Polish people in UK not reporting crime.

Quite concerning to me is this article regarding the amount of crime that goes unreported by Polish people (particularly in Crewe where the article is centered). Some of the crime not reported is serious and is not reported partly because of a lack of trust so what can be done to create some "trust" between Polish people and UK police (particularly as a large amount of UK citizens don't have faith in the police as it is)?

How can the other factors be overcome?


news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7220337.stm

I feel sure that there is a lot of crime not reported by british people either.

If I don't report a crime in Poland... Why should I do it in the UK ?

Yeah. Slogans like 'CHWDP' are characteristic for distrust in the police in Poland.

You'll be right but not the issue here.


That would be a personal choice. Although, I feel sure if you were beaten up you'd probably want to report it.

The point is not about being able to choose to report a crime but feeling unable to. Whether it be a reason like not feeling confident enough with the language or a bigger reason like distrust. According to the article the police here understand the issue of distrust and why Polish people don't report certain crimes, but they are trying to work round that. I don't know how they can work round it.

Obviously there are people who just don't report any crime for various reasons but the concentration here is on the issue of people who do want to report it, but can't. It's a worry, I feel.

The reason why polish people do not report crime, is that they can't speak the language, we are p*ssed off with the governemt figures that detail the amount of money that we forked out on the amount spent on interpruters.

Not only this, the norm in our local paper, is polish folk being caught for drink driving, the most shameful crime!! we then fork out to process them through the legal system!!

Now, polish folk are the first to bang on about 'certain standard' grammer & punctuation seem to be important, but really in the the real world, is it not how you spell but how you accept and intregrate into the local community.

Correct! You were paying attention.


The Buchan Observer? There are 2,000,000 other threads for discussing those subjects, not this one.

poles aren't a bunch of snitches. ;)

I love Police logic,they recon one of the reasons is a hang on from the old Communist days and distrust of the Police back then in Poland,so whats the answer? Lose the ir uniforms....great,Secret Police,much less reminisent of communism Im sure....

Next thing you know they make daily stops at your house and take your bread...

Point taken.

Exactly, the police find a cause and then think they've found a solution (no wonder it doesn't work). Is a solution to try and recruit more Polish people into the actual police force? Rather than put them in a situation where they feel like informants.

One of the main problems is that it is well known that police detection rates of small crime is very low indeed. perhaps it might be different in cases of murder and other serious crimes because they put all their resources in to detection? Maybe the Polish are suspicious of the police and their corruption? Eastern European police forces were very corrupt indeed. Also, another thing is that a lot of these so called Poles are Russians and other ex Russian satellite state with false passports. There is a strong possibility that these so called victims of crime fear detection themselves should they approach the police.

I doubt that this is true of more than a small percentage.

Maybe some of the people who have suffered from crime are in the country illegally, or are scared of being deported, and so they do not want to go to the police.

how can you be illegal in UK, if you're Polish?

thats a good question

djf has a good point here, there are many people who are not officially registered and this creates problems. Criminals can capitalise on this. The police, almost in any country, aren't the most approachable people anyway

You could be working here illegally and it may be something the police check if you report a crime.

from my observation you cannot even integrate into the "virtual" community of PF, so how can you expect Polish people to intergate in Britain which contains many more challanges, such as language, culture, law etc;)

who cares if crimes are committed against poles.

I would hope a criminal, no matter who the victim is, should be caught and unpunished. If someone can commit a crime against a Pole then they can do the same to anyone else be they a Brit or however.

Yes, but who is really Polish? There are lots of people entering Poland from the former Soviet Union who are buying Polish passports. Then, these 'new' people are entering the E.U. and the job markets.

Well, with such mediocre ''lawyers'' there's small wonder that this country is going to dogs. Law is law and should be obeyed. You represent views characteristic for medieval centuries - often there were different laws for 'locals' and quite different for 'strangers'. Since Poles pay taxes, they should be protected too. And what if a crime would be committed against you and the only witness would be someone Polish ? I bet you would 'forget' about your whole polonophobia then.

In theory at least, the law is supposed to protect everybody equally, foreign or not. In fact, even if you are attacked in this country and you are illegally here, you have the same right to protection as a British citizen.

Don't waste your time on him, brother. It's a well known thing that noimmigration is a nationalistic, racist, mentally handicapped fan of Hitler and his Übermensch doctrine.

Yeah, I don't think there's any point in arguing with him. He'll sure be a skinhead's advocate in the future.