Regular readers will be well aware that our illustrious sponsors, leading professional claims handling providers Bankstone, take the dimmest of possible views of motor scooters being co-opted in the perpetration of crimes against person or property.
The recent spate of attacks in which solvents have been sprayed in victims’ faces (resulting in serious injury and/or permanent disfigurement) has focussed crimefighters’ minds as never before on the issue of scooter-enabled crime.
One of the fiercest frustrations facing those intent on combatting the moped mobsters has been namby-pamby soft-on-crime rules forbidding police from chasing criminals on motorcycles when the suspects aren’t wearing helmets.
But the cops now have a new weapon of their own that could turn the tide of motorised youth thuggery, a weapon based, ironically enough, on the same principles of pressurised propulsion put to such vicious and cynical use by the Harpic-in-a-Nerf-Gun crew.
Regional news source getSurrey recently reported that five suspects were arrested after quick-thinking cops sprayed them or their vehicles with a ‘special spray’ that’s indelible, invisible, and marks the suspect out for future arrest using a synthetic DNA cod.
Along with that synthetic DNA code, the spray – tested for the first time earlier this month in such exotic southerly locations as Elmbridge, Runnymeard and Spelthorne – also has magic UV bits that show up when you shine a special light on them.
This allows cops to go round directing a special UV light wand at people, bikes and cars to see if they have had special spray sprayed on them – and then they can start arresting people. The spray is expected to play a key role in the fight against lid-less fugitive scooter crims.
To spray effectively, officers must get within 5 metres of their intended target. Otherwise they might end up spraying thin air or themselves or other officers, which could lead to the wrong people getting arrested. If that sounds challenging, Spray Day One proved otherwise.
During a single day of spraying, Surrey cops managed to mark no fewer than 17 people and 23 vehicles, subsequent checking of which led to the arrest of five individuals, one of whom was found to have 125 grams of cocaine and a couple of joints in his car.
Calming fears that cops might go a bit crazy with the new spray (which stays on a person’s skin for several months and in their lungs for potentially rather longer), Slurry Police spokesman Inspector Alan Sproston insisted that officers will only let loose when they have a ‘valid reason’.
Sproston told getSorry that the spray allows officers to “target transient offenders who use vehicles to carry out crimes,” adding that it sends a clear message that “people using scooters to commit crimes will be marked and consequently identified from the DNA UV spray.”
Anything that nudges scooters away from grim images of hammer-wielding thugs and back towards chic Italian teens buzzing round La Città Eterna (or even Phil Daniels hanging Brighton around in a parka) sounds just fine as far as Bankstone News is concerned.
Nice one, Sprosty, we say here. Spray on Surrey Police Dudes!
Sproston: no place to hide from my spray
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