Lyss (lyssador) wrote in bad_service,
Lyss
lyssador
bad_service

Police Problems

So, it's been a crappy week. A few days ago, while I was at work, my car was broken into in the employee parking lot (which doesn't have lights or a camera, so this is also a surveillance fail, but whatever). Actually, not even while I was at work... when I was leaving work. I walked out to the parking lot, and someone was sitting in the car with the lights on where I thought I had parked my car, but I figured I must be mistaken so I continued walking. After walking down about six more cars, I realized that it WAS my car the guy was sitting in. Because it was a crime in progress, I called 911. I told the dispatcher someone was breaking into my car, and he said this was a non-emergency and would transfer me to the non-emergency line of the city I live in. However, I work in a small town just outside that city, which isn't under the city police jurisdiction but under the RCMP. I managed to get "But I'm not in..." before my call was transferred, after which I waited on hold for nearly ten minutes while the guy in my car rifled through my stuff, got out, and walked away (I didn't want to confront him... he was big!).

When the cop did come, I explained everything to him and we went out to look at my car. The rear driver's-side window was completely smashed in, all the compartments were open, all of my stuff was all over the floor and seats of my car, etc. Thankfully, he didn't steal anything. However, because he didn't actually take anything, apparently this didn't count as a crime (the cop said it was just "mischief", whatever that means). The cop didn't even write down the description I gave of the guy (although I did write it down in my statement), and they didn't take any evidence from my car even though the guy had been BLEEDING and there were blood smears on the steering wheel and BLOODY (very clear) FINGERPRINTS on the handles of my doors, and it had been raining and it was a dirt parking lot so there were footprints on the floor. To top it off, the cop didn't even give me his name, had me fill out the witness statement using my knee as a table while he went to get a coffee from our cafeteria, and when I asked about the blood and the broken window, he told me to "just take it home and figure it out. You probably won't even need to file a claim." Needless to say I took some latex gloves from the cleaning department to drive home that night.

Yeah, I realize that catching petty thieves isn't a huge priority, but come on!

tl;dr - My car was broken into but this isn't a crime, and fingerprints and DNA are not evidence.
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