A conservative shadow.

I'd love to have been the bobby who took David Cameron out for a spin this week. Whilst he makes plenty of the right noises on his "blog", he has given the game away with the words:

"Three young men arrested for drugs (possession of cannabis, speed and ecstasy) are swiftly cautioned and sent on their way." I have concluded therefore that his ride-along was a set-up, for the following reasons:

In Blandmore this "swift caution" would take many hours: first the drive from place of arrest to the police station, then the booking in (we are up to about two hours now), interviewing them all (an hour each allowing for their consultation with the solicitor). Then there's the hour's search for an officer trained to field-test Speed and Ecstasy (you cannot even caution in my force without a basic test to confirm the drugs are what the suspect thinks they are).

On the the discovery that Ecstasy cannot be field-tested and must go to the lab despite the suspects' admissions, the three suspects would be bailed for three weeks time pending a scientist's report. Of course, given the possibility of the lab test coming back negative, no suspect in Blandmore would ever admit to possession of Ecstasy, so you would not be "cautioning" them anyway.

Three weeks later, on the bail date, you can expect two out of three not to show up. "Wanted" files would therefore have to be created which is a good 2-3 hours work, plus each file would have to be given the go-ahead by CPS. Several years later, when one suspect is stopped for having a brake-light out, he may just get charged.

Perhaps David Cameron just means that the three suspects were read the words of "the caution" before being sent on their way - not to be confused with "a caution". The mistake is easily made.

By the way, one of the above links is to the news that Chris Tarrant has received a caution for playfully lobbing cutlery at a fellow diner. Apparently, the police "[recognised] that there was never any malice on [his] part, just a bit of amiable horseplay". I wonder which force this was, because in mine we aren't allowed to claim detections for "horseplay" - indeed I cannot remember seeing it as a classification for any kind of crime... perhaps we could learn from this.









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