Tuesday, February 5, 2008
This baffles me
According to a report in the London Telegraph, UK police have lost over £700,000 (more than $1.4 million) in equipment over recent months.
The losses include "27 motor vehicles, 50 computers, 104 radio handsets, 149 satellite navigation systems and 189 mobile phones. Other missing items include 109 batons, 187 pairs of handcuffs, 113 torches and 141 police caps and helmets."
You know, the US invaded Iraq with not much more electronic equipment than that!
There are other, more interesting items missing: for example, "two metal replicas of police officers worth £200 each, lost by Durham Constabulary, a £95, 9ft cardboard replica taken from Suffolk Constabulary and a £20 clothing mannequin belonging to Essex Police."
Metal replicas of police officers? A nine-foot-tall cardboard replica? (Of what - a nine-foot-tall policeman?) Clothing mannequins? Just what are we dealing with here - a law enforcement body or a shop decorators supply house?
Most baffling of all to me is the theft of three police dogs.
Police dogs???
Y'know, around these parts police dogs are large hairy creatures with teeth and an attitude. (Some might say that description applies to their handlers as well!) Any thief trying to steal one would cause said police dog to go down on its haunches and thank Dog Above for providing free meat on the hoof . . . just before the mayhem commenced.
How on earth do you steal an animal like that? Or are English police dogs becoming politically correct and no longer taking hunks out of those who get too close to them?
The mind boggles . . .
Peter
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5 comments:
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that maybe some paperwork creativity got a few lost items reclassified as stolen :)
I know if I lost a dog that I had been trained to handle (not to mention a dog that probably cost more to train than I did) I wouldn't be too eager to admit so in writing.
I expect the cardboard/metal replicas were used as bogus traffic cops to scare speeding drivers.
Combining your first two items today suggests the Perfect Crime:
You get pulled over for doing 65 in a 30 mph zone. The Officer strolls up to your window, prepared to write you a summons for something approximating the Bolivian national budget. You roll down the window and show him your Pecker Checker, the blood drains from his face (because a dozen of them 'disappeared' from the stationhouse), and instead he wishes you Godspeed and sends you on your way.....
I'd use the word "inconceivable" but I don't think it means what I think it means anymmore.
Did they lose any firearms?
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