The Thin Blue Line......

Reverting to the eternal debate on the effectiveness of policing in the UK which has reached a crescendo as a result of ‘the riots’ (and the reports that left me highly tickled that nobody except Sir Hugh Orde wants the top job at the Met but nobody wants Hugh Orde), there is a weekly TV show called ‘Police Interceptors’, the cream of the Essex Constabulary who are equipped with super-fast rally cars full of amazing electronics that can tell what you had for breakfast. Their task is to apprehend hard-case villains who also have fast motors.

So how are they doing?

Often they use several cars and a helicopter to catch criminals who have committed a string of serious offences – robbery with violence, burglary, car theft, etc. And what happens afterwards when the cases come to court? Why, community service orders, suspended 3-month prison sentences and the rest. Never any porridge.

This week they gave chase, in two cars, of a driver who was very dangerous, weaving from lane to lane on the motorway, exceeding 100 m.p.h in crowded traffic – the full monty. They eventually trapped him in the fast lane, about as dangerous as it gets. The driver was extremely violent and it took 4 cops to subdue him and handcuff him to the Armco barrier. On searching the car they found a large quantity of class A drugs. So quite a charge sheet there, you would think – dangerous driving, refusing to stop, resisting arrest, possession of illegal substances, for starters.

And what happened when they got him down the nick? Why, he got a police caution!

Other highlights included using a police helicopter at about £1000 an hour to chase a couple of youths joy-riding in a VW which they had ‘taken and driven away’, and an emergency call-out to a leaking tap in a flat (normally the role of a plumber who at least wouldn’t have smashed the door down with a police battering-ram) and to round-off an eventful night the Sergeant dropped his handcuffs down a drain.

How different in the old days. I keep a collection of press cuttings from long ago that amused me. Here is a sample.

‘Detective Sergeant Farr said ‘It is highly probable that my closed fists might have come into contact with his face’, but he denied deliberately punching Mr Rose’. 

‘PC Alcock denied using any violence. He said he could explain the fact that polish found on the zip of the accused’s trousers was identical to that on his shoe’.

‘A police officer kicked a man so hard that the sole of his boot came off, it was claimed in Leeds County Court. The man was accused of criminal damage to a police boot’.

Evenin’, all!