Taking the biscuit

A beat officer based at Kingston, south west London has been on restricted duties since last June for allegedly eating and distributing a colleague’s biscuits without permission. Such acts are, within the police canteen culture, approaching sacrilege. The initial alleged offence appears to have been aggravated when having munched one or more of the morsels in question, he chose to hand them out to fellow officers. That’s Rich Tea indeed! It is not clear why his colleagues have not been investigated for handling stolen goods. Perhaps he placed the biscuits directly in their mouths? A year seems a long time to investigate such a matter. Major crime teams have been rolled up more quickly, and the officer’s contributions to operational policing will have been seriously diminished. It doesn’t seem so long ago that Sir Ronnie Flanagan suggested that such apparently trivial cases should be handled with greater urgency, but the Metropolitan Police Service’s Directorate of Professional Standards seems to have been taking its time. A MPS spokesperson said: “The investigation has nearly concluded.” What might that mean? Time will tell. Eventually. Heading north, officers in Halifax, West Yorkshire have taken to padlocking large cartons of milk inside the station fridge to ensure that they are secure. They have, for reasons best known to themselves, chosen to place images of the secured containers on social media. Why the great and the good among you would choose to purloin biscuits and milk but continue to buy teabags and sugar is a mystery. Perhaps we need some profiling here? Meanwhile, an international drugs syndicate is alleged to have used drones to run counter-surveillance on officers in a failed bid to import 78 blocks of cocaine valued at £18 million into Oz. Australian Federal Police Commissioner John Beveridge has said that the operation demonstrated that drug cartels were becoming more sophisticated. I am not sure how sophisticated the drug syndicate in question is. Australia has a lot of underdeveloped coastline, smuggling some drugs on to the continent without getting spotted should not really have been too difficult. Perhaps they would have done better had they loaded the drugs onto the drones. Commissioner Beveridge has praised the efforts of his investigators for avoiding detection by the aerial surveillance. It is thought that umbrellas may have been involved, but he is understandably reluctant to give away the tricks of his trade. Finally, after last week’s drama, in which a child named ‘Bobby’ was born in a miraculously well-resourced station yard in London, three members of the West Midlands Police`s cannabis team were flagged down by a driver in Wolverhampton and required to help deliver a baby girl. This raises serious questions about the quality of their cover. Drugs teams are normally required to patrol in some elaborate form of disguise, ideally in an unmarked vehicle. One Mr Hall, dubiously described as the ‘cannabis disposal team manager’ for the force, said: “It was far from your typical call for help but it was definitely one of the most rewarding. I have been with the force for more than 30 years and never had to deliver a baby before. We receive medical training but nothing can ever prepare you for such a situation.” As with the birth of Bobby an ambulance eventually turned up, but it would seem that the police service is being had over this. We should refuse to deliver any babies, anywhere, until an ambulance crew has felt a few bank robbers’ collars. Yours, Stitch