Picture from Securidoor and not representative of any particular Community Protection Officer.
I haven't had a lot to do with these people before, those people who as children wanted to be police officers but couldn't quite cut it when it came down to it and instead wear a fancy dress version of the uniform and attempt to patrol the streets despite their total lack of power. The only thing they are qualified to do is to call the real police. They are able to dish out fines for such crimes as riding a bicycle on the pavement or dropping litter but they either don't seem to bother or get given a lot of false names. A few years ago I was walking along sending a text and an FDC (Fancy Dress Copper) stopped me to advise me about the dangers of not paying attention as someone could have snatched my phone and ran away. I suppose he had a point but a real police officer wouldn't have bothered surely?
Today I was walking Jack and I spotted an FDC walking towards me. I didn't think anything of it to be honest and carried on. He stopped me to ask if I had some plastic bags for the purpose of dog shit collection and disposal. I am a responsible dog owner and think that people who leave their dog's crap on the pavement should be made to eat it, so I always make an effort to clean up after Jack. As I pointed out to this FDC, I had four carrier bags in my pocket and he replied by asking if it would be enough. My rather terse response was to inform him that if Jack needed more than four shits in the duration of a walk then I'd take him to the vet.
Is this really a thing now? Are the police and their pretend counterparts attempting to prevent crime from happening in the first place? Will FDCs be patrolling shops warning people buying kitchen knives not to stab people, or stopping people outside hardware shops with spray paint and reminding them not to spray graffiti on walls? On the face of it this isn't such a ridiculous scheme, and I am here to suggest how the police and the FDCs can go that one step further and totally eradicate crime once and for all; time travel. All the police have to do is read through their crime report archive and travel to the moment the crime was committed and arrest the person before they are able to do it. A new law would have to be passed through Parliament allowing the police to arrest people in advance, and to make sure the news got through an announcement would have to be published in the very first newspapers so we were all aware of it. If it appeared in today's papers for example, that wouldn't help the criminals of the past. By way of an arrest warrant the police would have to present the potential criminal with a newspaper clipping about whatever it is they are about to do.
This might sound ridiculous, but it might make the FDC brigade useful at last.
No podcast this week.
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May housekeeping
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