There are criminals out there. Crime happens – no matter how careful you are you could be unlucky and find that you are the victim of some crime or other.What should you do and why would you do it? The advice below should help.
Reporting Incidents To The Police
If you do have to make a telephone call about a suspicious caller, be ready to give as good a description as you can. If all you can report is ‘A guy with black hair’, don’t expect the police to find him. The police need to know who to look out for. Your description of a guy with black hair is of little or no use, but at least the police can exclude females from their search!
The police may well want to find and detain your suspicious character to talk to him, so they really want to know who to look for while they are driving around or checking via CCTV cameras in the town. For those purposes they need some easy identifiers. If your description of the suspect was white male, six foot six inches tall, shaved head, white trousers and a dark blue jumper, they have something to work on. Knowing that they can ignore anyone with hair, anyone who is short, any women and children, etc. They can more easily keep an eye out for very tall bald guys with white trousers and dark blue jumper.
When they find him they may want further details to confirm they have the right man, so the rest of your description will be invaluable. The rest of your description might include the fact that he spoke with a Welsh accent and that there was a little red crest on the left breast of his jumper. The man you saw also had nicotine stains on the fingers of his left hand, a snake tattoo on the back of his right hand and he presented what looked like a home-made gas company identity card stating he was Frank James – District Assessor.
That should give the police plenty to work on. If Mr Frank James really is the
District Assessor with the local gas company he won’t mind you being careful. If he isn’t, he will wish he hadn’t come to your door!
As with any similar matters, when you have to report matters to the police, as soon as possible after the encounter write down as much as you can while it is fresh in your mind. That way, names, car registration numbers and other such detail don’t get lost or confused.
Descriptions
Depending on the circumstances a full description for each person involved would include as much of the following as possible:
- hair colour/length/style/ornaments, etc.
- clothing/style/colour/markings, etc.
- identifying marks – tattoos/birth marks/scars, etc.
- voice/accent/impediment (stutter)
- names used – called himself Frank James, or colleague called him ‘Barry’, etc.
- anything carried – bag/briefcase/clipboard
- other identifying features, e.g. limp on left leg
- what he said – e.g. Claimed to be charity collector
- what they touched/ate/drank, etc.
- anyone else in the area who could give an independent description to police – e.g. ‘He called on Mrs Biggins at number 42 before he came to me’
- if they had a vehicle: make model colour age registration number or partial number if that’s all you saw markings, e.g. ‘Grabbit & Scarper – Builders’ in black lettering on side of light blue van – no phone number shown other identifying features, e.g. rusty roof rack, broken left headlight, etc. direction of travel if it has left the scene, e.g. they turned left onto the A40 heading into town.
The more detail you can supply, the easier you make it for the police to track down the culprit. If you are a witness to any crime, you should be using your powers of observation and filing details away in your memory so that you can accurately report them later.