The Factory Next Door

Cannabis factories are everywhere. Literally everywhere. This has been shown in the last couple of weeks with a discovery of a cannabis factory in Legoland (Legoland for Christ's sake!) and another in an abandoned nuclear bunker.

Obviously it wasn't a new attraction that Legoland were trialing, it was a remote outhouse on their land, but it was there all the same.

More often than not, however, cannabis factories are found in normal suburban homes. Tending to be more prevalent in either council, housing association or privately rented houses which have been acquired using fake or stolen identities. Sometimes the details of the vulnerable are used to acquire the properties. The electricity will be bypassed to hide the excessive usage. Usually in a rather dangerous manner I might add. These properties are very much in demand by regular families at a time where housing is at such a great shortage in London. Instead they are used to grow cannabis.

Criminal gangs are said to make about £250,000 from each of the small suburban factories a year. And they have plenty of them. It is accepted that one by one they will be discovered, so new ones are constantly popping up to make up for any loss. Due to the high profits made, the loss of a single harvest and all the equipment involved is insignificant.

I've discovered many of these myself. Normally the door is forced and you will hear a frantic scurry from inside. Upon entry you will find a rear window open and a poor fellow darting away across the rear gardens. Occasionally you find these people asleep or simply waiting for police in amongst the plants. These guys are not the criminal masterminds. They are usually vulnerable people, or persons whom have entered the country illegally. In return for a place to stay and a pitiful wage they are paid to take care of the plants by the gangs.

Occasionally somebody will set up a mini cannabis factory in their own residence in order to supplement their income or feed their own habit. Twice (TWICE!) I have attended addresses where the occupant has wished to make some sort of allegation. They have called police to their home themselves! A quick whiff inside and an experienced copper knows exactly what is behind one of those shut bedroom doors. So twice I have been called by somebody to help them with something only to end up arresting them for cultivating cannabis. As I hinted at earlier, these people are not always criminal masterminds.

I've spoken before about the problems with relatively harmless drugs such as cannabis being illegal. These factories are everywhere, and even in the most surprising of places (for example Legoland). They are filling the coffers of criminal gangs with millions and millions of pounds every year and I hasten to guess that their profits aren't being donated to Cancer Research.

For every cannabis factory police find and shut down, another two pop up. So, the question remains, are you living next door to a factory?

Anonymous Bobby

Can A Copper Have A Cuppa?

On the BBC today was a story about two police officers who had stopped off to get a cup of tea on their way to a call. Unbeknownst to the officers a female was deceased and hanging at the address they were due to attend.

The call had come from a concerned friend who had received a suicidal message from the female in question. The call was originally directed to the ambulance service but was also passed to the police, most likely due to their ability to force entry into an address if required.

Police call handlers graded the call using normal the police triage. It was graded 'S'. This is the second highest grading a call can receive ('I' grade being the highest) and gives officers up to one hour to arrive on the scene. Whilst the limit is an hour, officers should arrive as soon as possible. ('I' grade calls have a 14 minute limit).

Lack of police officer numbers and recent cuts means that the officers out on the street, namely the response units, are almost always en route to one call or another. Whether its an 'I', 'S' or 'E' grade. ('E' grades have a 72 hour limit, they are unofficially known as "E-ventually" calls). That means that over a 10 hour day officers are constantly on their way to one call, diverted to another of higher grading, stopping at something they have come across direct such as a damage only road collision etc etc. Hardly ever are they 'On Patrol' - or free for whatever call comes out.

So this beggars the question, is it really that unreasonable that these two officers stopped to grab two cups of tea from Mcdonald's, which they probably drank whilst en route? For if officers only ever went to the toilet, had a drink, or ate whilst they were 'On Patrol' they would never do any of the beforementioned necessities.

Had PC Tony Stephenson and PC Gavin Bateman not stopped to pick up the two teas, the female would still have been dead in her home. She had died before the original call was made.

A 2 day hearing is due around the conduct of these two officers next week, costing God only knows how much. All because they dared to stop to get a cup of tea, before making the 'S' grade within the allotted one hour time slot. At a time when the public needs every police officer possible out on the street protecting them, this seems like a waste of everybody's time.

Police officers eat, drink, smoke, urinate and defecate just like everyone else. They are not entitled to any official break and often manage a constant flow of calls and people needing help by stopping and doing these things whilst en route to lesser graded calls such as the one in question.

An unprecedented attack on police officers on the street from within, the public and the media continues, and now it seems that despite the difficult work we do, we aren't even entitled to the most Englsih of constitutions, a simple cup of tea.

Anonymous Bobby