On Mon, 12 May 2008 12:44:39 +0100, unit743 wrote:
>On Mon, 12 May 2008 01:01:52 +0100, "Cork Soaker"
> wrote:
>
>>: Have the Police really totally given up on Public Relations?
>>
>>Were they ever trying?
>>
>
>At one time, yes.
Back in 1981 I was interviewed as a neighbour of an old lady who had
been murdered. I was shown a picture of the lady and asked "Have you
ever seen her." To which I accurately replied "I don't remember ever
seeing her." which prompted the response and the written note, "Oh, so
you've not seen her." by the officer. The officer was clearly taken
aback when I replied that what he had interpreted as my response and
written down was not what I had said. He commented that it was the
same, and I then pointed out that it was most definitely not the same
in the following way: suppose I had fleetingly seen her once when I
was in my backyard, as she was walking down the back lane, and she and
I had exchanged hellos. Becuase it was such a transient encounter and
I was quite preoccupied at the time, I didn't remember it. However,
the exchange was seen by a different person, remembered, because I was
new to the area, and later reported to the police. The apparent
discrepancy between the officer's written account of what I had said
(which was not an accurate account), and what this other person
reported would possibly be grounds for taking more interest in me. His
response to me was to ask whether I was accusing him of deliberately
misrepresenting what I had said, to which I replied "No, I am merely
pointing out that you have made an error that would be better sorted
out." but I got the impression that I was going to be labelled as a
troublemaker for all this, and so it was: I was interviewed a number
of times, even though they had no apparent grounds for doing so.
As it turned out, the person who did it was the old lady's nephew, and
he was arrested a week or so later, but the combination of inaccurate
recording, and then the attempted interpretation of my correction of
the the officer's inaccurate interpretation of what I had said made me
very wary of blindly accepting what police officers have said since
then. At the very least, the exchanges would have been a total
disaster for their public relations if my own experiences were not a
one off. |