We witnessed, we entrapped, we got them busted.

During the early 90’s, got transferred to a night security station in a tired government office block. Was a two man site, so me and the other guard would keep ourselves amused by buggering about with the row of CCTV feeds in our office from the array of cameras situated about the site. “Police, camera, action” it wasn’t. For one thing we didn’t know what we were doing, so couldn’t operate them properly. Nor were we that interested and really only used them to follow the progress of each other as we took turns to do a walkabout of the site every two hours.
It did pass for amusement to encounter an impassive glaring camera that would start “Nodding “ and spinning erratically when you walked under it. A few times the dayshift guards, after taking over would question why some cameras were trained directly skywards, like some kind of stoned Johnny-five.

One camera overlooked the front carpark, and from there onto a quiet side street with a telephone box. This camera became our source of idle viewing at the infrequent pedestrians that would amble along, mainly bored Chavs, dog walkers and other night dwellers.

My work mate who clearly displayed a more advanced state of “stir-crazy” than myself got the number from the telephone box and took to ringing the phone when we observed anyone walking past it, then ring off just before they would lift the receiver, only to ring back when they were walking off. Tedious I know, but a welcome distraction despite nudging a few perfectly decent members of the public to the edge of their sanity.

Then one night we saw three Hoodie-types swaggering along in that stupid exaggerated walk, looking in car windows and yelling at each other with animated hand gestures. We sat up and observed them silently with growing contempt. One of them tossed a half full milkshake to the ground as they passed our phonebox.
My workmate hissed and grabbed the phone and rang the number.
Chav.1 “Yeah Hello?”
SG: “PICK …THAT… UP!!”
Chav.1 .Ah dunno who it is…OOO ARE YA?
SG: None of yours, Pond-life, just pick up the shake!.

Hence insults, threats, observations about our mothers ensued. To our credit we gave plenty back, ridiculing them on their elaborate dress sense, the way they swaggered about like drunk-chimps, we really were running rings round them. They had to be F**kwitts or smashed cos none of them made the connection that we could see them despite dropping these cast iron hints. They then resorted to violence, obviously cos they couldn’t find us, they chose the phone box itself. Attempting to put the booth windows through, trying to smash the receiver.
We watched with disdainful enthusiasm at the image of these three lunatics blurring round the booth in frenzied showmanship. “Oh yeah. This is brilliant, we gotta shop em”.

A call with the words “Security, Government building, observing real-time criminal damage etc”. The police must have been as bored as we were, to say they hit the ground running weren’t even close. My workmate and I observed some truly conclusive police work, bodies stretched over the bonnet, a few subtle extra elbows and knees here and there to soften them up. It made a real highlight reel.
The police never asked us for further info, guess they figured it wasn’t needed as they caught them in the act. I will never forget Chav.1 head bowed, shrunken shouldered, gingerly replace the handset and step out to face the music.

Length? No.. no, not even a stretch…. maybe 50 hours community service. Tops
(Eeeza bit Tidy A blink, a pause, a blush and then I knew., Fri 15 Feb 2008, 12:46, Reply)