A minor incident over the holidays has been needling me for the last couple of weeks, ever since my friend's mobile phone was stolen by pickpockets in Sliema and I heard the frustration in her voice at her inability to get anywhere with the police.

I am aware that petty thefts are hardly at the top of our stretched police force's list of priorities. As crimes go, this was the common or garden variety. There has been no violence, my friend was not hurt, her phone is replaceable and with time she will manage to regain hold of all the data she has lost - contact numbers, e-mail addresses, diary appointments, text messages with vital information, etc. - although, with that kind of information, identity theft remains a real and present danger.

And yet anyone who has lost a possession or been robbed at any point in one's life can understand how bereft one can feel at the loss or disappearance of a cherished or invaluable item. One can also appreciate that it is hard enough being the victim of theft, even petty theft, without going to the police station to file a report in the hope that something can be done to regain what one has lost, only to find a cynical policeman who can hardly be inveigled into writing down a detailed crime report, let alone follow it up and investigate.

When my friend, whom I shall call Marion, realised her phone had gone missing, she called her phone service provider to try and locate it through their global positioning system. They did not have one. But the staff at the phone company could provide her with the numbers last dialled from her phone and she learnt that the thieves had made between five and seven calls to the same foreign number.

Armed with this information, Marion went to the Sliema police station to report her phone stolen and to offer the police information she believed might help them track down the thieves. At the police station, no one was really interested in the crime itself, let alone in her as a victim of crime. She was immediately told she could forget her phone. The policeman jotted down a few notes on a piece of paper and when she asked him if he was going to take down the foreign telephone number called by the thieves, his laconic response was: "If you want me to take it down, I will".

The general attitude was hardly proactive. Time and time again, she was asked: "But what do you want us to do?" as if it were the job of a victim of crime to come up with a strategy for an investigation. When she suggested that they could call the number the thieves had called, their main excuse was that they could not call overseas from the police station telephone. But even had they been able to, none of the policemen on duty at the Sliema police station on December 23 could work out how they could track down the thieves in Malta by trying to identify the owner of the foreign number.

In the meantime, other shoppers were arriving at the police station to report other thefts. A Bulgarian mother and daughter pleaded with the police officers to take a look at the tape of the surveillance system installed at the shop where their money was stolen. The policemen on duty found this debatable.

Marion exchanged stories with the Bulgarian mother and daughter, who recognised the number last dialled from Marion's phone as a Bulgarian number. The girl called the number and spoke to someone she was convinced was a gypsy but the woman on the other side of the line denied she had received any calls. The two girls had already managed to get further than a career policeman. Buoyed by their success, they went back inside the police station to try and convince the police on duty to do something but December 23 was not a lucky day for either Marion or her new Bulgarian friend.

A few days later, Marion returned to the police station to follow up the report but was told she would have to speak to the same policeman on duty on the day she filed her original report, which leads me to suspect that the crime report was not even typed up because, if it had, any of the officers on duty would have been able to call it up on a computer.

But this is beside the point. Marion could very well be wrong and the policemen right. Maybe the Bulgarian phone number would not have led the police anywhere. Certainly my friend appreciates that her phone is now gone for ever. But, at the very least, the police could have shown more interest and some kindness, while explaining more fully how a police investigation works, the limitations with which the police force in Malta has to operate, while promising to do their best and mean it.

Is it too much to ask that policemen unlearn the dismissive tone and the patronising attitude which seem to come as part and parcel of their training and start to understand the basic elements of human courtesy? Is it possible that the only way they feel capable of dealing with people is by dehumanising them and reducing them to a reference number?