Just read the local rag
1) Small time 17 yr old drug dealer has his cash stolen - reports the theft to the police!
Found guilty of dealing. Defence lawyer stated he was only 17 yrs old and not not think the police would ask about the circumstances of the theft!!!!!!!
2)Shoplifter steals £200+ of clothing from a shop. Goes back the next day, wearing the 3 items. The manager looks at the CCTV from the day before and the shoplifter ends up in court. Just out a few weeks and is now back in for 120 days!
The theives in my younger days were probably "not the sharpest tools in the box" but I think they might have realised how to avoid being caught that easily.
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Just proves you do not need intelligence to make money as a criminal but you do to keep it
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I hope "they" won't track me from now on now that I've said it, but I have always maintained that intelligent sorts - like you get on here of course, could properly plan some thieving, do it and then get away with it.
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>> I hope "they" won't track me from now on now that I've said it, but
>> I have always maintained that intelligent sorts - like you get on here of course,
>> could properly plan some thieving, do it and then get away with it.
>>
Go into banking you mean?
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Surely criminals are getting smarter. Far less of the knocking someone over the head and taking your money sort of crime like bank robbery these. They are all using their IT skills to con the gullible over the internet or setting up dubious deals on ebay or trading in crack. Sort of progress I suppose. You need a degree to become a decent criminal these days. Not like the old days when you could get into crime without an o level to your name.
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Many moons ago, when I was a young PC in Westminster, there was a chap whose 'modus operandi' was to go to look at a car 'for sale' ...take it out for a test drive with the owner ..and at an opportune moment, he would drive off in it, leaving the hapless owner at the roadside.
He would use it for 2-3 weeks minicabbing ...then dump it somewhere, (usually in good condition) then start all over again.
One afternoon I heard a circulation for a stolen car (black Granada Ghia, the then new Scorpio shape) and thought to myself at the time "that's the sort of car X would steal".
At grub time in the canteen, I was discussing this with a mate and he informed me that X was signing on every day at our police station, (because he'd been 'station officer' the night before and had facilitated it).
Sure enough, I check the signing on book and matey is due in within the hour.. and I thought "I wonder if he's that stupid" ...so tried to get CID interested, nope...tried to borrow an unmarked car...nope...so went and got my own car, sat in it with a civilian jacket and waited for chummy to appear, which he did from a side street. I waited until he came back out again, then followed him around the block in my car ... and there was the stolen Granada, it was him, the thieving git.
There was a bit of a minor drama though, as some **** stopped in right front of me, double parked to let a passenger out and I couldn't get to matey before he got back into the Granada .. so I had to follow him, giving a commentary on my personal radio until an 'area car' caught us up, but by then we'd gone from Rochester Row, SW1 to virtually outside Downing Street in Whitehall.
Using my own car was all terribly unofficial, but no one moaned.
Nice little tickle that was... and how stupid of him.
Last edited by: Westpig on Thu 26 Jun 14 at 17:49
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>> Using my own car was all terribly unofficial, but no one moaned.
>> Nice little tickle that was... and how stupid of him.
Didn't the CID smile grimly, offer you a dodgy handshake and invite you on board for better wages, lots of bribes and a free hand to commit crimes in mufti and terrorize innocent citizens?
Were you ever tempted Westpig?
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>> Were you ever tempted Westpig?
>>
No, funnily enough.
To start off, all I wanted to do was drive fast cars around ..and you didn't get driving courses if you had CID intent.
By some strange stroke of luck, I managed to get an advanced driving course at the age of 23, which was virtually unheard of.
In those days you normally waited yonks for a 'standard course', but I managed it with just over 2 years in ..then you waited ages again for a van course , I managed it in another 6 months, then a PSU (Police Support Unit...riot bus) soon followed, before on 5th December 1986 off I went to Hendon Driving School for my advanced course.
..(in the Counties you only get advanced courses if you are in Traffic, but in the Met you also get them to drive an 'area car' which is a relatively powerful response type car that is also authorised to pursue).
So there I was, aged 23, swanning around in the Rover 2600 SD1 auto (A780UJD) in Westminster thinking I was the bees knees.
I soon worked out that for me the fun was finding them in the first place ..then handing them over to CID, so I could go back out again and find some more... and if in the meantime you could thrap hell out of someone else's car on blues and two's.. well, why swap that for an office?
I fully understood why some liked the investigative angle ..but for me the thrill of the chase was the brighter flame, not tying them down with the evidence.
Each to their own I suppose.
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You don't seem that sort of cat Westpig I must say. Some CID I've come across have been pretty gothic and scary, although not all by any means. It occurs to me that the older I got, the less scary plainclothes coppers seemed. Was it me or them I wonder?
:o}
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Funnily enough, I got my advanced at 25, within a year of getting my standard. The standard allowed you to drive vans, CID cars and all sorts of other 'ordinary' vehicles like the mortuary van ! i suppose my rapid rise to the faster stuff came about 'cos I got the highest marks heard of on the standard. something like 293% out of a total of 300% over three stages of the testing. ( Trumpet blown !) I was a petrolhead then !
I'd already got my standard motorcycle, getting my advanced after the car course. There was a simple test for guys with a driving licence to drive panda cars but that was just a trip round the block in a Morris Minor.
One bobby on the standard course didn't hold a license and had no intention of getting one. He had some service in and used to cycle to my house for the course and I would drive him in. He made sure he failed....of course !
Happy daze........Mk 2 Jags, Humbers, TR4As with the roof off in Summer. WP would have loved it !
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>> Happy daze........Mk 2 Jags, Humbers, TR4As with the roof off in Summer. WP would have
>> loved it !
>>
You are not wrong.
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Of course by definition we never hear about the inteligent criminals because they are not caught. In fact the very smartest crimes will not even be detected, so no one will ever realise there was a crime at all.
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...as the subject says.
Others have already covered it. The smart ones get away with it without anyone knowing any wrong has been done.
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>> ...as the subject says.
>>
>> Others have already covered it. The smart ones get away with it without anyone knowing
>> any wrong has been done.
>>
Except the detectives on their payroll.
Allegedly.
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It's a shame that younger generations can't absorb experience by osmosis but have to re-learn things oldies already know.
Just imagine if we each held the accumulated knowledge of our ancestors.
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+1
I once heard that summarised as " History repeats itself, it has to nobody listens the first time"
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Education is definitely getting poorer! - madf
