Why reporting crimes and anti-social behaviour incidents to the police is so important

One of our representatives, a former Police Officer, has given some advice to the WhatsApp Group on the importance of reporting:

There is an offence of tampering with a motor vehicle. Just because nothing was worth stealing doesn’t make a difference; similar to that of burglary. 10 cars may be tampered with before the 11th one has something worth stealing. If the tampering is reported, we ‘should’ get a more proactive (and reactive) response to reduce the number of actual damage and thefts.

Reporting a crime/activity shouldn’t be seen as a response to an individual’s experience, it should be for the good of the wider community and bigger picture.

Added to that, when we had large/serious investigations, many times a trawl of the ‘everyday’reports for totally unlinked offences, would give us leads for our job that you wouldn’t necessarily imagine.

If we keep up the reports (even for just tampering, especially those with cctv images), then more crimes can potentially be linked resulting in more charges and higher sentences.