The terrorists have won again
and will again and again, while the crowds turn paranoid....
Northants cops blow up suspicious school play prop
Northamptonshire Police have advised anyone disposing of school play props to do so "responsibly", after a discarded piece of theatrical material caused a major bomb alert. According to the plods' own report, a "suspicious package" found this morning in Kingsthorpe was later downgraded to unsuspicious status, but not before it …
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 15:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: pic
Meanwhile, police have arrested a man wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag with "SWAG" written on it. Releasing the man later, officers said that the man was an actor on his way home from a film shoot and that "actors should consider getting changed after work instead of confusing police officers".
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 15:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
title
Maybe this should also be a lesson for the police to not get so worked up over something.
Terrorists wanted to bomb kingsthorpe? really?
I fully expect members of Anonymous to begin a campaign of terror by leaving "suspicious packages" (read, empty boxes with "I'm a big scary bomb" printed on the side) in random locations across the UK.
Why bother wasting time, resources and the potential for raising the suspicions of the UK anti-terror forces by trying to aquire/manufacture explosives when a little bit of art skill and careful depositing of the object can achieve the same level of blind fear and over reaction?
Too many people blindly follow procedures to the letter without engaging their brain and thinking "do I really need to do this or is there another way?", from these idiots who prolly get a thrill out of yelling down the radio "I need a bomb squad now now now" to morons who insist on demanding proof of age to buy alcohol when the person is 70 years old (Happened in a Morrisons apparently).
I know there's a whole "better to be safe than sorry" element, but surely there's something to be said for getting a job done with a minimum of hassle, fuss and expenditure.
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 19:58 GMT 100113.1537
Hmmmm
The Met Commissioner was just taken to task for suggesting that the emergency services shouldn't be forced to follow the same health and safety rules after criticism of the 7/7 bomb response. The Police Federation (cops union?) were screaming about safety on the job when the inquiry was criticizing the slow response time of actually getting people into the Underground to deal with casualties.
In NZ there was similar critizism after a mining accident when rescue crews were denied access by the police. The "better safe than sorry" argument is getting a bit of a battering just now.
[Big Brother - obviously]
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 23:59 GMT sam 16
But...
It's typical terrorist practice to anticipate emergency service response to an attack, and blow that up too.
In the past, several groups have guessed what hospital the casualties would be taken to and bombed the busy emergency department.
As there were several near simultaneous explosions around the city, expecting an attack on rescuers was basically sensible. This might have included blowing up the hospital, the evacuation route, or just setting a secondary bomb to explode half an hour after the first one.
When it comes down to it though, it's about risk. A firefighter needs to enter a burning building to search for casualties (10% chance of finding one who lives say). At what level of totally guessed risk do you not ask him to enter the building? 10% chance of him also dieing? Seems a tough ask...
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Wednesday 25th May 2011 10:37 GMT kissingthecarpet
Nothing to do
with "Health & Safety". At all. As someone pointed out, its the following of moronic procedures in a moronic way that does it. You point is a good one, but "better safe than sorry" is your Mum's idea of H&S. Health & Safety is a good thing - the laws stop employers risking their employees lives for the sake of profit - eg guards on dangerous machinery etc. I think the HSE get very upset about nonsense like this being conflated with their function.
The Filth's behaviour was less "Big Brother", more "Scared Little Brother", really
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 20:35 GMT Pete 2
When you've got it you're just itching to use it
> Maybe this should also be a lesson for the police to not get so worked up over something.
But, but, but ... they've got all this cop stuff. Dogs and helos and anti-terrrrist units and robots and sniffer-thingies and emergency units and training and ... and ... if they never get to use it WHAT'S THE POINT?
Which would you rather: spend all day trying to make writing that single-page report last until knocking-off time, or being able to pretend you were Bruce Willis and you were saving the world from Dick Dastardly? Being able to strut around and shout orders and impose the overwhelming might of your will on all the local squirrels and pigeons must be better fun than trying to think of another word for "suspect".
And as far as using common sense goes. Well yes, you or I might think that (and everybody else in the country too, for that matter) but really, we have no say whatsoever. From a cop perspective, would you prefer to not get yelled at by your boss for not following the rules to the letter or NOT inconvenience hundreds or thousands of inhabitants, who just want to get home/to work/away from the place? Since they are not answerable to any of us, ordinary people in any way shape or form there is little prospect (short of elected chef constables - you know: the police who wear big white hats) that they would ever feel the need to consider our comfort, convenience or expense - especially when there just might be a bit of excitement to be had.
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 15:39 GMT Peter Kay
Ooops
Still, this brings to mind the Doctor Who episode Remembrance of the Daleks
Amongst other things this features the rather fun Heavy Weapons Dalek - basically a squat Dalek with
a BFO gun on it which was used to destroy a reinforced iron gate.
The explosion was suitably impressive.
Unfortunately whilst filming this the Beeb forget to tell
anyone they'd be blowing up part of London and caused a
major terrorrism alert. Ooops.
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 15:59 GMT Phil Endecott
Sat Nav
This reminds me - was there no Reg coverage of the blokes whose sat nav directed them into the main entrance to Sellafield recently, or did I miss it?
Unluckily for them, they were "of Bangladeshi origin". Duff sat nav has resulted in some unfortunate incidents in the past, but perhaps none quite as nasty as having your homes searched and undergoing an "interview" by the terror plods.
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 20:01 GMT 4HiMarks
On the other hand
A security guard recently found an apparently lost toolbox outside a Federal building in Detroit. He brought it inside and placed it in the lost and found. Two week later someone decided to X-ray it and discovered that it WAS a bomb. All security guards were subsequently required to take a refresher course on handling of "suspicious packages".
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 20:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Where's the problem
The emergency services have just had a true to life simulation where they weren't sitting on their butts staring at their watches waiting for an arranged one to begin with the added benefit of it not costing anything to set up.
Maybe it's our duty to leave suspicious packages about to keep them on their toes.
As for the real cost. The respondents would have been paid their usual salary whether they where attending this emergency or having a cuppa back at the station so I guess the cost is that when they get back their tea will be cold and they'll have to buy another.
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Wednesday 11th May 2011 23:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Maybe it's our duty...
...to leave suspicious packages about to keep them on their toes."
The only shortcoming of this idea is the lack of an official publicly-released definition of what constitutes a suspicious package. Lacking such, how would one know what the authorities would regard as a suspicious package? One could waste much time and effort, leaving various and sundry parcels around which would be ignored.
The obvious solution is to tag them. For instance, one could place a pair of stinky athletic shoes in a shoe box and scrawl
EVIL SMELLING SHOES
on the side and leave it outside an office building or a shopping mall.
Or what about this? Any container, even an empty one, with Arabic writing on the side would be certain to arouse suspicion.
One caveat: Given how ubiquitous video surveillance is, one might want to wear a disguise, regardless of what a drag that might be.
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Thursday 12th May 2011 10:21 GMT Magnus Ramage
I know that area!
I often drive past that area of Northampton. It's a very ordinary ex-council estate, neither especially salubrious nor especially down-at-heel. Hardly a seething pit of terrorism. Good thing it wasn't a couple of hundred metres further into Kingsthorpe, where there's been permanent roadworks for years and traffic grinds to a halt for any excuse.
Agree about the bonkersness of the response. OTOH, if it had been a real bomb disguised as a fake bomb and they'd not blown it up, you can imagine the media reaction. Either way, the police can't win with this kind of thing.
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Thursday 12th May 2011 10:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
The bomb
It was black,
It was round,
It did have the word bomb in white lettering on it,
It did take the Police 3 hours to recognise it was a prop.
Huge credit to the local 6 and 7 years olds for making such a convincing prop!
The local plod I spoke to said that it was very obvious it was not a real bomb almost instantly, but procedures had to be followed.
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Thursday 12th May 2011 10:22 GMT elderlybloke
Even in New Zealand
We are super cautious nowdays.
I went into my Bank and filled in a form before joining the line for the cashier. After almost a minute an alert female staff member came across and asked if that was my briefcase at the form filling place.
I pleaded guilty of forgetting to pick it up.
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Thursday 12th May 2011 10:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Wait... wasn't there also a case...
Didn't crack English anti-terrorism-forces also, once, blow-up a "suspicious" cardboard box... that actually turned-out to be full of kittens..?
I wonder what they'd do if a mysterious container had "DANGER: NUCLEAR MATERIALS', warning-labels on it... go ahead and blow it up... I suppose.
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Friday 13th May 2011 00:13 GMT Suburban Inmate
Similar thing happened to me.
The key differences being it was a black box behind the driver's seat of a van, wired up to the dash, at Belfast Airport.
It was my Vibe subwoofer, but that was hardly obvious from the outside.
I did wonder why the place was absolutely crawling with machine gun toting coppers and ARU Land Rovers. I was later told they also, naturally, had the controlled explosion lads on standby.
Still, it was a laugh!
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