A FOREST electrician who regularly makes trips to impoverished parts of Russia to help hospital projects is annoyed by police action following an attack on one of his vans.

"You find yourself saying, wait a minute – I'm the victim here, not the culprit," said Roger Davey after the van being used by one of his workers was attacked by a man wielding a sledge hammer.

The incident in Bream last November happened while Roger, of Fetter Hill, was on his way to the airport for a week in Russia followed by a week's well-earned holiday.

"The electrician was invited by the woman customer to pull into what we later understood to be a shared drive over which there was some dispute and found to his amazement someone was attacking the side of the van with a heavy hammer.

"There was quite a bit of damage and the police were called and the man was arrested and taken away.

"When I returned that I thought I had better follow the matter up and find when the culprit would come up in court and called the police for details. I was shocked when I received the reply that it had all been sorted."

When he queried this he found the man had simply been cautioned and when Roger asked about recompense for £400 damage to the van he was told he would have to follow this up through the county court.

Since Roger is no stranger to county court proceedings for recovering bad debts he realised it was a situation where no solicitor would represent him because of insignificant fees, and also that his employee and witnesses would have to attend the court hearing, meaning even more time and money.

On top of that a request to police for statements taken in the case had been refused and an application on November 22 2002 to the Crown Prosecution Service for statements on the matter had not been answered to date.

Since then Roger has talked to a police sergeant who agreed that if no criminal proceedings were taking place – a process which normally makes recompense part of its sentencing – the sensible thing to do would be to release the culprit on bail for 28 days and not prosecute so long as the victim was contacted and the damage paid for.

"He said what was needed was consistency over what action is taken by desk sergeants in cases like this. As things are at the moment the victim seems to be suffering most, as in the case of Raymond Ho which you recently reported," he said.

However there has been a happy ending. Knowing the attacker's address Roger wrote to the man and he has since paid up for the damage without quibble.

"But it could have been quite different. For one thing, nobody concerned has had any communication whatsoever from the police on the matter. If I had not followed it up I would be none the wiser," he said.