Interesting times
Well it’s been an interesting 24 hours.
At this time last night I was in a feverish sleep - with some well-weird dreams, too, although I’ve forgotten most of them by now.
I finally surfaced properly around noon, having excused myself during an earlier interlude of consciousness from photographic detail chez Tall Andy, to find a PM from one of the moderators on a forum I host. One of the (quieter) members had posted disturbing posts leading us to assume that he was about to do something very, very stupid. What to do?
So I ended up calling the local rozzers with as much information as I had - which wasn’t much (an email address, first name and approximate geographical location).
Half an hour later I was called back and told they couldn’t get the chap’s details from his ISP and the suggestion that I ring his local force.
Somewhat mystified as to why they couldn’t do this themselves I did so and went through the story again.
It took them an hour to call back to say they couldn’t get anything out of his ISP - apparently they have no out-of-hours staff to answer any enquiries from the police (seems odd to me). They assured me they’d follow it up on Monday but that - and wait for this … it’s a cracker - in the meantime they’ve sent the chap an email.
Oh well. That’s alright then.
On the one hand I can see that given that the most worrying posts were about 12 hours earlier, if anything stupid was to have been done then any element of urgency was long gone, but really!
The good news is that I’ve since worked out that the chap visited the website again yesterday morning at 9:24. The bad news is that he’s not been back since (according to the user table in the database, at least, and I’ve just checked again).
I have a bad feeling.
December 14th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Good for you for doing the right thing. I’ve also gotten that call this week from a forum I frequent - not that I posted anything about finishing myself off - but I was rather down in the dumps last week and they called to see how I was doing.
Police aren’t very resourceful are they?
December 15th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Blimey, I see what you mean - just had a look. I hope the outcome is good.
Andy
December 15th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
God. One hopes it comes to nothing. It’s always hard, the winter. Esp. with the holidays and whatnot, it can be so demanding, emotionally speaking. I hope it all goes well. Good on you to become involved, sometimes that is all one needs, a call, an e-mail.
Love, really.
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:40 am
How is the chap?? Is he okay? Good for you getting the rozzers (brilliant word!) involved. Everyone should be more community-spirited like this. What goes around comes around. You’ll see!
December 23rd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Well, he’s logging in again (or, at least, someone with access to his username and password) so I have to presume he’s ok.
The rozzers have, of course, not been back in touch. Given his web activity I’ve not pursued the matter.