++> Forwarded to me by a friend, I thought it might be especially
++> interesting for OFATP. Brit-car content is marginal - dvh
++> ---------
++> Date: Wed, 17 Nov 93 13:47:10 GMT
++> Subj: If they do this with a Range Rover what would it be like with a 911?
++>
++> I guess this is Blues Brothers, UK style ...
++>
++> I don't know if anyone read a story in their Saturday morning tabloid
++> about a 3 hour chase around High Wycombe and surrounding towns which
++> resulted 9 [NINE!] police cars being totalled by three joyriders in a
++> Range Rover. What was printed in the papers was pretty astonishing
++> (for many reasons); however, it's not quite the full and unexpurgated
++> story. I live in Wycombe, and about 0200 on Friday morning I was woken
++> up by a jellywopper hovering low over my house and waving a searchlight
++> about in my general direction; obviously the police, and it worried me
++> enough that I went and dug out my old FM airband radio to see if I
++> might discover what kind of gun toting psycho they were looking for in
++> close proximity to my front garden. As a result, I listened into the
++> whole incident in it's un-glossed form; the police don't come out of it
++> smelling of roses.
++>
++> The lunatic driving the Range Rover was obviously an excellent driver;
++> bloody good job, too, because if he hadn't been he would surely have
++> been through the side of someone's house, the speeds he was being
++> chased at. As it was, the only thing he hit all night were police
++> vehicles, all of them deliberately. After three hours every high-speed
++> traffic jam sandwich for miles around, including the local armed
++> response vehicle, was a pile of twisted metal. The police were reduced
++> to following in their bottom-of- range Astra panda cars, or more
++> accurately hiding from the Range Rover which had gone from pursued to
++> pursuer; I heard one car calling in an asking if it was safe for him to
++> drive up the A40. As soon as the helicopter ran out of juice, they lost
++> the Range Rover...
++>
++> The Metropolitan plod come out of this really well (not); they wouldn't
++> lend Thames Valley another helicopter to continue the pursuit. At no
++> time during those three hours did they apparently think of calling up
++> Range Rovers, or Landy Discoveries from adjacent areas to ram or box in
++> the Range Rover; instead they just aimlessly chased it around the area
++> at breakneck speed. If they couldn't catch it, why on earth were they
++> chasing it and risking their, the thieves, and many other peoples lives
++> in the process?
++>
++> Anyway, the newspapers DIDN'T mention that not all of the police
++> vehicles were trashed by hitting the Range Rover; at least two of them
++> hit each other in severely embarrassing circumstances, and a third very
++> expensive traffic car, provided like the others by the polltax payers
++> of this fair county, disappeared down a bunker on the 18th fairway at
++> Flackwell Heath Golf Course while pursuing the Range Rover thereupon.
++>
++> What really concerns me, though, is the police justification for the
++> whole incident. The car sped through a speed trap in Wycombe; fair
++> enough, I wasn't listening to the chase then. The police also allege,
++> in the paper, that 'The three occupants of the car could be seen taking
++> drugs while they were driving along'. I presume that this is designed
++> to lend weight to the police argument that apprehending these people
++> was worth the risk to life and limb, not to mention the entire new
++> vehicle budget for Buckinghamshire this year and next. But all I can
++> say to that is 'B*ll*cks'! The police couldn't even see their faces
++> well enough to describe them, let alone 'see them taking drugs'. Unless
++> they were shooting up with their arms out the window, I don't know how
++> they could have. A Range Rover is four feet above a cop car anyway, so
++> they'd have a job seeing anything going on inside, and the way this guy
++> was driving, it was very unlikely he was on anything except, just
++> conceivably, speed.
++>
++> Besides, I was listening to the whole thing and I didn't hear drugs
++> mentioned once in all of the commentary or discussion from the police
++> in the two hours I was listening. My conclusion: They're making that
++> bit up. Inspires confidence doesn't it?
++>
++> You couldn't have made a film about this; this is High Wycombe, not
++> Hazzard County. What exactly do we pay our police for? Is it enough
++> that they risk their lives, as they clearly were here, or do we require
++> that they do it competently, and to a purpose, and cost effectively,
++> without risking our lives as well? Or perhaps it is that they behave
++> like the Keystone Kops, as they did on Friday morning... And what, dear
++> reader, would have happened if any really significant crime had been
++> committed in Bucks on Friday morning, while the ARV, and most of the
++> other Police Cars were gaily sticking out of the scenery in and around
++> the High Wycombe area?
++>
++> The final result of this sorry debacle, of course, is that the driver
++> of the Range Rover is going to be a real hero among his friends. After
++> all, Smokey and the Bandit has nothing on him... even I can't help but
++> have a sneaking admiration for the little toe rag, so his peer group
++> will have no trouble. We will now be invaded by hoardes of his pals,
++> probably less able than him, all keen to be a hero like him. People
++> will be injured, or even die as a result of all this. No doubt the
++> police will then bleat about how they need more resources and more
++> powers and more this and more that... how about new commanders, new
++> training, new objectives and new brains?
++>
--
William woodruff woodruff@caen.engin.umich.edu
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