A Great Idea For A New ITV Late Night Docudrama…

‘NetCops’..!

“We are looking at a whole new area of open-source intelligence,” a senior Scotland Yard source told The Times.

“It has a part to play in a number of inquiries. But these social networking sites may also have a role in predicting incidents and helping us prevent them.

And it’s a far easier job than kicking down doors in the middle of the night and brawling with aggressive street youths in the rain. Never mind all that ‘Life on Mars’ rubbish, no-one really wants to be Gene Hunt, we’d all rather be Ferris Beuller…”

That last part may not be an actual quote… ;)

Of course, this new task brings its own problems:

Detectives have struggled with their lack of familiarity with the networking sites and teenage slang.

Lulz! I’ll just bet…

Not that that’s stopped the same old suspects from scenting a bandwagon they can jump on:

Gloria Laycock, director of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, (Ed: For real..? Sheesh…) in London, said that more research was required into why some young people carried weapons. “The messages that young people get influence their behaviour and they get a lot of those messages from social networking sites and the internet,” Professor Laycock said.

“They are very susceptible to the message of following the crowd . . . It is worth looking at how we communicate with young people and how they communicate with each other if we want to exert some control over their behaviour.”

Which roughly translates as ‘The cops are getting a chance to sit on their backsides in a cozy office all day, drinking coffee and browsing the web? That should be our bloody gig! Where’s our union rep..?’