Where's the police when you need them eh?

Had a nice afternoon at a friend’s house, ate cake, drank tea, and then drove home. Somewhere I had to stop behind a parked car to let some oncoming cars pass and when I stopped I heard BUMP! and felt the car shaking a little. A guy on a moped hadn’t stopped in time and had hit the rear bumper of my car. He stopped, so I got out of the car, checked the damage done and walked towards him. “Sorry”, he said. “Hmm”, I said. He even took off his helmet. The bumper had lost a lot of its shiny black appearance and was all covered in scratches. “Can I see your moped license, so I can see who you are?”, I whispered (lost my voice last Monday and haven’t found it yet). And at that point the boy, he must have been about 16, either thought: “oh shit, I’m in big trouble, it’s going to cost me money”, or “fuck! I don’t have a license”. Either way, he took off. I quickly made a mental note of the number on the license plate of his moped and grabbed my iPod (I do love my new iPod), opened the dictaphone and whispered the number before I forgot. Couldn’t think of another way to make a quick note and fortunately it worked.

And then I got in my car and drove home. My legs were actually shaking. Gawd, I didn’t know I was the kind of person to get shaking legs from a minor incident like this. Perhaps it was pure anger because the boy took off. I don’t know.

At home hubs phoned our friendly insurance guy (I don’t have a voice remember, so I couldn’t phone him myself) and told him about the accident and gave him the license plate number. “You will have to lodge a complaint with the police”, he said.

Now, while hubs was phoning the friendly insurance guy, I was already on the internet to lodge that complaint. I had read that in many cases this was a possibility. So I searched for ‘police, lodge a complaint’ and arrived on a form to do so.

‘Where did the incident take place’, was the first question. That wasn’t a difficult one and I answered it correctly.

The internet police warned that I couldn’t lodge a complaint about everything via the internet and listed the options for which the police actually needed to be contacted by telephone. I checked the list and one of the options was: (you can’t lodge a complaint via the internet if) you know the identity of the offender. All the other options weren’t applicable in this case either, so I went on to fill in the list of questions.

‘Of what would you like to lodge a complaint?’, the police wanted to know and listed a couple of possibilities, one of them being: destruction or damage through a collision.
“Yep, that’s it”, I thought and chose that one.

‘What has been damaged?’, the internet police asked next and again gave a list of possibilities.
I chose ‘vehicle or vessel’.

‘Did anyone get hurt or was violence involved?’
I chose ‘no’.

‘Has the offender been seen or, if applicable, is the license plate known?’
’Yes’ seemed to be the obvious choice here.

In that case you can’t lodge a complaint via the internet flickering red letters told me. You have to contact the police through this phone number……..

Man! Why didn’t they mention that before?

So hubs took it upon himself to phone the police, since I feared they wouldn’t take a whispering, heavy breather (it takes a lot of energy to produce a voice and even though I’m screaming, only a whisper comes out) seriously.  And besides, I shouldn’t speak at all. Very bad for the vocal cords people keep telling me. *sigh*

After he answered the same questions I had already answered on the internet, completely in vain, and gave the license plate number of the stupid boy to the police person, she told him that we had to come to the police station to actually lodge the complaint. ‘I will make an appointment for you for Monday morning, 08.00 o’clock’, she said.

It is Thursday today. Thursday! What do you mean; Monday morning is the first opportunity to lodge a complaint! Is our local police force enjoying a long weekend off work? Even more worrying, apparently the local police station is always closed on Saturday and Sunday. Always!
Is there no crime in weekends? Do criminals only work from Monday to Friday, nine to five? Do stupid boys not drive their (or other people’s, I don’t know) mopeds into innocent cars in weekends?

But no, Monday morning, 08.00 o’clock they will make the time to put my complaint into their computer and I’m pretty sure they will not do anything else with it. But our insurance company will probably ask for evidence that I’ve been to the police, so…

Meanwhile, our friendly insurance guy already called us to say that they did track down the license plate number and it is a registered plate. So stupid guy will be found, I’m betting on the insurance company to be the first one to find him, and either stupid boy or his insurance company will pay for the damage. I hope.  But I’m definitely not betting on the police to do something useful. They will probably need some time to recover from their funfilled long weekend off work first.

Aaaaanyway, I’m just glad no one was harmed in this incident. And I’m glad that stupid boy stopped to say sorry, even though I’m really upset that he took off at great speed after that. I tried to grab his sweater, but  then again I’m glad I didn’t pull him off his moped. He probably would have hit his head on the curb and I would have been sued for inflicting injuries on an innocent stupid boy.

I feel slightly frustrated.