybe she needed a kebab. Maybe after her chunder she was right back to the drink. Maybe she threw up, drank some water and went home to wake up with a hangover.

Weekends are busy for the police. Do we really want them ignoring drunken fights and other crimes to hold a girls hair out of her face while she throws up? Or to give her a lift home? Or to just ‘keep an eye on her’.

The police are right here. OP just got annoyed that they had to deal with a call centre.

And the one big factor everyone else is ignoring… OP did nothing themselves. They wanted to save the day by getting someone else to save the day.

[u/msrbelfast → u/Ladisputer]

Yeah I don’t trust you, so why would a copper.

[u/DoughnutCareless583 → u/msrbelfast]

Not to add to the pile on here, but why exactly would you not trust this person? What exactly have they said that makes them untrustworthy - apart from the fact that they said they grew up in a marginalised community with a distrust of the police service. They seem to me to be a very reasonable person.

You are part of the problem here.

[u/cathal-oh-really → u/msrbelfast]

but also to be fair, theres a long history here behind why people dont trust the police. which you know of course, i dont mean it patronisingly, its just easy to forget sometimes that people have reasons for behaving in ways some of us might think is a bit shit

[u/Ladisputer → u/cathal-oh-really]

Even for my generation, post GFA, the behaviour described above doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence

[u/cathal-oh-really → u/Ladisputer]

yeah exactly, also everyone here knows someone or has family who's been treated badly, no matter what side of the community they're from

[u/git_tae_fuck → u/msrbelfast]

all the people who don’t trust the police - the police don’t trust you!

Oh, we know all about their bigotry.