Londonist was watching the future of law enforcement yesterday afternoon. No not Robocop, but this quantum leap forward in making the police force look even sillier than they already do - head mounted video cameras.
We were going to rant on about yet another little slip down the road to a Children of Men style cityscape, but then the spokesperson on News 24 said that we have nothing to worry about as long as we do nothing wrong. So that's ok then.
We got further reassurance that men in uniform shoving their helmets in our general direction was nothing to worry about when we realised that your average plod will never get them to work properly. If they can't manage to work out how a telephone works then they're probably a couple of years away from mastering the on and off button of a camera:
Two police officers have apologised to a single mother after accidentally leaving a filthy message on her answer phone. Putney woman Laura Whibley was horrified when she checked her messages to find one from the pair of laughing policemen who joked that she loved group sex, was a "pain in the arse" and even had an unusual use for a shaved cactus.
These two fuckwits forgot to hang up the phone before discussing exactly what they thought of the woman who had come to them for help after a long campaign of harassment, which has included receiving death threats over the phone and her car being petrol bombed.
So what's the best way to spell out to their colleagues that this kind of shit is unacceptable? How about taking them off that one case and having a senior officer keep an eye on them for the next 12 months. Unbelievable. Then again when you let other officers shoot people in the face and keep their jobs it would seem a little harsh for these two jokers to lose their jobs for simply letting people know exactly what grade A wankers they were.
Maybe it's the police and not the public that should be under 24 hour surveillance.
Image from sw2guy's Flickr stream and the Londonist pool
