[Closed] 24 Hours in Police Custody - TV last night

Yep. Pretty mental!

My Wife used to work at Thorpe Wood, so she was watching with great interest!! 🙂

It did seem extraordinary - it's as if he thought he'd be the only one looking at the data so could cover it up. The other officers checking internet searches and the like didn't appear to take too long to figure out where those had originated from. Duplicate copy of the blackmail letter in his kitchen bin, not disguising himself when likely to be on CCTV, etc.

You'd think as a surveillance officer he'd know what the police would look for and therefore cover his tracks. As one of his (ex) colleagues noted: why risk career, pension, marriage for £1000?

I suppose he thought the guy would just pay up and didn't plan on actually being part of the investigation.

Trying to make quick money I think. What to pay off I'm not sure.

I really like the programme, the amount of effort to make it must be huge. They''ll have to film hours and hours of footage of cases, then wait for them to go to court before they can even think about making an episode out of single case.

It was really compelling viewing but left me with more questions than answers.

Would an experienced, (apparently) intelligent and good copper really risk so much for £1k reward?

Why did he do such a crap job of carrying out the blackmail?

What was his motivation?  Financial gain, power, boredom?

I reckon I could have done a better job than him. He left a ransom note in his house for gods sake. It was almost like he wanted to be caught

It just didn’t seem to fit together. Was he perhaps being blackmailed himself? Perhaps he is married to Louise and wanted a get out.

why risk career, pension, marriage for £1000?

If you think about it it's actually not as stupid as it sounds.  Once you've decided that you are going to blackmail someone for cash then your primary objective is to get as much money as you can whilst ensuring the target stays quiet.  If you go for a huge amount of money then your target is more likely to report you as the cost to them is so high, whereas if you make it a relatively low amount of money they are more likely to pay up to keep you quiet.

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm really looking forward to it, it seems right up my alley! (spoilers don't bother me with factual stuff).

and I guess he starts small in his demands and the victim pays up then he can go back and ask for more, and more and more.......

He googled 'how to get rich from petty crime' ffs.

or he'd already had previous 'punters' pay him £1000 quietly and not report it?

In not covering his tracks, he obviously didn't consider getting caught/not getting caught. I think if he had, he wouldn't have gone through with it in the first place.

You sound like you know what you're talking about, gonefishin 😉

It was unbelievable how naive he was especially keeping photos in his bedroom and the ripped up copy of the letter in his bin. You would have thought he would have at least shredded them...  Must have realised the game was up when he was involved in the surveillance of his own drop off point!

I drive past that drop off point on my way to and from work practically every day and have cycled along that bridlepath on numerous occasions. Wonder if they picked up the money 😉

I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m really looking forward to it, it seems right up my alley! (spoilers don’t bother me with factual stuff).

It's very Line of Duty in places

I really like the programme, the amount of effort to make it must be huge. They”ll have to film hours and hours of footage of cases, then wait for them to go to court before they can even think about making an episode out of single case.

We actually built an entire rig for that show into a pelican case (recorders, sound mixer, radio mic's, camera control, monitors, everything) so the only thing that had to be installed were the cameras and wiring which could be left in place for the duration. Meant they could cover far more police stations than before, just park the transit in the car park as an office and plug it into the wiring (admittedly it's still about 30 wires), but means they should get more/better stories.

They still have a big setup at Luton but the more mobile setup got some interesting stories.

This one really felt like a drama for quite a while. Absolutely bizarre that he thought he'd get away with it.

The prostitute and pimp driving round in a camper van was also pretty funny/depressing to see.

You sound like you know what you’re talking about, gonefishin

Purely a thought experiment.  M'lord.

I was impressed how transparent Bedfordshire police were, in allowing such detailed footage about one of their own.

Probably some sort of double bluff.

Why surprised? It's entirely normal for senior Police officers to throw their colleagues under the bus if it makes them look good at their next promotion board.

Take that PC in Manchester who jumped in the river... without Hoff's intervention he'd probably be on charges for not doing a proper Health and Safety risk assessment.