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In a story you just couldn’t make up even if you tried, a junior Sussex police officer sent a plain-clothes copper on a wild goose-chase around town, literally chasing his own shadow for 20 minutes.
The CCTV operator called in the incognito street-beater after seeing someone “acting suspiciously” in the area. Little did the man on the ground know that that someone was actually himself in a ridiculous case of mistaken identity. The camera operator had him running around in circles chasing himself for a whole 20 minutes. It wasn’t until a sergeant trundled into the cam-watching room and recognised the plain-clothed officer on the ground, that the hilariously embarrassing mistake was realised.
How on Earth you could send one person chasing round in circles after himself when you’re sitting in front of a real-time feed, Lord only knows. Poor chap’s never going to live that one down. [The Telegraph]
Image credit: CCTV from Shutterstock
What I find slightly worrying is that they will follow someone for 20 minutes just for “acting suspiciously”. But as you say they will never live that one down!
This is the sort of thing Giz do more and more these days; leave out a little line or two that make the story a little less “sensational”; “was monitoring an area hit by a series of burglaries in an unnamed market town”
I’d say; good on them. It’s nice to know that if some toerag was breaking in around an area, the police are actually doing something about it. Or at least trying to.
“Tonight on ‘Notes from the Frontline’…”
This reminds me of the time back in my student days when I was looking around a store in town. A group of 3-4 people attracted my attention as they were acting very suspiciously, including occasionally glancing over in my direction.
I walked over to a store assistant and asked them to get some help as I thought there was a group of shoplifters about to rob the store.
A minute or two later one of the dodgy group came over and asked if there was a problem – yes, they were store detectives. They did not see the funny side of it.