A FURIOUS Solihull resident says he is putting in a formal complaint over the way he was treated by West Midlands Police after having his car stolen at knifepoint.
Jonathan Fisher hit out after it took 32 hours for a police officer to come and take a statement from him after thieves broke into his house in the small hours of Wednesday morning, September 8.
Crawling through a small living room window one of the thieves got into the kitchen, armed himself with a knife from a drawer and took the keys to Mr Fisher’s brand new Audi A3 company car, before escaping out the front door.
“My wife woke me at about 2am and said ‘that’s the front door’,” said Mr Fisher, a sales manager of Frankton Close, Solihull.
“I looked out the window and saw these guys outside, so I legged it down the stairs and ran outside.
“This one says ‘get back in the effing house’ and pulls the knife out on me.
“We’ve got two young children, my wife was begging me to get back inside, and they jumped in the car and left.
“We rang 999 and although someone came out from forensics on the Wednesday an officer didn’t come out until 32 hours later to take a statement.”
He added that he’d been told the thieves had tried a house in nearby Old Lode Lane where CCTV footage was recorded of the gang.
“If they’d responded to that call they could have come from the other side of Birmingham to prevent what happened to me and my family. My wife is terrified.
“I’m not blaming the individual officers, but it seems the police just don’t have the resources to cover Solihull properly anymore.”
However a police spokeswoman said they were actively pursuing the case and when the crime was initially reported to them it was described as a burglary, with no mention of a knife.
“We have done quite a lot of work on this since we found out the exact circumstances of the incident, and are continuing to do so,” she said.
“Forensics have been out and we have done house to house enquiries and CCTV enquiries.
“Traffic officers were also alerted on the night of the incident so they could be on the look out for the car.”
Anyone who can help the police with their enquiries should visit: https://west-midlands.police.uk/contact-us or call 101 quoting log number: 290-080921.
