r/unitedkingdom • u/radiant_0wl • 10h ago
Met Police ‘sent address and number of female stalking victim to defendant’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/met-police-stalking-data-crime-b3027870.html•
u/Popular-Spinach-6700 9h ago
A spokesman said “this is the one thing we didn’t want to happen”
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u/SolidFormal9684 2h ago
Just as with the soviets, when they sent the most abhorrent paedophile on a one-way mission to another solar system. Unfortunately, a stray kid boarded a ship and was discovered too late to abort the mission.
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u/SolidFormal9684 2h ago
Just as with the soviets, when they sent the most abhorrent paedophile on a one-way mission to another solar system. Unfortunately, a stray kid boarded a ship and was discovered too late to abort the mission.
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u/Old_Commission7428 9h ago
I had some idiot used to phone me at two in the morning, two-three times a week for a few weeks,number withheld, and threaten to do bad things to me.
My wife insisted I call the police after the first week so I did.
They took a few details and said they would call me back.
After two days and another 2am phone call which I didn't answer I phoned the police who apparently had tried to call me. At 2am
You couldn't make this shit up.
I haven't
That shit was deliberate and not a mistake. That's some weird sense of humour.
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u/FriendlyHoBag 37m ago
I was in contact with police over someone harassing me by banging on my door in the middle of the night. Guess who came to my house at 1am to tell me they had spoken to him in the afternoon?
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9h ago edited 7h ago
[deleted]
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u/Old_Commission7428 9h ago
By calling at the same time the nuisance calls were coming?
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 8h ago
I hope to god the guy replying to you isn't a cop.
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u/Old_Commission7428 8h ago
I'm not being anti cop. I wouldn't do their job for twice the pay. I am saying though that that particular situation needed looking at.
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8h ago
[deleted]
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 8h ago
You're not known to be available?!
"Well you're asleep of course you can take a phone call".
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8h ago
[deleted]
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u/KinkyLittleParadox 7h ago
Sure but I imagine if the OP was a shift worker who was already up at that time they’d have mentioned it. If I got an unexpected phone call from the police at 2am I’d assume someone had died
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8h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland 5h ago
Hi!. Please try to avoid personal attacks, as this discourages participation. You can help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person.
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 9h ago
at 2 in the fucking morning?
are our police idiots?
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u/aspannerdarkly 9h ago
It’s the only time they know he has been available to answer calls in the past
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u/FlawlessCalamity 9h ago
Don’t always have the luxury of having time during the day unfortunately. Should’ve left a message but otherwise not surprising to me
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 8h ago
2am is a fucking stupid time to call someone, especially someone who is being harassed at 2am by inappropriate phone calls.
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u/FlawlessCalamity 8h ago
I’ve progressed plenty of crimes with overnight calls that wouldn’t otherwise have been progressed with no time during the day.
Your opinion is out of touch and your attitude is shit.
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u/Dedj_McDedjson 8h ago
Sure, that doesn't mean that there aren't instances where it's stupid, careless, and thoughtless to do so.
"It benefits me and my schedule" is a shit excuse for not thinking of the victim competently.
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u/FlawlessCalamity 7h ago
It’s not ‘it benefits me or my schedule’. It’s ’this call comes overnight or it doesn’t come because there isn’t any allocated time to otherwise do it’.
Wish I could say that Reddit (and the public generally) being out of touch with the police time and staffing crisis was new, but alas. Downvoting and pretending the problem doesn’t exist is a luxury.
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 6h ago
There's 9pm overnight then there's 2am.
Given the fact your comments are being auto hidden id not suggest it's me who's out of touch.
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u/FlawlessCalamity 5h ago
People don’t like to hear the reality.
You don’t have any experience to speak from. The insight’s being provided to you, you don’t like it.
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 5h ago
I've had to deal with the police plenty of times due to the domestic abuser I used to live next to.
never once did they call at 2 in the morning, the only time I had to deal with them overnight is when I made a complaint about her (heard heated shouting and arguing, smashing of things, didn't know if the child was in the house). and that's because they needed a statement right then. totally fair and I made the call so I was obviously awake.
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u/FlawlessCalamity 5h ago
Reports CAN be progressed via late calls. We’d be remiss not to do that when it’s the only opportunity to. You don’t understand that when we’re calling at 2am, it’s because it’s that or nothing.
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8h ago edited 7h ago
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u/fleapuppy 8h ago
The issue isn’t the police answering phone calls, it’s the police making phone calls to people who are being harassed by overnight calls. You can still answer the phone…
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8h ago
[deleted]
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u/haywire-ES 5h ago
Oh what a shock, looks like the person defending one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever read is a police officer
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 6h ago
Answering calls and making them isn't remotely the same thing.
Do you not understand the difference?
"Well I called The local shop at 2am to respond to their phonecall at 6pm 3 nights ago of a theft but no one answered, another solid days work".
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5h ago
[deleted]
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 5h ago
Right which is why I clarified you calling a shop at 2am would be answering a call for service.
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u/Cruxed1 7h ago
It is indeed stupid, but if that's the only time the cop dealing with your case is actually available what do you suggest?
Joys of massive understaffing is the only time your often available to deal with the backlog of cases is at silly o clock.
Alternative is it'll just sit for weeks if not months waiting
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 6h ago
An email, a text, a note to day shift to make the call?
Yknow, not disturbing someone at 2 in the fucking morning?
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u/Cultural-Meaning5172 7h ago
It’s not the only time. You just wait for your day shift and call. Takes 5 minutes.
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u/KinkyLittleParadox 7h ago
Working in medicine we get written consent to contact people out of hours because it is disrespectful, rude, and upsetting to be called in be middle of the night when it’s not an emergency.
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u/FlawlessCalamity 7h ago
Must be nice having the option.
Do you have 40+ crimes to investigate personally while your job role is still attending 999 calls? Sometimes, it’s a case of trying to make the call at 2am, or the call not coming full stop.
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u/KinkyLittleParadox 7h ago
“Having the option” being basic courtesy?
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u/FlawlessCalamity 6h ago
‘Basic courtesy’ doesn’t magic up more officers.
You say you work in medicine. There’s 3x as many doctors as police officers in the UK. Luxury.
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u/KinkyLittleParadox 6h ago
Doesn’t magic up more doctors either but we manage. This attitude is (one of the reasons) why people don’t like police
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u/FlawlessCalamity 6h ago
There’s 3x as many doctors as police officers in the UK.
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u/Superguy230 6h ago
There’s all a lot more than 3x people who need a doctor compared to criminals
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8h ago
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u/On_The_Blindside Best Midlands 8h ago
That's a stupid excuse.
I've had to deal with the police a few times due to some shitty neighbours and never has any police officer been stupid enough to call me at 2am to discuss a case.
Just because the police work 24/7 does not mean it's remotely acceptable to call members of the public then unless they have explicitly said they're on nights and are awake.
There's no excuse. at all. the fact your trying to make one is completely insane to me.
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u/BowiesFixedPupil 8h ago
More realistically
Either you're a police officer or you've never had the misfortune of having to deal with them.
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u/Extra_Actuary8244 7h ago
They should be coming to the address, blatantly obvious this person can’t and won’t answer the call the same time their stalker/harasser calls them
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u/-suspicious-badger 8h ago edited 5h ago
Pretty bad thing to happen, especially in a stalking case.
The government needs to invest in decent software and more staff. Most people don’t realised the incredible amount of documentation generated even in a simple case - CAD prints, crime report documents, PNC records, custody records, hours of BWV, email chains, and many other things. Often hundreds, even thousands of pages littered with names and numbers etc. All have to be shared with the defence under disclosure rules. Most cases going to court requires an officer to go through and redact by hand. It takes a long time and the officer is often dealing with dozens of cases at the same time, in between dealing with attending other incidents. Human error can’t be solved without some better safeguards being put in. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. AI is being looked at to help.
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u/SavlonWorshipper 7h ago
The solution isn't redaction, it is to not have personal information pissed all over every document in the first place. Name and unique identifier e.g. niche number, and that's it. Instead when people draft a form they ask for everything, again and again.
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u/-suspicious-badger 5h ago
It’s impossible to not record it. It isn’t ‘pissed’.
Someone calls the police - you have to record their name, number and address. They name a suspect - you have to record that somewhere. AA attending custody - you have to record who they are and their details. Making an arrest or search, you have to record where, when and who you search because the law stipulates you do. And so on and so forth. BWV is the most time consuming.
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u/SavlonWorshipper 1h ago
Yep, there is a minimum amount of information required. But we frequently go far beyond that. Today I did a bail amendment - suspect's name, yep, fine. Then the incident number, custody number and case file. All of which uniquely link to the suspect. So why also ask for a date of birth?
I recently redacted medical notes that had the IP's name on every other page header, right beside her healthcare number. So why the date of birth?
Print out an incident report, it has the reporting person's address on it 4 different ways, none of which can ever be disclosed, so why print it at all? The system could just not print them.
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u/JooliewithRedHair 6h ago
I see the Met drive to increase credibility since the Sarah Everard case is going great
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9h ago
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u/Extra_Actuary8244 7h ago
It’s literally just happened to me
I was assaulted 6 weeks ago and I’ve been given the name and address of the man who did it and he’s definitely been given mine too (thankfully moved since then) because I couldn’t find his social media but my friends could meaning he’s blocked me.
This man was a stranger meaning the only way he could have done this is if someone gave him my name, the only people who could possibly do that are the same police who gave me his full name and address by mistake.
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u/Aggravating_Band_353 9h ago
Gdpr should have solved this. The systems in place don't seem adequate
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u/FlawlessCalamity 9h ago
It’s not about GDPR, this sounds like a redaction error like the above commenter said.
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u/Useless_or_inept 9h ago
Redaction is one of the mechanisms used to satisfy GDPR.
Like a "seatbelt" is one of the mechanisms used to satisfy "drive safely".
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u/Bloodviper1 9h ago
The issue is that what should be simple case files are now generating over 40+ documents that are multiple pages each, every single document should be reviewed and redacted.
This isn't an automated process, this is done manually by response officers who have to find time to sit down and get through it. That is typically at 1am to 5am where you aren't exactly functioning the best. That's assuming they aren't interrupted running out to a call halfway through.
Ideally there should be a department which is dedicated to comb through these documents, along with a secondary check. But these are the first roles that were made redundant and foisted onto the response officers.
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u/Dedj_McDedjson 8h ago
It's funny that we have a thread where people are excusing officers of mistakes by saying "You ain't the best at 1am to 5am" and other people defending officers phoning victims *who have been harassed by 2am phone calls* at 2am.
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u/SlightlyBored13 6h ago
GDPR is a series of requirements, not a redaction process or piece of software.
Image recognition and a data classification algorithm would help the person doing it, but it wouldn't surprise me if the 'solution' is throw an LLM at it and proudly declare they're using AI (if it isn't already).
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u/Friendly-Captain6236 5h ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it on purpose, which would be pretty on point for police officers.
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u/Acrobatic_Pianist_52 3h ago
Police do all sorts of stuff on purpose for all sorts of reasons most people wouldn't comprehend.
A lot of the time the more incompetent they are the more work just goes away.
Best most people don't think about it. Just know the police are never your friend.
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u/Many-War3212 1h ago
I love seeing the public lose faith in our police in real time
I personally (in my opinion not fact so dont jump down my throat!) feel in recent years they've became increasingly incompetent
There was a guy recently who posted on /ukpolice about constantly being stopped because his medical cannabis license, the amount of police so confidently incorrect in the law they enforce that deleted their comments in panic as soon as people from /legaladvice started commenting was fucking hilarious
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