Dixon of Dock Green

Police Action Five

Since I’ve been given a free view box, I’ve been watching some of the police action videos - when I’m eating my beans on toast.  Naturally, when I’m not eating my beans or anything else for that matter, I don’t watch nothing [sic], why, because the telly is so unspeakably bad.  This is all because of Nuts TV going off air, sorry, only joking.  Back to the police actions stuff and all that malarkey.  The malarkey is that these police videos are in truth, really very funny. 

When Clint Eastwood made the Dirty Harry films, these and others too contained themes that were ‘suggested’ by the FBI.  No honestly, this is really true, they saw the scripts and ‘suggested’ that crime mustn’t be seen to pay.  I don’t know how far the FBI actually wrote great chunks of the script but there you are.  One thing you can say about the Dirty Harry films is that Sergeant Gallagher (is that right) doesn’t have to take on children and/or criminals who are utter incompetents.  Moreover, Gallagher didn’t have to key work suspects either.

One of the most amusing aspects is night club chuck out in some ghastly provincial town centre which is as dead as um, night.  Take away the revelers and these places would be ghost towns devoid of any life form at all.  With the cameras running, the police go chitty-chatty with the clubbers who are usually bashing the brains out of each other.   Rather than act like proper policemen and grab the perpetrators, they um, key work them.  After key working Gary or whoever, Gary naturally takes objection to then being arrested, followed by the inevitable struggle. I can’t believe that local commanders would sanction such totally useless policing, I mean, the sheer cost of key working somebody like this must cost thousands and then you’ve got Gary’s friend Wayne.  Usually, Wayne interrupts Gary’s key working session and then is key worked himself.  Eventually, after completing a risk assessment, Wayne gets arrested while trying to stop Gary being hauled off to a police van.  It’s all very silly. This is REALLY what happens when the cameras aren’t there.  The police hide until territorial support turns up and then wade in and arrest as many people as possible.  I saw this once happen and even clubbers just standing and talking got nicked.  In fact being guilty had nothing whatsoever to do with being arrested.

The children, ah bless ‘em, popularly known as ‘hoodies, they gather in a park and get surrounded by the Bill.  Being small in size, they get stopped, key worked and searched.  Inevitably with the camera watching, they always happen to have drugs, are frequently drunk, foul mouthed and lippy.  Sometimes the youngest ones drive cars, there’s a bit of a chase and they crash. There’s something rather absurd about a 13 years in a tatty escort trying to get away from police in a state of the art Porsche.  Even adult drivers are silly too and lead the police on a 30 mile chase across Essex before crashing and trying to leg it.  By this time there are another five cop cars plus helicopter.  Any criminal worth his salt knows how to stop the police dead in their tracks; you just reverse back at high speed into the police car immediately and scarper.  No chase, no sirens and certainly no helicopter, end of story, but of course these ‘successful’ pursuits are never shown on television.

If I was a British agent in Paris, circa 1941, I’d probably not go into a coffee shop and say: “Excuse my good fellow, do you speaky the English.”   I would not; I repeat not, walk down the Champs de Mars and ask a policeman for directions, no not ever, not even in French.  Likewise, if I was a bad boy living in Luton, circa 2009 and tagged, I would not nick petrol from Tesco, then do it again from Sainsbury’s – all in broad daylight – and then do over a ton on the M1.  If I was another bad boy living in say Dover, I wouldn’t Eurostar it up the M2 at 145 when an arrest warrant had already been issued for me by the magistrates at Basingstoke.  No siree, not me and that goes for most other normal blokes.  Oh here’s a good one, young man is driving home with his bird in white van and is followed by police.  The guy gets nervous and starts to speed up, the police speed up too and a pursuit ensures ending in the inevitable.

The reality.  A good British spy in wartime Paris would have probably spoken street French with a regional accent.  Professional criminals must be laughing all the way to Monte Carlo.  Proper criminals don’t like driving because they say you become an instant, eh, criminal.  They take the train, use taxis and most importantly of all, they are generous contributors to the various police good causes, such as the annual local nick’s Christmas bash.  Even the less sophisticated - the villains not the cops – will after robbing a footballer’s house at two in the morning, never exceed speed limits and hire state of the art vans – paid for of course.

See yer

Andrew

In a prison in Paris

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