Slightly mugged

[fanf]

On Thursday evenings I go to the pub for a few beers with friends. The route I walk from work goes across Jesus Green from Lower Park St to Carlyle Rd. This evening it was darker than usual, because of cloud cover and the lamp on the path being broken. There's usually a few people walking across the park but this evening it was quiet.

As I was approaching the Jesus Lock end at about 20:30, I saw three youths cutting across from the right-hand avenue onto then path. They walked towards me widely spread abreast, so that two of them were on the grass and I had plenty of space to pass between them. As I did so, one of them pushed me over onto the grass. I said "cunt!" or something like that, and he started to have a bit of a go with feet and fists saying "giz ya phone". He wasn't hitting hard, so I told him it was worthless to him. I tried briefly to get up and fight back but this made them hid harder (one or two of the others joined in) and I found that curling up on the ground and protecting my head didn't excite them. Soon they lost their bottle and ran off towards Park St.

They didn't get my phone, or the £60 in my wallet, and only bruised me slightly. Sore cheek and forearm, and back is fine despite taking most of the blows. I was more annoyed by them than scared - it seemed that Dickhead #1 was just showing off, and not really intent on theft or injury.

What a bore. I was going to have to call the police to report the crime, but I wasn't hurt and hadn't lost anything, but it was just enough to utterly disrupt my evening. Chiz.

At this point I should have dialled 999 on the phone that the chavs were too crap to steal properly. However I wasn't hurt and I did not see enough of them to be able to identify them (dark clothes, dark night), so I called Rachel to get the Police non-emergency number. I didn't get through to anyone until about 10 minutes after the mugging, at which point I find out that the Police wanted to take it much more seriously, and if I had called 999 they might have been able to see something useful with their CCTV cameras. Silly me.

I walk home to reassure Rachel that I am fine, and soon a couple of coppers come to take a verbal statement and give me an incident number. They classified it as assaulted by common people common assault (but not attempted robbery, since they were just being dickheads).

After that I made myself some dinner and Rachel and I settled down to watch yesterday's episode of Heroes. But Charles managed to have a suck on the DVR buttons (which we usually try to prevent) and they didn't work. Faugh, I say! Faugh and thrice faugh!

Time to find another beer and see if half an hour in the airing cupboard has fixed the buttons.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

Ow!

I did notice your absence from the Carlton, though I thought no more of it since you're often not there.

I'm glad you're relatively unscathed. Yes, calling 999 if a violent crime has just that moment happened is a good idea. A handy tip, incidentally, is that if you dial 999 then repeatedly tap the handset's screen with a fingernail they'll connect the call to the police; I believe the police can then locate your phone to within a hundred metres or so. That could be worth doing even while trouble is ongoing.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Ah, does this require a touch screen? Or require not having a touch screen? Because I'd imagine they behave very differently.

[gerald_duck]

I believe the requirement is simply to make a noise they can tell is human and deliberate, meaning "I genuinely intended to dial 999, but can't talk".

So it works with a non-touch screen. Presumably, with a touch screen one would have to avoid tapping any active areas, which could be interesting.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Pressing one of the number keys in a morse SOS would presumably work then. Or tapping the base of the case instead.

[saraphale.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I'd assume that if you dialed 999 and did nothing they would send officers to investigate anyway. Perhaps the regular noise is meant to indicate that it's not an accidental dialling.

[gerald_duck]

Many years ago, it was decided that mobile phones must always be able to make emergency calls. This has two good effects and one disastrously insane. On the plus side, a mobile phone can make an emergency call even when barred, out of credit, lacking a SIM card, etc. it can also make an emergency call using any network if you're out of coverage for your own provider. On the negative side, you can make an emergency call when keylock is engaged. (Try it: lock your phone and hit '999'. Regardless of make or model, you'll see the digits come up, just begging for you to hit the green button.) Since it's quite easy for 9 9 9 green or 1 1 2 green (which also works) to get pressed in one's pocket this means the overwhelming majority of emergency calls from mobile phones are false alarms.

I've personally made at least half a dozen accidental 999 calls from my mobile in the past decade, which marginally outnumbers my intentional calls.

So if you dial 999 but don't say anything, they assume it's an accidental call unless they can hear something that alarms them. To make sure, they ask you to tap the screen repeatedly if you're really there but unable to talk. If you happen to know this fact, you can do it even when also unable to listen.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I have dialled 999 twice. Well, no, one of those times my phone dialled 999. I was distinctly embarassed when I discovered it, but I didn't do so due to the police turning up.

(And that reminds me - I think a friend's small child has learnt to press the buttons on his mobile. I'm often first in an address book.)