Here come the Keystroke Kops! While woman's car was torched police trawled her laptop for evidence of Facebook cybercrime
As Lesley Ross's boyfriend took to the streets of Aberdeen in search of the top-of-the-range Audi, she went on Facebook to appeal for help
When Lesley Ross’s car was stolen she reported the theft to the police but didn’t hold out much hope of them finding it. So she decided to turn detective herself.
Her boyfriend took to the streets of Aberdeen in search of the top-of-the-range Audi and Lesley went on Facebook to appeal for help.
Soon, sightings were flooding in every 15 minutes. The Audi was still in the city and one report had it being followed by a police car.
Lesley kept up a running commentary online.
The thieves had broken into her house by kicking in a dog flap and stealing the keys.
She said: ‘I can’t believe the power of Facebook. It was amazing. I put up a photo of the car, telling people to phone the police if they spotted it. There must have been hundreds of postings.’
As the hunt progressed, Lesley wrote: ‘Why can’t the cops catch them? They (the thieves) must have been keeping an eye on my house. They have stolen my Range Rover spare keys, too. Are they planning on coming back?
‘Feel sick thinking about it. Hope they wrap the car round a lamp-post and maim themselves.’
At 10.30pm that night, while her boyfriend Ricky Strachan was still scouring the streets, two police officers knocked on the door.
Had they found the car? No, they had come to give her ‘words of advice’ about the way she was ‘handling things on Facebook’.
Lesley said: ‘They were all over my laptop taking screen grabs. The female officer wrote something in her notebook and made me sign it.
‘I asked them to clarify that I was still the victim here and not the criminal. She just said: “We’ve got to make sure we’ve got everything covered.”’
Shortly after the police left, Lesley went back on Facebook to discover her Audi had been torched.
Photos of the blazing vehicle had been posted by a notorious group of local car thieves who call themselves ‘The AberdeenBoyz Stig’ and have their own Facebook page where they boast about their crimes.
Lesley admits she may have been a little intemperate, but can’t believe that the police appeared to be more concerned about her remarks on a social network than finding her car. Sadly, I can believe it.
To add insult to injury, when the officers did finally return three hours later to inform her the car had been burned out — something she knew already — they told Lesley she would responsible for collecting it.
It seems extraordinary that while the police could find time to warn Lesley about her 'offensive' comments on Facebook, they couldn't track down a stolen car being driven through the streets of Aberdeen
It does seem extraordinary that while the police could find time to warn Lesley about her ‘offensive’ comments on Facebook, they couldn’t actually track down a stolen car which was being driven at high speed through the streets of Aberdeen.
There were enough sightings reported. And if the police could monitor Lesley’s Facebook page, why didn’t they check out the site belonging to the AberdeenBoyz? Presumably this wee gang of local neds is ‘known to police’.
When a motor goes missing in Aberdeen, you’d expect them to be Plod’s first port of call. Yet while Lesley’s car was being torched, the bold Bill were trawling her laptop in pursuit of cyber crime.
A spokesman for Aberdeen police said inquiries into the stolen car were ‘ongoing’.
He added: ‘During the course of the investigation, suitable advice and guidance was offered to one of the owners of the vehicle about the content of some social media posts they had made following the incident’.
New 'crimes': Surely the police don't have a squad of officers constantly monitoring the internet in search of 'offensive' remarks?
What was it the police found so offensive? Was it Lesley’s wish that the thieves wrap the car round a lamp-post and maim themselves? Or was it her asking why the police couldn’t catch them?
Answers on Facebook to Aberdeen nick.
Presumably the police were alerted to Lesley’s Facebook page by members of the public ringing in to report sightings of the stolen Audi. Surely they don’t have a squad of officers constantly monitoring the internet in search of ‘offensive’ remarks? Actually, these days I shouldn’t be surprised if they do.
Even so, their priority should still have been dealing with a real crime in progress, not poring over every keystroke on a victim’s laptop.
Mind you, this is typical of the way in which the modern police ‘service’ find investigating exciting new ‘crimes’ much more to their taste than actually going out on the streets catching old- fashioned criminals.
On Tuesday, I wrote that I don’t want to get a reputation for kicking the police gratuitously. Truly, I don’t. But stories like this come across my desk every day of the week, sent in by law-abiding, tax-paying Daily Mail readers who despair at the behaviour of certain sections of the police. Am I supposed to ignore them?
I also hear from plenty of serving and ex-officers who are increasingly ashamed at what The Job has become — an arrogant, insular, incompetent, box-ticking bureaucracy which regards every single member of the paying public as a potential criminal.
Let me reiterate yet again: there are tens of thousands of decent coppers out there trying to do their best every day. But they are hamstrung by the new breed of fast-track, careerist chief officers, who spend their lives playing politics and setting ‘priorities’ which bear no relation to the real world.
We’ve ended up with Keystroke Kops who’d rather investigate imaginary Facebook ‘crimes’ than catch car thieves. It can’t go on. The police are in crisis, from the Met to Aberdeen.
On Tuesday, the first half-hour of Channel 4 News was devoted exclusively to discussing the various shortcomings of the Old Bill, including the allegations that members of the diplomatic protection squad tried to fit up the former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell.
Maybe it’s time for a far-reaching judicial inquiry into the ‘culture, practices and ethics’ of the police.
I wonder what Lord Justice Leveson’s up to these days.
They seek him here, they seek him there
Looking at Men's Fashion Week over the past few days, even Ray Davies would be lost for words
It’s more than 45 years since Ray Davies wrote Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, brilliantly satirising the preening peacocks of the Swinging Sixties.
Looking at Men’s Fashion Week over the past few days, even Ray would be lost for words. Most of the designs were beyond satire.
They should have had Frank Spencer on the catwalk. ‘Ooo, Betty, I’ve done a whoopsie in my onesie.’
Forget the prats with wooden planks on their heads. The one who made me laugh out loud was the bearded bloke who looked like a Taliban tribesman in a suicide vest.
If you were on patrol in Helmand Province and he came walking towards your checkpoint, you’d have no hesitation putting a bullet between his eyes.
Missing Somali terror suspect Ibrahim Magag gave his surveillance officer the slip by calling a London black cab.
That’s what I call a lucky escape. Magag was fortunate to find a cabbie going his way.
‘Somalia? That’s south of the river, innit? Sorry, guv, I’m on my way home to Cheshunt.’
Do you still think those Coalition cuts are savage?
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Most of us struggle to get our heads around the scale of Britain’s financial problems. We’re too busy worrying about balancing our own budgets.
The debate is dominated by the ‘savage cuts’ being imposed by the Coalition to tackle the train-crash economy inherited from Labour. But how are we supposed to put any of this into perspective? The figures are mind-boggling, the political squabbling puerile.
As it happens, there’s a formula doing the rounds on the internet that was originally designed to help Americans understand their own ‘fiscal cliff’.
It relates the U.S. Federal Government finances to a typical household budget. I’ve adapted it to Britain, using data for 2011-2012, the last full financial year available.
The figures come from the BBC and Guardian websites, so no one can accuse me of being biased.
UK tax revenues £550,600,000,000
Spending £694,890,000,000
New borrowing £117,500,000,000
Outstanding debt £1,312,100,000,000
Spending cuts £11,000,000,000
Now take off seven zeros and pretend it’s a household budget.
Annual family income £55,060
Annual family spending £69,489
New debt on credit card £11,750
Outstanding credit card balance £131,210
Family spending cuts £1,100
Still think those cuts are ‘savage’? If UK plc was a family, we’d be spending fourteen grand a year more than we earn, we’d owe the credit card company over £140,000 and we’d be offering to pay it off at twenty quid a week.
Sadly, we’ve come a long way from Mr Micawber: ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’
Micawber was one of life’s optimists, always confident that ‘something will turn up’.
For all our sakes, let’s hope so.
Britain is forecast to be covered in snow this weekend. Who’d have thought it — snow in January? According to the Met Office, it’s a direct result of global warming.
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