Updating post from Reddit.
Maybe I'm getting old and cynical, but I'm seeing a lot of these kinds of posts on the UK subreddits recently. They always deal with racial conflict in some way, the police have always been unhelpful, society is breaking down etc.
It's a fact that foreign governments run information operations on places like Reddit, and with the advent of AI it's now easy to add details to a story (like the use of a particular translation service) which make it seem more plausible.
Of course you could dismiss every dramatic post like this and some of them must be true but, just saying, take it with a pinch of salt.
this is exactly where my head went to as well, because op had to mention they were foreign and needed a translator BUT provided a tenancy agreement in english (I'll assume) for the police.
the dramatic cliffhanger to end on, the officer in the comments politely calling BS, everything stank a lot
Point worth making. Just for people to consider doesn't necessarily mean to be the truth, but I didn't necessarily clock that notion.
I saw a story on the BBC about someone's house sold without his consent via fraud. I think people learn to exploit our useless legal system and weak police and these things will probably become more common. But definitely aware of propaganda. It's telling to check post history and previous karma too.
Just as an FYI you can sign up to a government service that will send you an email if there are any changes to your land registry. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/property-alert
Isn't it still too late at that point though?
You can put a restriction in the title at the land registry (link). Any sale requires a solicitor to confirm the identity of the vendor prior to any sale.
Why is this not a requirement for all sales?
Very good question. I live in spain, and people are astonished here that a house could be successfully sold by someone falsely claiming ownership. I think the rationale probably has been that this requirement would be a cumbersome layer of bureaucracy, but given the increasing prevalence of fraud it seems surprising that additional ownership identification measures have not been prioritised.
If you have to get someone to help you sell your house then is it yours? What if all solicitors decide you have to pay them GBP 10,000 before they will do the certification?
You don’t often think about it, but it’s entirely possible to sell a house in a day without solicitors. Of course it requires a cash buyer not bothered about searches, but the point is it can be done and if you start effectively banning it you are taking away freedoms, however rarely used.
Thanks for that.
Good point, you inspired me to post about the land registry service that helps people protect themselves against that.
I had the same thought when I saw that post.
Good point. If this was real then it would have been on every news channel incessantly.
This has happnened several times befoire. Listen to BBC Radio's You and Yours progamme. It's on Monday to Friday from midday. A man got his house stolen in Luton. He was able to get his name back on the deed after two years, then squatters (similar to the current story) moved in with fake tenancy agreement.
Had never considered this but makes so much sense
Probably needs to be pinned comment
I don’t know, this exact scenario happened about 5 mins away from my house where a man broke into a house and was living there and wearing the owners clothes whilst she was on a 2 week holiday. Horrifying and apparently quite difficult to get rid of him.
Only quite difficult if you try to do it the right way.
When was it, squatting in residential property is criminal. So the police are called to crime in progress to remove them.
I personally think that post was a lot of nonsense. Even if someone had begun living in your home and you found them there. The cops would come and your neighbours would vouch for you and the cop would ask the person to leave or else....
I dont think most people would even wait they would be going in and chucking the persons items out!
Having worked in the law and alongside police for decades I can confidently say that the police won’t do anything.
If we do get an update it’ll be along the civil route not criminal.
For some decades now the police have lost all bite. They have no interest (understandably) and poor management has left them with no one to press on them the importance of actually policing.
Police are more akin to parking wardens or school prefects these days.
I say this as it’s important to be realistic rather than wishful thinking that the Bobbie on the Beat is going to swing by and sort everything out. Also, the only way of ensuring any reform in the force is to be vocal and clear on topic like these and how the police should but don’t act.
Looks like an AI username, newly made account etc, one post, only commented on the one post.
Says the person with the username responsible-type-595😂 Is it that inconceivable that someone who needed to ask an urgent question but didn’t have an account created one to ask the question?
That’s fair, but it does scream AI / anti immigration hate spreading.
Valid point but I wasn’t getting the impression that the aggravation was around them being foreign, it was mentioned but not heavily, and OP was very responsive in their replies. Not saying it’s out of the realm of possibility, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first case of this happening recently
Well, tbf maybe not AI, and could definitely be just propaganda spread by the right wing.. as we know they use sites like these, Facebook etc to sway people and promote their agenda.. I could be wrong, but some things don’t add up with the post..
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility unfortunately as there have been a few reported cases of houses being taken over and even sold.
However this account looks dodgy so I don’t believe it.
Ok so I’ve been trying to reconcile this.
What happens if I go into the police station with a fake tenancy agreement and say I was renting a house and the landlord just appeared and physically removed me and I demanded action.
What would the police do?
Reckon civil matter, cant do anything. Seems to be case with anything around tenants and property.
Most of the time, say it's a civil matter and ignore any evidence to the contrary. When it comes to tennacies, police usually lack training and critical thinking skills needed to understand when there is a criminal offence going on. For example, in a local force, 9 officers out of 10 polled believed landlords could not be treated as trespassers at a property they rent out. That is not legally correct, but if you are a tenant having to remove a trespassing landlord, you are the one getting arrested and dragged away from your home.
The first thing you should of done is smash a window, you then ring the police and say they forced entry.
Sounds like total bollocks to me, for a start off its not a robbery as the OP states,its possibly a burglary, definitely a trespass with criminal damage at the least and the Police won't have done nothing, they'd have done electoral role checks V5 checks, previous calls to the address, etc etc and found out that the people calling them live there, its as easy as speaking to the neighbours. Source i'm retired Police.
How long retired?
Reports that police simply won't attend both unlawful evictions and "violent person in HMO/home" are...very far from uncommon.
eviction is a civil matter and police will attend if any criminal offences are disclosed or to prevent a breach of the peace for a lawful eviction. Violent crime is a priority for every force and a Violent Person would be a P1 grade or immediately grade. Whether the said force responsible has anyone to actually send is another matter entirely.
I think a lot of new police don't know the law and are more like social workers softly approach than actually making decisions and fixing things.
I second this and my background is in the law working alongside police at times.
I do not wish to do the force an injustice but I would say it’s right to assume most are part of a boys club whose day to day is more akin to a parking wardens or school prefect.
Just look at the stats for theft, fraud, rape etc. Government bodies have even come out to say some of these crimes are essentially decriminalised by the police.
We've seen a huge shift in awareness of crimes like Domestic Abuse and sexual assault.
Volume wise these are up massively.
Most of these crimes come down to he said, she said evidence (especially with historic allegations). In the case of DA the victim often won't support prosecution. And as a result solved outcome rates have collapsed.
I’m fed up with this poor fallacy.
I am not making my comment lightly but rather expressing how alarming the statistics are. Suggesting that it’s not all that bad either suggests you are unaware of the statistics or simply have no interest in anything but enabling the force as it stands currently.
Around 14 million men and women will suffer rape or sexual assault. Of which only around 71,000 in 2024 were recorded by the police (representing around 0.5%) and of these only 2.7% of this 0.5% will lead to the police brining chargers. If you are raped or sexually assaulted you have around a 0.01% chance of charges actually be brought.
In contrast to the alarming statics above we can say that almost all of these crimes are committed by a victims partner/ ex partner or most probably someone they know.
38% of people or 5.3m will simply not come forward due to believing the police won’t do anything. Frankly, given the above, they seem to be right.
If you’re not willing to engage with the police’s responsibility in so much of the above then you are part of the problem.
Yes, I worked for the police for a decade. I probably know a lot more than you.
Let me give a summary of one incident I was involved in:
Call from hotel, woman stated she had been raped by male friend
Arrive at hotel - woman is now attacking reception staff
Man comes out, apologises and states they have taken drugs and she's 'gone mad'
Woman now being restrained
Both man and woman arrested.
Eventual NFA on rape allegation due to complete lack of evidence and refusal of woman to engage with police.
That's one of your 'police failures'.
Then you have the vast majority of women who will refuse to support DA prosecutions.
I fully understand why this happens, and the power dynamics at play, but that's a societal problem and not one the police can solve unilaterally. But the poor stats land at our feet.
And we tried - DA cars, linking with local DA agencies and ensuring better contact with complainants... But it's like trying to hold back the tide.
So yes, you are right to point out the fact VAWG is awful, but the statistical measures around performance are only half the picture.
I was also involved with a lot of the historical allegations work that exploded in the mid 2010s. Do you have any idea how hard it is to prove someone tapped someone's bum in the lift at work 25 years ago?!
Of course, many of the incidents reported were far worse than that, but there is literally zero evidence in many cases, certainly nothing that will get past CPS. So that's a gazillion more NFAs and, as a result, more terrible stats.
I have also been directly involved in setting up services for rape victims, including forensic testing for kids - so please piss off with your high and mighty Internet swagger.
So the focus on these types of crimes that have no outcome is why other crimes go unsolved like robbery and shoplifting?
Partly, crimes get assessed for deployment based on threat of harm. So VAWG related crimes are far more likely to get a deployment, especially if resources are thin. But your outcome rates for these are terrible. Meanwhile, the crimes you don't attend immediately suffer from evidence degradation, so then follow-ups for these also produce poorer results.
So, sort of, yes.
Police definitely aren't perfect, but a lot of people don't understand the system, nor the nature of volume crime today.
If you're on neighbourhoods, you'll often spend your whole shift dealing with domestic abuse allegations (often the same couples over and over) and mental health problems (because the NHS has completely failed). There's been some pushback on mental health recently, with the police withdrawing somewhat, but the reality is it still takes up huge amounts of time.
This has been the issue for ages. Underfunding means more demand than supply. For years the police have not investigated at random, such as even house number burglaries because you don't have the time to assess each case if it's worth pursuing. You then end up with victim detectives tracking down their own goods via social media, marketplaces etc. We aren't there yet but I can imagine vigilant groups forming one day. None of it stems from the police,it's a failure of society.
I definitely see the issue with the police becoming a catch all for mental health, much like the army are dragged into fire fighter strikes as the last resort.
I appreciate that the force must be something you’re passionate about but you have to give weight to the statistics and accept they are nothing but damning.
A fallacy is a position which does not serve to progress a conversation.
A bit like those who suggest Wayne Couzens is a reflection of the force. One isolated incident does not offer value on a macro level. Perhaps the case is of interest on a micro level but certainly it’d be wrong to suggest all PCs must be like Couzens.
Like the above, your one incident (even if you vouch this is a common scenario) does not progress this discussion on the topic.
With such damning statistics there is little more than to settle on the police being grossly at fault.
A long time ago a Partner of a law firm who was training me taught me an important lesson. Perhaps it will help you also digest these statistics. ‘Just because something is not your fault does not mean it is not your responsibility’. To add to this, the buck starts, runs and stops solely with the police; not because it’s their fault but because it is their responsibility.
I think you're misunderstanding the point I'm making. I'm not trying to absolve the police of all responsibility, but you have to dig a little more into why the stats are as they are.
CPS Delays - if cases take too long, victims will often pull out. The police don't control the courts.
Complete lack of evidence - for most all historical cases, there's simply no evidence. Unless we have multiple people all alleging the same thing, it's very hard to get anything past the CPS.
Even with huge investment in support, complainants still regularly drop support. In my force we massively increased availability of pre-trial support, access to local support services and changed numerous internal deployment processes to give us the best chance to getting them onside. Millions spent, but didn't make a dent.
We see huge numbers of SA cases from more vulnerable groups - such as those with wider mental health complaints. The NHS has basically dropped support for these people.
We literally brought in local DA and SA organisation and plonked them on our internal safeguarding boards etc. They even joint -chaired one. Yet even they couldn't shift the stats meaningfully.
I'll be honest, they do a tough job, but once they realised they also couldn't fix things, they did somewhat run away to avoid the spotlight of blame and return to shouting from the sidelines.
Again, policing isn't perfect - you get crap officers, sometimes victim support is poor and historically VAWG wasn't properly understood (I don't think that's the case now). But ultimately the police really get involved in situations normally once every other agency and wider society has failed. It's the final safety net and increasingly people are expecting that net to do the jobs of everyone else.
17 million men and women in the UK will suffer rape and sexual abuse in 2024? I think you may have pulled that out of your hat. The closest statistic that matches that is from the US that says 17 million men and women have suffered rape and sexual abuse since 1998. And DA and sexual abuse is taken very very seriously in UK police forces now, the outcomes at court are not the metric to measure the time, effort and care that are put into those investigations.
https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/
1 in 4 women + 1 in 6 men ≈ 17 million.
The statistics I am referring to relate to the police involvement in bringing charges. The courts can’t be used as a scapegoat here.
There won't be an update. It's fake
Their most recent post on that was something like; ‘family have just told me something’s going down at the house, gotta go’
Been deleted, the whole thing overall screams fake.
I was the guy squatting in there. I left today after the real owner paid me 4000
Used to be a builder yeeeeeaaaaaars ago. Had this happen a couple of times where we turned up to renovate a place after a tenancy and there would be a family or couple in there with a hand written note saying they are paying rent.
You have to be robust around getting them out, no debate, no phone calls to anyone just start grabbing their stuff and putting outside. Any complaint is met with an eardrum splitting “get the fuck out now”
In the real world if people broke into a house the Police would arrest them for burglary. I don't think the story makes a lot of sense.
Looks like what is happening in Spain: I've read is plenty of gangs occupying the houses there, and nobody does anythign about it. It blows my mind.
I would like an update too. How can these people move in right away, how could they have known they were on holiday. There chances are very very slim. Also if anyone does this to your property, kick them out, dont get the law involved. They won't have your back. It's a civil matter and you can bet the illegal occupiers won't take you to court although won't stop cops scaring you.
Oh no here comes more legislation because some people lose their moral compass and have to have legislation rammed down their throat. Sad times
England has squatters' rights, unlike Scotland. I was talking with a B&B owner who had a 2nd property she'd not had access to in years due to it having been broken into and taken over in the couple of weeks she'd been away for.
There's no Such thing as squatters rights in England and while not inherently illegal to do so in commercial property since 2012 it3been a specific offence to do so in residential property.