This government has done so much damage to the public services. We’ve only got more disasters to look forward to in the future unless that changes.
If people actually realised how few officers are often at work at a given time they’d lose their shit at the government.
It’s unsustainable and it leads to issues with officers only being able to attend immediate response incidents, or being pulled away from incidents to dealing with new incoming incidents without having fully dealt with the old one. It can mean that whilst you’d ideally like multiple vehicles out looking for a high risk missing person, you’re down to maybe 2-3 cops in 2 cars, one of whom probably can’t blue light.
The same goes for the other services, Fire and Ambulance. If one big incident comes in which takes all of them, for example a massive crash on the motorway, cars on fire, people trapped, people seriously injured, in some areas you’re probable seeing a large chunk of the fleet for fire and ambulance, you might get Highways helping out but you’ll still have to block multiple on/off slips, potentially make a search for any unaccounted for persons. Then if someone is at fault they might get arrested which is another resource or two down for a while, then you need collision investigators out, people to repair the damage, etc. Which now means anyone needing those resources for something less urgent, or needing a large number of people for something equally as urgent, is going to struggle to get what they need.
In this case it does sound like there were mistakes. I’d be interested to read the first inspectors review for why it was not high risk, as clearly the second inspector has raised the risk. Were they given all the facts, did they seek all the facts, were they listening to those who knew the most. One of the key things we always ask the family of missing persons is where is someone likely to go, where are places that they have an emotional connection to. A lot of the time they’re good guesses and usually quick enquiries that mean once they’re done you can focus elsewhere.
2 comments
Tragic story all around.
This government has done so much damage to the public services. We’ve only got more disasters to look forward to in the future unless that changes.
If people actually realised how few officers are often at work at a given time they’d lose their shit at the government.
It’s unsustainable and it leads to issues with officers only being able to attend immediate response incidents, or being pulled away from incidents to dealing with new incoming incidents without having fully dealt with the old one. It can mean that whilst you’d ideally like multiple vehicles out looking for a high risk missing person, you’re down to maybe 2-3 cops in 2 cars, one of whom probably can’t blue light.
The same goes for the other services, Fire and Ambulance. If one big incident comes in which takes all of them, for example a massive crash on the motorway, cars on fire, people trapped, people seriously injured, in some areas you’re probable seeing a large chunk of the fleet for fire and ambulance, you might get Highways helping out but you’ll still have to block multiple on/off slips, potentially make a search for any unaccounted for persons. Then if someone is at fault they might get arrested which is another resource or two down for a while, then you need collision investigators out, people to repair the damage, etc. Which now means anyone needing those resources for something less urgent, or needing a large number of people for something equally as urgent, is going to struggle to get what they need.
In this case it does sound like there were mistakes. I’d be interested to read the first inspectors review for why it was not high risk, as clearly the second inspector has raised the risk. Were they given all the facts, did they seek all the facts, were they listening to those who knew the most. One of the key things we always ask the family of missing persons is where is someone likely to go, where are places that they have an emotional connection to. A lot of the time they’re good guesses and usually quick enquiries that mean once they’re done you can focus elsewhere.