1. Here's your report that 'vaguely resembles that'.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...s-reported-hearing-shouting-middle-night.html
Note carefully how the report puts no failure on the parents for allowing their 15 year old to be over twice the drink drive limit, or for going to bed when he said he was on his way home - nope, all the police, should have searched better. Yes - no power was needed for the search here, but the essence is the same - a call that someone is in danger, police attendance, a search took place - just the difference being that search wasn't thorough.
2. That's exactly what we do. Every day. If someone makes an uncorroborated complaint, then it is acted upon. If there were significant evidence that the call was rubbish then it's different, but just one call saying "sometimes getting hurt" is enough for us to check that someone isn't getting hurt, and for us to lose our jobs and potentially gave criminal charges of we call to do so without good reason. We do have the power to enter homes to do so (Section 17 of Police and criminal evidence act 1984), and it does get used regularly. If you dislike this, we live in a democracy and you can write to your MP and suggest it be repealed.
3. As I've said a number of times, in your specific case you may well be correct. You may well be completely incorrect. I don't know and neither do you. But to suggest that we shouldn't act on uncorroborated calls is simply wrong, as is (on the basis of what we KNOW) describing their actions as indefensible.
Seriously, if you care this much go to the local station or the IPCC to make a complaint and get it investigated proudly. And I'm disappointed by any parent taking the word of a group of drunk and possibly drugged 15-16 year olds as gospel and trying so determinedly to defend their behaviour that required a neighbour to call the police.
I don't acknowledge the parallel. I hadn't seen the report, and I certainly wouldn't quibble with the gist, that the police failed to do their job properly, whatever the failures of the parents. Nor, according to the report, would they. But I don't see the cases as in any way comparable.
I have never suggested that the police should not act on uncorroborated reports. Probably 90% of the reports they receive are uncorroborated, and a high proportion probably prove to be well-founded. The question is,
how should they act. In this case, as I suggested earlier, the appropriate way to have acted would have been like this:
The first cop at the door, once it was answered by a 16 year old girl dressed as a bunny rabbit and in no obvious distress other than that caused by the sudden and unexpected arrival of a mob of police, could have seen very quickly that nothing dangerous or sinister was in progress. No shooting, no screaming, no signs of anything untoward - just one frightened teenager, and music playing in the background. At that point, the 'policing' thing to have done would have been to ask if everything's ok, point out the importance of not causing a nuisance, and leave.
Do you not agree?
I have also suggested that before even thinking about despatching one of your 'night time economy' units, a sensible first step would have been to have sent a car with a couple of cops to check it out, have a word with whoever answered the door, and use a little discretion in deciding whether, say, seven officers were likely to be needed. And then perhaps got back to the caller and asked them about this 'violence' they had reported. Given that the police had attended, and not found anything but a teenagers' fancy dress party, which seemed to be entirely violence-free. No screams. No gunshots. No signs of harm or distress.
Do you not agree?
I have made it clear on more than one occasion that I do not regard the version of events presented to me by my daughter as 'gospel'. I do, however, believe it to be a fair representation of what took place.
I have the admitted advantage over you of knowing my daughter, and of knowing that she would not have hesitated to tell me if there had been so much as a scuffle at this party, let alone anything constituting real violence. But I object to being accused of 'taking the word of a group of drunk and possibly drugged 15-16 year olds'. I am not. I am taking the word of my daughter, who had indeed had a drink - she had after all been at a party, however short-lived - but was sane, sober and coherent, and perfectly capable of telling me what had happened.
Which was this: seven police suddenly turned up, came into the house, and went on a fishing expedition, scaring the crap out of a bunch of nice kids who were doing no-one any harm whatsoever. Then ordered everyone out, despite having found nothing even vaguely illegal. At 9 o' clock on a Saturday evening.
I call that bad policing. I call that bullying.
Apparently, you don't agree.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.
Oh, one last thing: apparently this group of drunk/drugged kids whose word I take as gospel behaved in a way that '
required a neighbour to call the police'. Isn't that rather begging the question, given that by your own admission you 'don't know' what actually happened? Or, more to the point, didn't.