Police scrambled eight patrol cars filled with armed officers after a man in his 50s pointed a toy ray-gun at a baby and said 'Pow, Pow'.Oh, for the love of….!
Onlookers in Hove, East Sussex, were astonished when the police cars sped to the scene to apprehend the man.And in this age of institutional tolerance of even the most pointless and time-wasting ‘grievance’, the police duly responded in force, no doubt because you can’t be too careful, and it could well have been a realistic-looking imitation, instead of the ‘toy ray gun’ claimed by the ‘Mail’:
Alison Edmonds, 23, said that she saw the man - who is not believed to be related to the baby and mother - approach the pram holding the toy gun, before jokingly saying 'Pow, pow' while pressing the trigger repeatedly.
The mother of the child then called police, who sent an armed response team to find and arrest the man, who was waiting for a bus less than a few hundred yards away.So, after realising they had been made to look utter fools by a hysterical woman, did they apologise to the man and caution her for wasting police time?
Miss Edwards said: 'It was unbelievable. All he did was try to make the child laugh, but the mum decided to call the police and obviously told them a man with a gun had threatened her and her baby.
'What happened next was truly astonishing. I've never seen anything like it. These eight cars screamed to a halt and surrounded the poor man at the bus stop.
'They were fully kitted out with machine guns, rifles and everything.
'The man didn't know what was happening. All he was trying to do was make the baby crack a smile.'
Oh no:
Police seized the man's toy ray-gun and arrested him on suspicion of possessing an imitation firearm in a public place.The local paper has more, with opinions divided between those who think this is a pointless waste of police time, and those who think the police are right to treat ‘imitation firearms’ seriously, and therefore wholly approve of locking up an individual who did no more than behave foolishly in a public street because ‘he might be a nutter’.
They never feel that these laws could, one day, be applied to them, do they…?
OMG l do not know whether to laugh or scream WTF is the world coming to?
ReplyDeleteWait until you see the story about police officers banned from drinking Shandy Bass (a soft drink) on duty in case it gives 'the wrong impression'...
ReplyDeleteTruly, we are becoming a nation of infants!
I follow a 'sport' called airsoft. great fun running around shooting one another with a real imitation low powered air rifle or pistol. I have an M4A1 carbine and AK47 identical to the real thing. If I brandished one in public I fully expect to get jumped on by the Old Bill armed response unit and possibly shot. Both look very, very real.
ReplyDeleteHowever, a toy ray gun? They over reacted owing to loking bloody stupid in their own minds. they wren't to know this guy had a toy ray gun were they. the mother should have been arrested for wasting their time.
"...the mother should have been arrested for wasting their time."
ReplyDeleteIndeed.
One of the commentators to the 'Argus' paper seemed to think the man in question was a well known local homeless alcoholic, so you'd think she'd know better.
Mind you, that commenter then says "What sane adult man walks around with a toy gun and points it at people anyway?"
Err, I think the clue might be in the word 'alcoholic', there...
The idea of having elected police commissioners originally struck me as being a bit daft, but the more you highlight stories like this, the more I think that the police have completely and utterly lost the plot and that such an elected official might just have the termerity to call in said armed crack police squad into the office and tell them that the costs of the whole sorry episode were coming directly out of their pay.
ReplyDeleteThe Farce is strong in you, my young apprentice.
ReplyDelete