Red Herring

I don't usually like to criticize officers much especially as a) Most of those that blog, provide a link to me and b)relations between Civvies and Coppers are already frayed. But when they try to muscle in on my turf it gets me a bit grumpy.

Today I was rushed from a very important shopping errand (cakes for the Office!) to attend a Burglary where the Officer had announced to the victim that there were Footprints and Fingerprints everywhere and replayed this find across the radio. I looked at my colleague and we both rolled our eyes and groaned. 'Why?'you ask, shouldn't we be pleased that there is obviously evidence left at the scene helping identify an offender?. If that were the case then yes. But unfortunately experience has taught me that when an officer can see fingerprints they are usually dirty glovemarks and the footprints will probably be clumps of mud in the carpet.

Now this isn't a huge issue, you can forgive the Officers ignorance as over-enthusiastic optimism and they do not have that SOCO trained eye. But it does get the Victims hopes up, only for us to turn up and scupper them with a sharp intake of breath like a Car mechanic telling you bad news. Indeed this was the case today, the victim found it hard to accept at first because the nice Officer had told her about the 'evidence', but after a little explaining all was good and no cakes suffered as a result.

So if you are a Police Officer and you think you can see Fingerprints then they are probably not Fingerprints, when faced with this Paradox you should simply say 'Keep away/don't touch that area until the nice (handsome and rugged) Forensic Man turns up.'