Desperate plea for advice.....

[LOTTYPOTTY]

I'm on the committee of our local allotment association and we've recently had to evict a plot holder for serious breaches of the site rules. However, although we have explained the reasons for the decision this person will not keep off the site and has broken in through the front fence of the site using force and therefore causing damage and exposing the site for anyone to enter at their will. This has now happened four times in the last ten days. The police are currently involved but say that it really is a civil matter as the land is privately owned. Unfortunately having spoken to the landowners they are not interested in getting involved as they gain such a small amount of revenue from us that it is not in their interest either. How on earth can we keep this person away from the site with so little help from the law or landowners?

Having spoken to this person's parents, it turns out that she also has mental health issues and is very abusive and aggressive to them on a daily basis. What can we do now?

Any suggestions of help would be gratefully received.

[Plot06]

Might be private ground but it's criminal damage to break through the fence. Don't understand why the police won't help. Other idea would be speak to a solicitor about an injunction banning her from the area.

Bit drastic I know Good luck

[Nicos]

If she has mental health issues then her GP needs to know.
As far as I am aware the police can only act on a breach of law- or a Psychiatric assessment.
Can you find out who their GP is????

[Two_Sheds]

This is a tricky one. She obviously can't go on breaking & entering, but it's a bit delicate if she has 'issues'.

Is there anyone she respects that can have a word? Without getting angry.

Otherwise, can you organise a round-the-clock watch for a couple of weeks? We did that once at our old site when we had similar problems with break-ins (no, the police weren't interested, although a CSO did start to patrol now & again afterwards, while she was doing her school-truant watch)

Video or photo evidence might be useful if you need to get a restraining order (I don't mean restraining, but I can't find the words this morning)

[Aberdeenplotter]

I'd have been saying dealing with a nutter is next to impossible rather than referring to her having issues but delicacy and diplomacy were never my strong point. I think you will just have to hope she gets bored and finds some other "project" to take her attention. A round the clock watch would be ideal if you can organise it but that does tie a lot of people up for a lot of time. good luck with it anyway

[snohare]

The police are currently involved but say that it really is a civil matter as the land is privately owned.

They are skiving, frankly. They want this to go away, and they are misrepresenting the situation in the hopes that you will find a way round this that doesn't involve them.
You need to insist that criminal damage and trespass, not to mention concerns for the culprit's own safety and fears for that of others, are not a civil matter, however much the bobbies may like the idea of a self-regulating society the members of whom can come to nice reasonable arrangements. Based on this argument, they would never prosecute for theft as it is merely a dispute involving private property ! But a public order offence is a public order offence, specifically to allow the police to act in these matters. If they don't know that, they have no business wearing the uniform.
The one thing that will get any decent policeman worried and make him sit up and pay attention is the mention of public safety issues. If this person is aggressive, irrational and prone to causing damage, there is no escaping the implications, but some coppers really need to have be asked, how would it look if we took this to the papers, or what if such and such happens and the press get hold of your inaction...
If there is a current and ongoing habit of aggressive behaviour and criminal behaviour linked to mental health issues, there is a definite case for a psychiatric assessment under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act, which requires/enables a police officer to detain for this purpose, any person who they feel may be a risk to themselves or to others.
Given that this person's mental health issues are clearly not being adequately treated, and certainly if she makes threats to others, it simply takes a police officer with the necessary moral fibre to do what is needed. For this reason it is particularly important to keep a record of any negative interactions between plotholders/family and her.
Harsh I know, but speaking as a person with mental health issues, and who has seen less serious situations with others come to a Section 2, I'd hope that if I ever went off the rails that badly that somebody would do the same for me. It is a great (and sadly, all too common) way to finally get psychiatric help to someone in real need of it.
It may actually be that if the miscreant is given a sufficiently severe talking to by the police, they will mend their ways. You never know your luck. But either way, you need to insist on action; it's the squeaky wheel that gets oiled...

[Newton]

What a fantastic response.....well done shohare!

[rustylady]

Ditto what Newton said!!

[FionaH]

Just thinking the same, well done Snohare

[snohare]

I thought I was just rabbiting on...

My dad was a bobby for more than twenty years. He was also very active in the International Police Association. So I have sat in on a few "shop talk" sessions amongst policemen of many nationalities (some of them even sober) - unusually, from the highest rank in the land to the lowest - and heard a lot about how they think and feel on different things. From this I developed some very firm ideas about how policemen should behave, and how they might reasonably be expected to behave - two very different things at times, which the police themselves do not ever advertise as they don't generally like to come across as human.
One telling thing I discovered is that when assessing an unknown policeman's actions, to gain context a policeman in Aberdeen is likely to ask what his badge number is. Why ? Because part of it denotes the year he joined, and some years were notorious for the fact that the interview boards dropped their standards in order to fulfill the number of vacancies. I'd guess this is quite common...
Also, all the Metropolitan police forces were considered corrupt by the smaller forces (but rural ones like Northern Constabulary were considered very unprofessional and ineffective by bigger forces) and almost universally, the drive to gain fast-tracked graduate recruits for top management posts by avoiding promotion from within the ranks was considered a disaster in terms of creating ambitious bosses who didn't know (or often, seem to care) what was happening on the beat. That said, keyhole vision seems to be the curse of typical policing.
At the end of the day, it seems to me that no-one in uniform ever steps past the failures or advantages of his training, except by an effort of will. The training is obviously far different nowadays - it is clear to insiders how the old cut-and-dried attitudes have changed amongst the young coppers - but disturbingly, a clear bias towards those in authority (and against lawyers and protestors) still seems to exist. (Mark you, I've never seen the discussions on online police forums, but I'd bet they are on hows not whys.)
If a top policeman gives orders to commit illegal acts to his police force (and I've talked with one foreign police chief who ordered anti-nuclear protesters thrown off a high bridge), it does not surprise me to find that the police will be found to obey their orders to the letter, and without question. Their Achilles heel seems to be groupthink; slavish obedience is seen as commitment to the pursuit of public order. This is further enhanced by a siege mentality; policemen in my experience tend to mix socially mainly or only with family and other policemen, to avoid unpleasant scenarios. Their training and experience sets them apart emotionally.
Give them their due, they are all willing to die to protect the public, even while decrying its members. A readiness to put themselves in danger to further public safety (which is inevitably equated with orderliness) is very much their wellspring. What I find extremely disturbing is that they do not consider they have any legal right, much less any responsibility, to ever question orders from above. ("Above my pay grade" syndrome...for 6 points, discuss three examples of when this fails.) Being well read on human rights issues or political world history is not generally common, although frankly they have some outright geniuses amongst them.
And if a force has a troublemaker, putting him in the riot squad on secondment is an obvious move for his superintendent..
IMO. <And breathe>