Police. Most of the time we prefer they weren't there. But, of course, in an emergency they're always a welcome sight. However, in some parts of the world they're the last people you call.

The police arrived in a heartbeat the first time my former Sydney neighbour was assaulted.

Impressed by the quick reflexes of the long arm of the law, when the same neighbour was assaulted a second time I was so confident the police would swoop equally quickly that for a moment I considered assailing the assailant and detaining him until they arrived.

But I am not as strong as my sense of justice and opted to comfort the victim rather than confront the offender. And just as well because, this time around, it took the boys in blue half an hour to respond. I am confident I would have lost by then.

The only witness, I was driven to the police station (in an unmarked car, so no playing with the siren) and asked to browse some mug shots with an officer. Dozens of men. A handful of women. Sombre faces. Vacant eyes. All of them had given someone a sad story to tell. I’m sure many of them had a sad story themselves. None of them resembled the attacker.

But I did recognise one of the men in the pictorial line up – a lovely bloke with whom I chatted in the park every afternoon while walking my dog.

"What did he do?" I asked the officer, indicating my acquaintance.

"I’m afraid I can’t tell you that," he replied.

To this day I wonder what unlovely thing that lovely man had done.

I recount this personal tale of contact with the police because we all have our own stories and we all have a different view of whether or not the police do a good job. Rather unusually, I would answer both yes and no for almost identical crimes, at least in terms of response time.

I was reminded of the above incident last week over coffee with small business expert and occasional The Cairns Post contributor Andrew Griffiths. During the course of our conversation he received a phone call on his new mobile phone which had been paid for – very promptly, I have to say – by his insurance company.

It was the police calling, for the third time that morning, though he forgave them their over-efficiency. Perhaps they simply were excited, given they were calling to report that they had recovered all the items stolen from Andrew’s house three weeks earlier.

I don’t know if those items were part of the $60,000 stash of stolen goods discovered the previous day at a Machans Beach property, I just know I was very impressed that Cairns police had followed up on the theft and solved the crime.

Andrew was also impressed, though he was left wondering if that meant he had to hand back his brand new phone.

The interesting thing about the crime was what it said about the changing nature of the average home invader’s quarry.

Indeed when Andrew returned home and saw his $2000 Canon camera sitting chunkily on his table, he didn’t realise he’d been burgled.

It was only when he reached for his fruit bowl of Apple products – iPhone, iPad and iPod – that alarm bells began to ring, though it was a bit late for alarm bells.

"The police said it was most likely kids because they didn’t steal my high end digital camera," said Andrew. "Kids think an iPhone is a camera. And they stole a six pack of beer rather than an expensive bottle of red."

After three weeks without his iLife, Andrew was left wondering if he actually needed all the gadgets we apparently can’t do without – iThink therefore iAm.

I told him iManage without them just fine. Then my wife called me on my BlackBerry.

After my meeting with Andrew, I asked a few locals about their impression of the police in Cairns and all responded favourably, suggesting our boys (and girls!) in blue do a difficult job as well as possible. None were overly surprised that the stolen goods had been recovered.

Perhaps I had simply spent too long in Italy, where, in certain circumstances, being the victim of crime is considered less traumatic than assisting the police in trying to solve it.

On one occasion a friend’s Alfa was stolen while we were visiting a UNESCO World Heritage site called Alberobello in the south of Italy.

"Shouldn’t we call the police?" I suggested.

"Please don’t," he replied. "It’s been a bad day. Why make it worse?"

Italy has four police forces, the most ridiculed of which is the paramilitary unit known as Carabinieri. Replacing Paddy as the butt of dumb jokes otherwise word-for-word, officers in this clumsy constabulary are infamous for putting ejection seats in helicopters, for burning their ears if the phone rings while ironing, and for manning the exits of banks while thieves slip out the entrance.

But I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

That doubt evaporated when my wife’s handbag was stolen at a restaurant only to be returned to our doorstep the following morning with just the cash from her purse gone astray.

Because the credit cards had been out of our possession for a number of hours, however, we were advised to report the temporary theft to police so that if any money had been spent on the cards while they were out of our hands we would be reimbursed on the bank’s insurance, if not quite as quickly as Andrew’s iPhone had been replaced.

The carabinere (officer) sat behind his old Olivetti typewriter and tapped away at the form for stolen items.

"So what time did the theft occur?" he enquired.

"Ten thirty," my wife replied.

The officer’s face turned as red as the stripes down his trousers.

"I’m... err... sorry but the number three key isn’t working," he informed us. "Could we make that ten forty?"

After my conversation with Andrew, I think I would rather have something stolen in Cairns than in Italy, whatever time that theft
occurs.

In Cairns they steal your iPhone. In Italy they steal your sanity.

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