Priorities

I had lunch today with a long-standing mate who I haven't seen for quite some time. Now, he works in the Met as a Detective Sergeant and quite often tells me stories about his experiences in work that are of the; 'you couldn't make it up' variety, pretty much along the lines of Inspector Gadget. Anyway I thought I would pass on this little story he told me today.

He's currently investigating a fatal stabbing in London which occurred in broad daylight. Naturally the road in question was covered by CCTV. So as part of routine inquires, tapes made at the relevant date and time were requested. However there was a problem...

Upon reviewing the tapes they could identify the victim, and the start of a fight with another man, but instead of zooming in to make identification clearer, the civilian camera operator zoomed away to a different part of the road.

Why?

Because he/she had noticed a car driving illegally in a bus lane on that road and they wanted to record the details, because that was the local council's priority. When the camera zoomed back to the fight the victim was lying on the ground having already been stabbed and the assailant had run off. As a consequence of the operator's actions the CCTV footage has proved useless at identifying the perpetrator.

And there was me thinking that CCTV "is one of the ways we keep people safe and make people feel safer in our communities"