Thank you Police for catching this guy:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8188152.stm

Walking down the pavement, pizza in hand, this guy comes up and changes our Christmas. He attempted to knock my gf's entire face off but she luckily saw it coming, he followed through and almost knocked me out instead. He chipped my teeth and quipped "enjoy your pizza love".

The Police couldn't do a lot for me at the time because of a lack of CCTV and he'd scarpered. They put me on the list to add to his charges in the end but 9 years in prison was enough that they didn't need me. Complain as much as you like about the police but this man scared us, glad to see him off the streets. Looking back, I certainly got off lightly compared to the other victims.
( SauronWibble I'll hold it, you lick it..., Tue 10 May 2011, 15:04, 10 replies)

i had a healthy criminal record, but thanks to the rehabilitation of offenders act im now record free.

this story is one of the few times i was actually innocent. walking home from the pub late on night, me and a couple of mates cut through an industrial estate. we came across a huge lorry with a bloke inside the cab, and my mate jumped up and asked him for a lift home. the driver said yes, so the three of us climbed into the cab. this is where we should have smelt a rat. the driver was fiddling about under the steering column for a while, seemingly looking for something. while this was going on a police car drove past, turned and parked behind the lorry. the driver said, let me handle them, got out and there we sat for 5 minutes till a copper opened the door and told us we were all nicked!

turns out the 'driver' was stealing the truck and when the old bill turned up, he had it away on his toes with the 2 coppers chasing him. they lost him and headed back to the truck where 3 drunks were patiently sitting waiting for a lift home. we all got arrested but released in the morning without charge.

bizarre
(jerpster gordon ramsey does not own chip shops, allegedly, Tue 10 May 2011, 14:50, Reply)

Romania, 1992.
We were there to teach, but had discovered that being English was our credit card to pretty well anything at all, and that the £300 we'd saved each for the duration, added to the fact that they were paying us 50% of a teacher's wage as well - which we hadn't been expecting - meant that we were among the richest people in the city. This was not something of amusement for the ex-KGB-type who was our guardian, and who really wasn't very impressed with this invasion of capitalism into his once-great motherland.

We were 18. All we were aware of was that we could get 40 tabs each and shit-faced for under a tenner for the both of us.

We'd been warned about drugs, and warned about our behaviour in general - although now technically a democracy, the hangover from communism in Romania was by no means over, and people still had a tendency to sort of disappear-and-only-emerge-unrecognisable-several-years-later occassionally.

Late one evening, however, we were swaying down a dark side road, trudging through pouring rain, loomed over on each side by enormous, faceless grey tower blocks. Quietly over the top of us was the bass thud of a house party, and we discussed earnestly whatever matter was at hand that evening.

Up ahead a big, black Mercedes pulled into the street, splashed through the puddles, and headed slowly towards us, just as I finished my cigarette, and flicked the butt towards the middle of the road.

Instead of behaving politely and falling into the road, the butt flew upwards in a slow arch, pausing momentarily at its zenith, and fell - in a splash of glowing red embers - exactly in the middle of the windscreen of the car. It was the sort of shot it's impossible to repeat.

The driver hit the brakes with a squelch. As the door unlocked, from the driver's side unfolded a guy who made Jaws in James Bond look like Penfold. Sillouetted by the street lamp behind him, he was dressed entirely in black, and wore a leather trenchcoat, which gleamed softly in the reflective orange hues.

I watched with rapidly-sobering numbness.

He crunched towards us slowly, and more purposefully than your mum to a cake shop.

Oh shit, I thought, I'm going to disappear. I'm going to disappear, and my mum is going to cry for the rest of her life, and all because I was more interested in beer than manners. Oh shit. He's going to wear my balls for earrings, and then he's going wander around the dimly-lit room they hold me in, saying "Look at me, I've got earrings made out of Vagabond's balls" in a high-pitched mince, while his friends laugh and stub out cigarettes on my tiny manhood.

"I'm sorry!" I squealed, "I'm sorry I didn't mean to it's just I was smoking and I tried to flick it and I didn't mean to flick it at you I'm really sorry I just meant that ... " as he came closer, ever closer dear Christ this guy is built like a fucking aircraft carrier oh Christ "I just meant that we'd been for some beers and I just wanted to"

He was in front of me, blocking out all available light. My mate appeared to be watching with disconnected fascination.

"It's just, you see, we're from England, and, well - I didn't understand, I mean, that wasn't deliberate or anything, it's just that I was, well ... " I whined.

He leaned down, his face level with mine, as I stared, terrified, up at him.

"I just ... I'm really sorry ... " I had gone beyond whining now - my voice was pitched somewhere in the range between dog whistles and bats.

"Sorry is all I wanted to hear." he said, his accent thicker than your sister. "It is no matter, I know you didn't mean it."

He turned, strode back to his car, got in, and drove off.

I don't even know if he was the police.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 10 May 2011, 14:13, 2 replies)

A final airport police...
As I've said before I worked were people collect their bags. Now, as most will know you have to pass customs before you can get into the real world and often you'll find items abandoned by wannabe smugglers.

Anyway one fine day (MASSIVE DRUGS) I found a huge bag of everyones favorite white powder (not Daz Brilliant Whites). On finding this I knew any of the airport dogs would go mental if I was within a mile and that the normal "I've got sausages in my pocket" excuse wouldn't cut it.

So, being the good citizen I was I brought it to the security booth to be confronted by another old hand of the Police force. I explained my find and his face suddenly lit up. "Hand it here son", I watched in amazement as the old feller took and tentative sniff followed by the biggest snort I've ever seen.

When his face re-emerged from the bag he looked like he was gonna shit his intestines through his arse and his face would explode in a spray of blood. He then muttered something about "sorting it" before trodding away in the opposite direction to the station.
( dazbrilliantwhites has been meaning to change this..., Tue 10 May 2011, 13:52, Reply)

stoopid pile of clothes
Me and a couple of friends had all been out on the lash one evening and returned to my flat at around 4am... as we approached I could see that the rear offside window of my car had been smashed. Balls.

I looked inside and saw my CDs piled up on the back seat and a pile of clothes on the passenger seat. "They must have had them out of the boot or something" my vodka addled brain assumed... until the pile of clothes stirred slightly.

We'd only managed to catch the numpty mid-steal! He pretended to be asleep as he knew he was surrounded and must have tried to unlock the door but found that I'd deadlocked it, his only escape route was the broken window.

We phoned the police and while we were waiting, one of us went to my neighbour's house. He was (and probably still is) a massive stoner, we knew he'd be up and would find it amusing. He came back out with his 2 mates and a round of vodka and cokes (with ice and lemon). The police arrived to be greeted by us, quite drunk and in good spirits surrounding my car, a small chav (he was 17 I found out subsequently) languishing in the front seat. The plod led him off and took statements from us, I got the car fixed and thought not much more of it.

A few days later, I got a phone call. They'd charged him with theft, "but there was nothing missing" I said, "did you not notice your lack of loose change?" they replied... he'd managed to get himself a criminal record for stealing 44p in 2s and 1s... and a weird fat pen that didn't work that I got free from work. He told them that he'd been chased around the estate and saw my car was open, he hid in there. They couldn't prove otherwise but they got him for the epic theft.

They returned my posessions later that week.
(Ross McBingobangobongo bingobangobongo, Tue 10 May 2011, 13:47, Reply)

A roasted pea...

A few years back, a bunch of us from work had taken over a couple of pub benches one evening and were enjoying a pre-party appertif. Out of the blue about a dozen plain clothes police raided our tables; seems they had witnessed one of our number - who we shall call Mr X - purchasing what they like to call "certain substances" earlier that day.

Mr X, who had indeed scored (and had been banging on about it all afternoon at work), held up one hand, put the other into the small pocket that's above the normal pocket on his jeans (a tad off topic, but if anyone knows what that stupid little pocket is for I'd love to know), and said something like:

"It's me, I've got an eighth in my pocket..."

A panic stricken look crossed his face and he started patting his pockets frantically, in the manner of someone who has lost their car keys.

"...er...", he continued

A couple of officers took him to one side, and the rest insisted on searching everyone else present. For some reason the quite nice-looking WPC wouldn't pat me down, no matter how nicely I asked her...

Since we were all clean, we were allowed to go. Mr X, on the other hand, was taken to the station and searched again. Thoroughly.

About four hours later, Mr X finally found his way to the party to which we had all been headed. It turns out, of course, that he had lost his gear earlier in the day, making him the only person I know to be arrested for NOT HAVING ANY DRUGS.
(tree hugger putting the "semen" in "basement"..., Tue 10 May 2011, 13:47, 9 replies)

Nasty things with nice ending
My dad was a copper in the 70s and 80s. As a lot of the stories here have already attested, things were done differently then – for better or worse. I've heard a myriad of anecdotes from him demonstrating behaviour that was ethically and legally dubious, and like most coppers of that era he has no regrets.

One time though, I got a glimpse of how his job could sometimes bring something good out of something awful.

We were in our local pub several years after his retirement from the force, stood at the bar having a quiet pint. I'd clocked a 30-something lady sat in the corner of the bar with some other people, and she kept casting curious glances our way. I presumed it was because we're such a smashingly handsome pair of drunks. After ten minutes of this shy staring, something seemed to click in her. She got up, walked straight over to the bar, said hi to my dad, and to my surprise hugged him and burst into tears. He cuddled her and gently led her to a quieter spot of the pub.
I watched from the bar as my dad spoke to her for a couple of minutes. Couldn't hear what they were saying, but he seemed to be reassuring her. She alternated between smiles and tears, and after another hug and a 'good to see you' my dad came back over and told me the story.

When the woman was a little girl, she'd been regularly raped by her dad. He'd also raped her sisters and mum too. Naturally this was accompanied by savage kickings. The family occasionally came to the attention of the police, but the girls were always too scared to testify against the man.
After years of beatings and rapes, one day this bloke went too far and attacked their mother so violently she bled to death. He was quickly locked up and charged, but seemed smugly confident that he'd get off lightly.
My dad was the senior investigating officer on the murder case, and soon uncovered the history of unthinkable abuse that everyone knew about but no-one would talk about – they even found a written record from the dead mother, outlining every hateful thing this fella had done to her and her children. It took a long time to get the girls' trust, but my dad eventually convinced them that if they told the truth, he'd make sure the man would never hurt them again. They believed him, and agreed to do it. With their statements he was able to put together an airtight prosecution file (this was before the CPS). Their father was put away for life, and died in prison some ten years later.

Everything was done by the book – no forced confessions, prisoner abuse, lying or perjuring, nothing that would jeopardise the integrity of the investigation, despite everyone on the team having an understandable loathing of the suspect. Ultimately, the case hinged on my dad making a promise to some terrified little girls and being able to keep it.

He's alright, my dad.

By way of compensation for lack of lulz, have some classic internet:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sahm3ot89cc
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Tue 10 May 2011, 13:41, 2 replies)

Sniffy Dogs
In the pub one night.
I'd had a smoke at home but left my herb there before going out.
So while sat in the pub, in walk 1/2 a dozen peelers with an alsation. Two cops block the front and back door to stop anyone leaving while the one with rin-tin-tin walks around sniffing all and sundry.
Obviously being the prolific weed-smoker I am, poochie took a liking to my scent so I got called out for a pat-down.
Told the cops I'd had a smoke but searching me would only turn up 20 fags and a lighter. They seemed amazed that anyone being searched would stand there admitting they'd been smoking pot with the biggest shit-eating grin on there face. I had never been happier that I'd forgotten my herb at home.
Sufficed to say I'm not drinking in there anymore.
(WOGAN'S WIG FIXER, Tue 10 May 2011, 13:22, 2 replies)

Seeing some nice bike stories,
His one came from a customer:

Two chaps on bikes, in Spain get pulled over. The policeman says
"You do wheelies, stoppies!"
"No officer, just riding sensibly."
"No no, you do wheelies, stoppies. Please?"

Ten minutes of impromptu stunts and they were allowed on their way!!
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Tue 10 May 2011, 13:14, Reply)

It's nice when they're human
No big stories about armed police or anything...

I'm parked outside the bike shop, on the pavement and totally illegally. Whilst I was in the shop, two bike cops had turned up. I spotted them just as I had finished riding along a short stretch of pavement to get to the road again. They have their notepads out and are looking right at me. Shit. How many laws have I just broken?

A cheery wave and they set about ticketing the ass-hat who has parked their cage in the bike bay which was why I'd bounced on to the pavement in the first place.

===

I'm on a clear bit of motorway. I'm late. I'm well into three figures. As in, jail-time three figures. A cop in the distance waves at me. Double-shits. I come off the gas, break into a cold sweat and wait to be pulled further up the road as I can begin to see more cops in the distance (car, van, few hi-vi jackets milling about).

As I get closer I see they appear to be fussing over some truck in lane 1 and ignore me totally.

I elect to continue my journey at a sane speed and arrive late and I've not been that monumentally stupid again.

===

Cutting through the city, I filter to the head of snarled up traffic and observe a cop halting all the traffic. Just around the corner I can see a break-down truck and related recovery machinery. Cop spots me and via much hand-waving indicates I should proceed at a slow pace. Off I pootle through the closed road where they are lifting oodles of badly/illegally parked cars; perfectly safe for a motorbike to cut through at a walking pace, but you wouldn't want cars/buses trying to pass. Sweet.

===

At the airport waiting for my lift home and a car pulls up at the arrivals area to pick someone up. Seconds later a marked car arrives behind them with sirens and lights going. Hee-ooj plod exits the police car and positively levitates his way in anger to the first driver who is extracted in no uncertain terms. They must have followed right behind him for at least 3 or 4 miles with lights and sirens (considering where the junctions are). The driver's crime? Driving at night with no lights on, and towards an airport to boot.
(SpangleDangle >->)))'>, Tue 10 May 2011, 12:36, Reply)

Get yer trousers on, you’re NICKED!
A man who drinks in my local was a copper during the 70’s. I’m not sure how many of his anecdotes are actually plotlines from “The Sweeny” or embellished Police urban legend, but he swears blind that when his station received their first photocopier, they lined up a load of ‘scrotes’ in front of it, told them it was a lie-detector and ‘scanned’ the palms of their hands while barking questions at them. I can only assume that this preceded driving a Ford Cortina through a pile of cardboard boxes and a swift pint with the guv’nor.

SHUT IT!
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Tue 10 May 2011, 11:51, 2 replies)

Suspect is Armed and Dangerous!
Riding home from work one night, I was surprised to see the old flashing blues behind me, and an official finger indicating that I should pull over. The usual panicky feeling, but as far as I could remember there was nothing wrong with the bike - paperwork up to date etc - so it was a bit of a mystery.

The two policemen emerged from the car, talking into their radios and looking severe. But as they got closer they seemed to relax, and were actually positively friendly.

It turned out that there had just been an armed robbery nearby, and the "perp" was seen to escape on a bike which was similar to mine. The cop said that he could see that it wasn't me, so it was just a routine stop. All smiles and relaxed chat. But then it took a turn for the worse...

"So, if I can just have a look in your rucksack, sir, we can all be on our way."

Oh shit. Why today? Why did I have to get stopped today, of all days, with what I have in my rucksack. My blood ran cold, but there was little I could do: I'm sure I must have looked pale as I wriggled out of the straps and unzipped it.

The policeman reached in, then hesitated. He looked at his colleague, then pulled out the contents. This was it. It was all over.

They looked at the complete set of Status Quo albums, then handed them back silently and waved me on. Oh, the shame.

insert "criminal record" joke here
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Tue 10 May 2011, 11:23, 6 replies)

Jamaica
Not my story, but a personal favourite.

Whilst on holiday in Jamaica a few years ago, a friend hired himself a rather flashy jeep to drive round the island and see the sights. After tootling round for a bit, he gets on a nice straight patch of the coastal road and starts wondering just how fast his new motor will go, and floors it.

Bombing along at a fair old nick, he looks in the rear view mirror and sees, to his horror, a police car bearing down on him. Lights flashing and as it gets closer, siren going. Fearing the worst, he slows down and the police car pulls up alongside him.

The policeman leans out of the window. "Hey man!" he shouts. "Do you want a race?"
(davywavy, Tue 10 May 2011, 11:11, 7 replies)

Hello? Is that the Police? The IRA are operating in the leafy suburbs of the West Midlands
As a lad, me and a couple of friends used to spend many hours running through a local wood with cap guns bought from the local ‘It’s A Pound’ shop.
The rules of combat aren’t necessary to be retold here but camouflage was an important aspect of the game. Liam, for that was his name, once wore a balaclava to disguise his face.
Unbeknownst to us, someone had spotted Liam, and as he was dressed like an Irish paramilitary and was carrying a gun they decided to phone the Police.
This was back in the early nineties when the IRA were still up to their old ways so you would imagine that the Police would respond.
They did.
Liam was hiding in a bush when he heard a rustle and thinking it was one of us, leapt out and shot. He found himself face to face with a lone, unarmed, Policewoman.
I’m glad the local constabulary didn’t take hysterical phone call of ‘guerrillas in our midst’ seriously.
( TitanLX, Tue 10 May 2011, 10:52, Reply)

Cap guns and armed police
One weekend at university, several of my female housemates were having a Charlie's Angels theme night at the union. They got some cap guns from the local toy shop to complete the look. The following afternoon they guys decided to take the guns with us to the pub (Back of Beyond in Reading) in a Beastie Boys Sabotage video homage. All was good, we hit the pub, got bladdered and thought nothing of it. My mate even left his gun on the seat in the pub before remembering and rushing back to slip it into his waistband. No harm no foul, or so we thought.

The following weekend, i had a mate down, so we went to the same pub and ordered some food. To set the scene, i was in a gothy punk stage with bright red hair, and eye makeup, typical uni twat. He was at Oxford and looked like it. To our amusement whilst eating two armed police strolled in and went to the back of the pub. Then two more came in and went to the side exit. Finally two more in came in, i settled back to watch some poor bastard get his comeuppance when i noticed to my horror they were walking to us. They asked me and my mate to stand up then frogmarched us out the side door. I was shitting myself, i literally had no idea what was going on. They asked us questions about drugs abd who we were. It was only when they asked if we were armed, that my mind slowly began to grasp the horror of what was going on. I blurted out the truth. The bemused expression on the officer's face gave away his belief of my story, and after 10 minutes further explanation let us return to the pub. The barmaid looked apologetic and she explained that the police had been looking for me for over a week and that she had immediately contacted them on our arrival. I ordered several stiff drinks and tried to laugh it off.

Not gonna lie, it was terrifying. My housemates all wet themselves when i returned home. Cunts. Armed police are scary.
(mogwai_rock, Tue 10 May 2011, 10:30, 4 replies)

Police raided a house in Liverpool
Just a simple 2 up, 2 down, in front of Toxeth library, but in it they found 57 kg of Heroin, 4 Romanian prostitutes, and over 50k in cash.

A spokesman for the area said "We were shocked! We had no idea Toxeth HAD a library".
(dchurch bah, Tue 10 May 2011, 10:22, 5 replies)

Just me?
Does anyone else, when they see a police van (or sometimes just a car) go screaming past, with it's sirens and lights on, say to anyone nearby "he won't sell much icecream going that fast!"

No?

Okay then...
(ScousersPet, Tue 10 May 2011, 9:44, 13 replies)

One dark night...
Nine years I spent as a traffic officer and I guess I could fill this QotW with various stories, some humourous, and some, not so bloody funny at all.

Probably the wierdest thing happened one night back in the early nineties. I had had a shitty evening, called out to a sweaty armpit of a biker's pool hall were there had been a minor fracas. It had been the usual Friday night nonsense and I had wasted a couple of hours taking down statements from various injured bikers, all of whom claimed to have been the 'innocent' victims of an 'unprovoked' attack by an, of course, 'unknown' assailant who funnily enough had since 'disappeared'. So I was not in a good mood later that evening when the rest of this tale occurrs.

I was driving through the crap bit of town - your typical post industrial urban wasteland cliche seen in a squillion hollywood movies- abandoned factories and demolished empty lots, the hang-out of vandals and drug addicts. The kind of place no-one normal goes to but the police have to patrol.

I saw some unusual sparking and flashing lights a bit back from the road, so stopped the car and got out to investigate. Some vandal had obviously been cutting through the chain link fence of an empty lot, but not with ordinary wire cutters. Oh no, it appeared that this guy had been using a blow torch or similar, as the wires round the edges of the hole were still glowing hot. I couldn't see anyone around, then I heard a noise, and suddenly I had been stabbed dead by a shining blade and a shape shifting robot had stolen my image in an attempt to destroy the human race and engineer world domination of the machines. Fucksocks.
(Mystery_Machine, Tue 10 May 2011, 9:11, 13 replies)

Top tip:
Avoid being in fear by having nothing to hide.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 10 May 2011, 8:49, 12 replies)

Having read quite a few of these,
a common thread appears to be that some police don't appear to consider pursuing small scale cannabis possession to be a worthwhile use of their time - almost as if they'd like to see a measure of decriminalisation. But of course they just enforce the law, they don't make it.
(sarcastic fringehead feet of clay, buns of steel, head of lettuce, Tue 10 May 2011, 8:48, 5 replies)

Youtube..
It's a magnet for wannabe gangsters, just a quick tip though, if you're ever tempted to post videos of the bags of weed, stolen satnavs and firearms you possess, try not to do it from an account that's got your mum's name as the email address OK?

It makes it awfully easy for the local police to find you and doesn't half piss off your family when the house gets turned inside out at 5AM in the morning.
(ceeej, Tue 10 May 2011, 8:34, 2 replies)

A friend of mine
is a fairly well known defender of human rights in other countries. Amanda is tireless in her efforts, the sort of very intense woman who can be utterly humorless at times but can also be unexpectedly spontaneous and goofy. She has a will of iron combined with a level of intelligence that almost everyone finds intimidating. In short, the sort of woman who goes around doing Great Things at the cost of not having much of a personal life.

Apparently when she was finishing her PhD at a major university she had managed to come to the attention of the editors of the school paper, and had pissed them off. Just before graduation they ran a satirical piece about her, featuring a picture of her head spliced onto some bikini babe. (This was before Photoshop.) As Amanda is very pretty with long curly blonde hair and a very fit body, it was apparently a rather believable picture. Someone showed it to her, and she was NOT amused. Not at ALL.

She and a friend spent the night going around with a pair of bolt cutters and stealing the papers out of all of the dispensers around the campus, and ended up with an enormous pile of them. For some reason they decided to set fire to them- on the lawn of the university president's house.

The following day cold reality set in and she realized what she had done. She packed up her stuff quickly and loaded it into the back of her friend's pickup and rode out of town under a tarpaulin about an hour before the police appeared at the door of her apartment, and got her diploma through the mail. She didn't set foot in that state for the next seven years, until the statute of limitations had run out.

She's now an internationally known human rights defender, but she came within an inch of being a convicted arsonist.

Once in a while we still tease her about that.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 10 May 2011, 2:52, 3 replies)

Back when I was a student.
It was around 2am, I couldn't sleep, and I had run out of cigs. Not being able to drive I had the option of waiting until the morning to get a smoke or walking 3 or 4 miles to get to the local 24hr Tescos. I make it down ok and got my cigs and a few late night snacks. I start walking back when I see a car pass me, then it comes back down the road a few minutes later. Next thing I know I see a car slowly approach me from behind. I'm not in a very good part of town. So my mind starts racing, where can I run, what do I have as a weapon. I figured I couldn't really run anywhere he couldn't drive quicker and the only thing I had for a weapon was a crunchy bar and a bag of crisps, not much good. Then I noticed the driver had his window open and was showing me something. It was his hat. More specifically his policemans hat. Thankfully he was looking for someone in that area and wanted to know if I had seen them, which I hadn't.

When he drove off I realised the only ID he had shown me was his helmet and then he was gone.
( bobzarkoff, Tue 10 May 2011, 1:43, 4 replies)

First ever after many years of lurking…

1: Many many moons ago, back in the day when Stoke City played at the Victoria ground, me and my now ex wife went to watch the (not so) mighty Preston North End play there. Unfortunately on arrival at said dump it transpired that I couldn’t find my wallet and she hadn’t brought her purse…fucksocks says I as we scrape together all the bits of loose change we could find and trundle off to the turnstiles. A very unsympathetic jobs worth then takes great delight in telling us we can’t get in because we are a pound short, twunt. As we step away one of Stokes finest boys in blue asks us if we are okay, to which I reply with our tale of woe, ‘here you go’ says he and fishes a quid out of his pocket, top bloke.

2: Back in the eighties my main form of transport was my thumb, met some great people and quite a few nutters, but anyway I digress. After one particularly long day hitching back from my mates who was at Oxford (not uni the poly) and having spent hours at the hell that is known as Knutsford services I finally get a lift of a wagon going up to Carlisle. At the time I was living near Blackpool in a place called Lytham so the offer of a lift to Preston left me about 12 miles short…..at 2a.m. The kindly driver did a detour up the M55 and dropped me at the Kirkham junction which only left me a brisk six mile walk home. So of I trot on my merry little way, sticking my thumb out when I hear a car coming not that there was much at that time of night. Then plod comes along in his nice warm van and give me the third degree for quarter of an hour, going through my bag, where have been, where are you going etc etc. Tight buggers wouldn’t give me a lift though so off I trundled in the lightly falling rain. Saw them four more times that night in the hour and a half it took me to walk home, the last time of which was when I got to my front door and they drove past giving me a cheery wave.

3: Again back in the eighties, this time in a police station for reasons that escape me, snag was, was the teenth that I had hastily shoved down my Y fronts whilst in the back of the 1.3 Escort. Fortunately I managed to shove it down the back of a radiator before being searched, and as it was summer the heating wasn’t on but I always did wonder if it gave of a tell tale aroma when winter kicked in.


Apologies for length but haven’t had any complaints before…
(Nigel101, Tue 10 May 2011, 1:15, 1 reply)

In which Grandmasterfluffles receives some strange advice
A pair of police officers used to come to my primary school a couple of times a year to tell us all about how to become good, law-abiding citizens. For the first few years this was fairly run-of-the-mill stuff about road safety. At around Year 5 however it started to get a bit weird. We were getting to the age when kids start being naughty, setting fire to dustbins and stealing sweets from corner shops, and the police officers’ job was to help nip such behaviour in the bud whilst we were still young and impressionable. However, they knew that we were nasty, selfish little sods and that appealing to our morality or sense of social justice would be futile. Instead they opted for trying to scare the shit out of us.

Stealing:

If you steal a packet of sweets from the corner shop, you will get caught. You will get a criminal record - yes, even if you’re only ten years old. This criminal record will make it impossible for you ever to get a job. You will be forced into a life of crime and prostitution and end up homeless, shooting up in alleyways and cursing that fateful day when ten-year-old you kowtowed to peer pressure to be one of the cool kids who steal sweets from the corner shop. IS IT REALLY WORTH THE RISK FOR A PACKET OF JELLY TOTS?

Alternatively, in the unlikely event that you are not caught stealing the jelly tots, the corner shop will be forced to absorb the loss by putting their prices up, and EVERYBODY’S JELLY TOTS WILL BE MORE EXPENSIVE.

Vandalism:

If you draw a childish and entirely unfunny crude drawing of a penis on a wall, you will get caught. You will get a criminal record. See Stealing for further details.

In the unlikely event that you are not caught, don’t think that there will be no consequences. The council will have to paint over your entirely unfunny penis sketch. This will cost money. Your parents’ council tax bill will go through the roof, and YOU WILL NOT GET A SEGA MEGADRIVE FOR CHRISTMAS.

Arson:

If you set fire to things, you will get caught. You will get a criminal record. See Stealing for further details.

Additionally, the fire will get out of control, and you will DIE OF FIRE. In the unlikely event of you not dying of fire, somebody else - probably a baby - will die of fire, and you will spend the rest of your life in jail for MURDERING BABIES.

Alcohol:

Alcohol is POISON. Drink it and you will DIE. In the unlikely event that it doesn’t kill you, you will be very, very ill. Do you think you’ll look cool hugging a toilet? Well, DO YOU? Additionally, you may have to have your stomach pumped. This costs money. Your parents’ taxes will go up to alleviate the strain on the NHS. See Vandalism for further details.

Drugs:

If you smoke a spliff, you will DIE. In the unlikely event that you don’t die, you will get caught, and get a criminal record. See Stealing for further details. In the extremely unlikely event that you neither die nor get caught, you will be forced into prostitution to fund your habit. Then you will DIE OF AIDS.

We liked the police officers though - they had cool uniforms, and got us out of normal lessons for an afternoon. I did feel that they were probably exaggerating things a bit though, and ten-year-old me did indeed get away with stealing sweets, drawing penises on toilet walls and necking my mother’s gin. I still don’t have a criminal record.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Mon 9 May 2011, 22:48, 10 replies)

Not long after passing my test...
...I was merrily blatting through the hole that is Ryton (the proper North East one) in my Fatha's Renault 11 GTX when I got pulled for going too fast in a 30 zone.

Upon bein asked the usual the plod then said 'Do you want to end up in court?' as in 'carry on driving like that and you'll end up in court.'

Not 'If you want to avoid court, slip me £££'s'

oops.

Later on in my driving life I had a charved up Fiesta with a 3-point harness. That got me pulled 3 times in one night with a producer for each one.

Bastards.

p.s. 1st post - WOOO!
(grinder_of_teeth, Mon 9 May 2011, 22:17, Reply)

Most half-hearted raid ever
I used to live in a house converted into flats, and my window was on the first floor over the door.

About 4am, there was a banging on the front door, and I stuck my head out of the window only to see several policemen outside, with a dog team.

'Hello. Can you let us in please?'

So I put some trousers on and opened the front door.

'Thankyou sir. We're looking for Mr J. Smith. Does he live here?'
'Not that I know of'
'Okay. Mind if we ask the other flats?'
'Not at all.'

So he goes round to each door whilst the rest of them wait outside, and knocks, and everyone tells him they're not J. Smith.

'Alright then. Thanks for your help, sir!'

And I shut the door behind them and went to bed.

Now, I'm not claiming to be an expert in policing techniques, but that didn't seem too thorough to me.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Mon 9 May 2011, 21:16, 3 replies)

I can't remember if I've told the one where I accidentally went to Afghanistan and got arrested by the Pakistani police while trying to sneak back down the Khyber pass
but trust me, there is nothing more terrifying than a few hours in a Pakistan border gaol. My only thought was: My mum is going to be soooo disappointed.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Mon 9 May 2011, 20:49, 5 replies)

Getting away with it...
Many years ago, when I hadn't long got my driving licence, I used to have a big heavy old Volvo 265 - the one with the big heavy old 2.7 V6 engine. The local constable who lived in the next village over and who served with a Hot Fuzz-like zeal had a fairly late model Sierra. Until he wrapped it, not being used to driving on twisty gravelly single-track roads. Then they gave him a Fiesta diesel, the 1.6 non-turbo version. Which he wrapped. On a twisty gravelly single-track road. So he got a shot of another Fiesta 1.6D with strict instructions not to even scratch it, or there would be Tea And Biscuits, and a Frank Discussion.

So I'm bimbling off to work as a jobbing arboriculturist at a little over 60... knots. Matey has a colleague in his car as he spots me, blue flashies, 75 in a 60, bugrit. Oh well, I was doing 75 in a 60, no question. Not much point arguing the toss, it only annoys them. *Not* arguing annoys them too, but there's not a lot they can say about it. After getting to site, cutting some wood, and heading home I thought "I know, I'll head round and visit my mate and play with some motorbikes, that'll cheer me up and distract me from my SP30-sullied licence."

I took a shortcut, along a twisty, gravelly single-track road, where leading up to a bend I could see black tyremarks of someone not really keeping on top of it coming up to a sharp left. Rounding the sharp left, I was greeted by the sight of a Ford Fiesta 1.6D in jammy sandwich colours, nose-first in a peat bog with the back end just barely on the road. Only one thing for it - stop.
Open up the back of the car, as the still rather shaken young polis - on his own in the car now, in the middle of nowhere, and in a bog - in the car he's not even supposed to get bird shit on - is unbuckling his seatbelt.
Root around among the weapons of mass deforestation for a big heavy bit of chain. Hm, he's looking nervous...
Hooked the chain around the towing eye on the front of the Volvo, and the towing eye on the back of the bog-snorkelling Fiesta.
Got in, not said a word to him yet, got back in, popped it into reverse, and with a rather menacing growl from the big heavy V6 slowly drew the chain tight, and s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y in case anything was caught underneath dragged the poor wee stricken Fordie back foursquare onto tarmac.
Unhooked the chain, and the constable got out of his car and inspected the damage to the front (muddy, nothing worse) as I rolled up the chain.
"Don't think anybody needs to say anything to anybody about anything today, do they?" I said.
"Uhm, no" he agreed. And drove off, very, very slowly and carefully. Especially round the twisty gravelly bits.
(gordonjcp, Mon 9 May 2011, 19:55, Reply)