Do I have to respond to a police questionnaire?

They’ve included an SAE, which is nice but do I have to respond to the police questionnaire?

POLICE QUESTIONNAIRE
David Frost
No and in this case I suggest you do not. Although the covering letter says you only need to give the first half of your postcode the form has space for all of it.

If you put in the full postcode you can be personally identified, which may not be what you want.

More importantly the questionnaire is biased towards encouraging you to say the standard is ‘good’ or better.

That’s because the next level down is ‘fair’ which most of us would regard as slightly less than satisfactory – ‘of moderate quality’ says my dictionary.

In effect if you think you’ve had satisfactory service you are obliged to say it was either good or slightly less than satisfactory.

Life being what it is you’re more likely to say it is good when it wasn’t rather than damn them with faint praise.

The results of the survey will be biased so there’s not much point in participating.