Caught By The Fuzz

Caught a bit of Police Camera Action the other night. A scolding, pointy-lipped Alasdair Stewart tut-tutted his way through half an hour of footage of wispy-moustached baseball-capped delinquents and their gormless mates stealing high-powered something or others, careering down country lanes and bouncing off trees and cyclists, before spinning off at a roundabout or disappearing into a ditch.

The offenders are always collared by the constabulary and the long arm of the law is again promoted as an inescapable outcome of such misdemeanours. The message is that if you engage in such behaviour, it’s an inevitable conclusion that you’ll be apprehended, but they only show those that get caught. I wonder how many hours of VT researchers have to sit through before they have a programme’s worth.

However, the sentences are so light, and driving bans so often ignored that it’s probably the same individuals re-offending week-after-week. It’s almost as if the police have a vested interest in re-offending as they, in turn, are able to gather more footage to flog to the network in order to make them look as if they’re doing a smashing job. Hence the filth get their PR, the delinquents get to nick more cars, the public get entertained and Alistair Stewart gets a bit of pocket money for those slow weeks when he’s not reading the news. Everyone’s a winner!