Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Off duty king

I've got somewhat of a reputation for getting into situations while off duty and before i started posting on here have been involved in 3 off duty arrests. Well the following happened to me today.
After a big night out with quite a few lads from the team i stayed over at one of the lads single quarters, as there was a spare bedroom. Well about 1300 we got up feeling rough as hell and decided on a hangover cure so we got dressed and decided to take a walk down to Mcdonalds.
We literally just walked around the corner from his house when a old Maroon coloured renault 25 pulled up with two occupants in it and an Irish voice said, u lads fancy buying a laptop??
I turned to John(my mate and colleague from work) and said, u speak to them i'll call it in. Well i discreetly gave all the details to control, then helped John with the next ten minutes of stalling them whilst a marked unit made to us.
They had a brand new laptop, a digital camcorder and a digital camera which they were planning on throwing all in for £400.
After deliberation and more bullshiting to keep them there despite their best efforts to go "come on old bill will be here any minute!!" "get in the car i'll drive you to the cashpoint"
we managed to stall them until the marked unit got there.
They pulled their car across the road infront of the offenders vehicle and the driver off the vehicle shouted "shit police go" and started the engine and tried to drive off.
Without thinking i dived in through the drivers door and wrestled with the driver and managed to get the keys out of the ignition to halt their escape.
Well with that excitement aside they were both nicked for handling stolen goods.
On examination of the car we found out they had been running the "water bottle scam" which has been prominant in the area, which is basically where they show you a laptop and camcorder in a laptop case then once you go get the money they swap cases and give you a similar looking case which only contains water bottles!!
Ingenious, pity they tried to do it to two off duty coppers though!!!!
To top of their day i seized £600 from one of them under the proceeds of crime act.
Well had to go back to the nick and do statements but wasnt too fussed about that as we'll be getting 4 hours at double pay for what was essentially 2 hours work!!!
Think we'll have bragging rights for a little while!!!
Back in tomorrow!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi

I would love to use this story in a book I am compiling on true police stories, can you let me know if that's OK?

More info here: http://policeshortstories.blogspot.com/

Many thanks for your time
David