I can ' t say I blame him , for not wanting to report it . He ' d have to waste precious time in doing so , probably for no tangible personal gain except , maybe , the cost of his dentistry recovered . My own experience of attempting to report petty assaults has always been one of apathy and disinterest from those on desk duty . This has been consistent in several constabularies . When I was younger , they usually implied I had somehow precipitated a response through some behaviour of my own , or else that I needed to man up . As I got older , they began to nitpick the detail I presented , or occasionally were blunt and said that they lacked resource to pursue matters . On the last occasion , a civilian receptionist told me the incident hadn ' t happened , presumably having somehow visually determined through her extensive operational training that I was delusional .