Inside the houses of an ordinary north London street my neighbours were watching television, eating dinner.
Except this time was different. Our second-hand car was parked a few doors away from the house with the kind of casual confidence that comes from believing that even in London no one would want to vandalise a car that cost less than £1,000 two years ago. But there was glass on the pavement. One of the back windows was smashed and musical equipment, covered with a blanket but foolishly left on the back seat, was gone. No one had seen anything. No one had heard anything.
After cleaning the debris from the street, the next step was to call the police. But recalling the message contained in a Metropolitan Police leaflet asking people not to put extra strain on police resources "unless a crime is happening now", we called the local police number. There must have been a lot to deal with that night because there was a long telephone queue to get through to the police control room. A civilian police worker was as helpful as possible. But with an air of resignation explained that such were the demands of bureaucracy on police time it would be up to 48 hours before officers could take a statement.
As an illustration of random car crime, the theft of musical equipment is annoying but nothing more. But the extent to which bureaucracy hampers police officers in fighting crime provides an insight into the problem of tackling red tape faced by the Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett.
At the annual Police Federation conference in Bournemouth this week, rank-and-file officers from across Britain again angrily denounced the Home Secretary over his plans for major structural reform of the police.
Although Mr Blunkett secured agreement with officers for the £200-million reform package - which saw the Home Office back down on cutting individual overtime rates - the Home Secretary faced stiff opposition from police over high levels of bureaucracy and plans to introduce civilian police units.
Last year the Home Office published research which revealed that of 43 per cent of an officer's day spent inside the station, 41 per cent of that time was spent processing paperwork. Just 17 per cent of their time was spent on patrolling the local community. In one police force, officers were asked to fill out 105 different forms for different types of arrests and official procedures.
However, a Home office initiative to cut paperwork and improve accountability in relation to stop-and-search laws, whereby officers would fill out a form for every arrest and record ethnicity, was also heavily criticised by officers as just more red tape. And more recently, the Conservatives - who had their own difficult relationship with the police in the 1980s - joined officers in criticising plans for civilian patrols, insisting they would simply be "policing on the cheap".
Mr Blunkett had to tread carefully when he addressed the Police Federation conference yesterday. The chairman of the organisation, Mr Fred Broughton, had won the overwhelming backing of delegates when he drew a comparison between the perceived "denigration" of police work by Mr Blunkett and the police-friendly record of the former New York mayor, Mr Rudolph Guiliani.
"Mr Blunkett, who finds a new windmill to tilt at every day, is no Guiliani, he is more of a Don Quixote," said Mr Broughton. And he warned Mr Blunkett that "never again" should negotiations between the police and the Home Office become dominated by Labour's wish to keep "a few tabloid editors sweet".
Conciliatory and apologetic for past mistakes but still determined that Labour's strategy of public sector funding increases should be accompanied by reform, Mr Blunkett avoided the jeers that followed his predecessor's speech last year. Humble pie may have saved Mr Blunkett's reputation in the short-term, but has he done enough to mend his damaged reputation with the police?