The Police take incompetence to whole new levels

Well we are still waiting for the Police to make a decision as to whether DS2 can go back to College while we wait for them to get round to interviewing the people involved. Its now nearly 7 weeks since the original complaint! Hardly demonstrating any sense of urgency. In spite of my frequent intersessions on DS2's behalf, explaining how damaged he is and how traumatising all of this is and Social Services also getting involved as well as a Solicitor I contacted (who worked for free as he was so appalled), we are still waiting for the Police to decide what is happening.

I have finally got a tentative possible date for DS2 to be interviewed which is another 2 weeks away...by which stage he will remember nothing and neither will anyone else. I cannot begin to express my levels of anger and disgust that the situation could be so badly mishandled. The mistakes made by the Police are endless.

• they failed to contact either myself as DS2's foster carer or his Social Worker when they initially said he had to be off College, even though he is a minor and is classed as vulnerable as he is in Care and has learning difficulties.
• when I contacted them I was given no information, i.e. when he would be interviewed, when he would be back in College....basically anything at all.
• The Police failed to contact Swarthmore to discuss how DS2 could remain in College even when I and his Social Worker stressed how damaging all the disruption was, even though a Risk Assessment meeting was supposed to be organised by the Police at the end of January. 
• The Police failed to involve Safeguarding who should have been involved as DS2 is still in full time education. To be honest Social Services also failed on that one. I was the one who contacted Safeguarding.
• The Police are bending over backwards to ensure the alleged victim/s are not potentially traumatised...their words but without the alleged!... while totally ignoring the actual trauma being done to DS2!
• When I finally managed to speak to somewhat who claimed to be able to make a decision I was so badly patronised it was unreal. The woman had obviously worked in a call centre previous to joining the Police because every time  I asked a question or interrupted her...to say stuff like 'yes I understand'...she just went back to the beginning of her speech and carried on. She was clearly not firing on all cylinders as she phoned me on my home phone and then checked if I was out shopping! Not overly bright.
• Swarthmore are as annoyed by all this as I am and seem to have experienced similar levels of rudeness from the Police, weirdly Social Services were impressed by the professionalism of the Police...maybe they are treating us differently!

Anyway it does seem...finally ...as though everyone is moving in a similar direction and, fingers crossed, DS2 may be allowed back into College sometime next week...not before time. He still may need to be interviewed by the Police but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. Swarthmore very clearly feel any complaints against DS2 are malicious or fantasy and given that they know at least one of the people involved I bow to their superior knowledge. It will be interesting to see how the Police react if it becomes plain to them that the complaints have no validity...I won't expect an apology but I will enjoy seeing how they weasel word their way out of the situation!

I will certainly be writing a formal complaint once its all over and letting them know just how badly their system fails vulnerable people. Honestly nothing they have done suggests they view DS2 as a real  person, the 'victims' are real but he is just supposed to stay invisible and in suspended animation until they decide to move. Very poor!

We will see what next week brings...certainly the last few weeks have been horrible. DS2 worked really hard at coping with all the disruption but then, more than a week ago, 25/2/16 to be precise, he hit a wall and just couldn't cope any more. The poor kid isn't sleeping, he's reverted to behaviour we've not seen for years its been dreadful. All this stress has also impacted badly on DD who has been in huge amounts of pain and flaring madly. My kettle has had to work so hard at providing me with sustaining cups of tea it died. A really bad period...and all caused because the Police are incapable of acting or seeing people as real!

DP has been told about the situation, mostly by DS2 who initially didn't want him telling but then couldn't avoid talking about it, hardly surprising as it filled his world. Anyway DP was away for a night with work knowing that I was fighting very hard to get a response from the Police, so when he came back he obviously asked how it was all going and what progress had been made....no of course he didn't. He talked for about how wonderful he was and bored on about who said what to whom and said not a single word about DS2! He is such a massive support to me, not.

Update: the Police have finally phoned to say that DS2 can go back to College on Wednesday 9th March...over 7 weeks since the original incident. Still no date for the interview and no, even tentative, timetable for how long it will take for the Police to then assess the information from the interviews and decide what, if anything, they are going to do. Oh the Police just continue to impress me so much words fail me.

Update 2: well the Police finally got round to interviewing DS2 on 26th March. We had a solicitor there as I had no faith at all in the Police actually having any interest in being fair or listening to DS2 tell the truth. I very much felt they had decided already what they felt had happened and had already condemned DS2. I didn't go into the interview...there is no way I could have kept my mouth shut when the Police started talking rubbish...as indeed they did according to DD who did go in. The solicitor was more than happy for DS2 to speak for himself and say anything as he could tell from DS2's account of the incident that he had done nothing wrong at all. The Police spent nearly 2 hours interviewing DS2 trying to make him admit to their version of events. According to the complaints against DS2 he had grabbed 2 girls by their vaginas...not his style at all. The girl he'd kissed claimed DS2 had dragged her down the stairs and tripped her and banged her head before kissing her against her will. Not a believable tale given that no one was supposed to have noticed this! Anyway even the Police couldn't make anything of the incident much as they patently wanted to. They still took a week to email me to say they wouldn't be taking the matter any further but still wanted DS2 to have the additional supervision at College, but gave no reasons why they wanted this. Also neglected to mention any of this to College. Honestly it would be hard to find an organisation more ignorant or arrogant than the Police. Really glad its all finally over...11 weeks from beginning to end. What a total nightmare!!