I had a look at this story yesterday, and wondered what to make of it. The idea of a plod being dobbed in for failing to arrest a scrote in the act of thieving – and then being jailed – sounds so implausible that one feels there has to be more to it.

However, Raedwald thinks he might have an explanation. "When officers start shooting their men to encourage obedience, you know they're in desperate trouble", he writes ...

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This is peculiar. The Police don't investigate all kinds of things and don't arrest all manner of people when they could and should. Here is PC Selby probably preventing a crime by stopping the man without the need to arrest him. Isn't that the point of Peel-ian policing - that the absence of crime is more important than numbers of arrests? I guess Strathclyde Police feel differently and require rigid obedience from their constables.

It reads as if PC Selby wasn't prepared to defend her actions when challenged by her superiors and she won't have helped her case by changing her story.(assuming the background check, tools and suchlike are kosher pieces of evidence)

I wonder if Inspector G. has some insight?

All done on the word of junior plodette...
This stinks.

I think your conspiracy theory on these events way off the mark. Both of them should have been disciplined for neglect of duty and sacked but it was Scotland and their law is different to England's.

Of course it may not be the whole story as my understanding of Scottish law is it requires corroboration, two witnesses to convict someone?

Tricky.

This is a classic instance where you really need to have heard ALL the evidence, instead of just reading the newspaper story.

There really might not have been enough evidence at arrest. The arresting officer had to make a call about the chances of getting a conviction. Just fiddling with a screw on a shutter might not made a watertight case, even for 'going equipped'... In which case confiscating the tools might be a reasonable option.

On the other hand, the job of a policeman can be a noble one, if performed properly and with the best of motives. But our esteemed Doctor is quite correct to point out that, if led by avaricious morons, we should not be surprised to find the character of the police descending into incompetence, and thence into criminality. I suppose we should be thankful that the burglar was just relieved of his tools and sent on his way for free, rather than after a bribe... though of course we would never get to hear about those incidents...

And now there will be two less officers in the Strathclyde Police. I don't give much for the chances of PC Mechelle Maley, after grassing up a colleague. These 23-year-olds, thinking that the world operates according to a set of morals....


PS - off topic, but I think it needs a wider audience. Go to this Amazon Biro pen page and scroll down to the reviews...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crystal-Ballpoi ... 252&sr=8-8

I put this down to the "Common Purpose effect". The senior policemen go on lots of courses where they sit around talking about how to lead without doing any actual leading.


Excellent. My favourite to date was the David Hasselhoff reviews, but I think those pen ones beat that.

Ace!

LESSON: Don't read when your mouth is full of cornflakes.