I agree and furthermore, it depends upon the Police Forces starting point when an incident/MFH/Serious crime is first reported and the ability or experience or personal approach of the first Police officer who attends the initial report . It’s no different in any industry whereby you have some employees who do absolutely everything that they can do to progress to a resolution or further response by other departments and take the initiative to create lines of enquiry and follow them up as far as that officer is able to before they then bring it to the attention of the supervisor and CID
And you have other officers who do the minimum.
Although there are process maps and procedures for dealing with different reports that come into the Police domain, it is also dependent upon the person who takes the call wether that be by 999 or 101 and the quality of their approach too, and if they do in fact complete the correct procedures or if they take short cuts . And then it’s dependent upon other individual attitudes toward the circumstances reported, which can vary widely . In Police circles, although you are taught to be able to deal with any situation, personally I feel that it takes a good 4-5 years before you are able to be confident in your abilities and competence to deal with whatever your are faced with but unfortunately too many Officers go for promotion after the mandatory 2 year probation period and ascend the ranks and become supervisory officers yet they don’t know and don’t have the experience and expertise at 2 years service to be able to competently deal with any situation . They are leading their staff who will look up to them to prove direction, leadership and decision making but don’t necessarily know what to do and words still, some are too proud ( or Stu pid) to ask. So all of these factors are part and parcel of the way a situation develops and the attention it is given . In addition to all of these points, you have some officers who only like to ‘lock up’ and see a report of a Missing from home beneath them . Every officer has strengths and weaknesses and sometimes as a supervisor, it’s better to match an incident to the best officer for that job / report as opposed to just sending whoever you can find . And lastly, it also depends upon the Police Force itself - for example- I worked for an inner city metropolitan force in the north of England with above average serious crime/murders/robberies etc
And if you and your team are used to dealing with such crimes on a regular basis, you collectively have more ability to investigate and solve crime. Officers in my Force who were in uniform on the front line , responding to a dozen or more incidents per day, also would carry 10-20 small crimes to investigate as well as being first responders and that’s a heavy workload. But some forces have officers who may only have half a dozen minor crimes to investigate per year ! Yes seriously, per year ! Yet we all get paid the same. But those who aren’t used to dealing with the same workload as an inner city force , won’t necessarily have the experience and/or know what to do and that includes all officers, not just uniform response and will ask for other forces to assist. For example- the Steve Wright serial killer who murdered 5 or 6 street workers in 2006 in Ipswich, that force had to request mutual aid from the likes of Merseyside Police and Greater Manchester Police amongst others because in particular, two staff of mine had to be allocated to gain the confidence of the female street workers so that information could be obtained to help identify the killer and they were specifically given that role because the staff in the force where the crimes occurred, were unable to gain the confidence of these women and ultimately get the intelligence required to share WRIGHT and it was purely down to the fact that my officers were far more experienced in that field of expertise than the initial officers who were allocated to gain the trust of the women . So if you add all of these factors together, plus the quality of the Press Office and communications departments within each force area , it dictates the reasoning as to why some victims get more attention than others. It’s nothing nefarious, it’s circumstances.
Sorry to waffle but I thought it worth being explained.
Her partner, family and friends are on my thoughts.
