LETTER: Police cannot be bothered with petty crime

There is a security camera located close by which covered the bicycle and so I informed the police with some optimism that the culprit would be identified.

Unfortunately this was not the case as the police responded with the comment that as it covered five hours from 6am to 11am when my son left work, they did not have the time to review the tape.

My only option was to request the owner of the surveillance camera to review the tape and advise the police if something was found. As this is not the place of employment of my son, we are not hopeful of this being done and even if they found something, they would only pass to the police, they would not inform us, so we are left not knowing whether this film is even looked at.

What sort of message does this send out to petty criminals? Whoever did this must have gone prepared with bolt cutters as there was a strong bike lock attached to it and how many other times have they done this knowing that the police will not bother with something so petty.

This is not petty to my son, not, I suspect to any other victims of this sort of crime.

Surely it would take a lot less that five hours to review the tape as it can be fast forwarded and could not a PCSO spend a little time on this?

I have sympathy with the police and the difficulties they are encountering all the time, but we must be able to report crimes to the police with some expectation of them not just being dismissed as “not worth the trouble” and the police cannot be bothered with local crime.

Sharon Ware

Hampton Vale

Peterborough