That's not my van, guv (stickers!)

[Evanivitch]

This probably goes down as least amount of effort, biggest hole to dig...

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/van-...

"A van driver tried to con his way out of a speeding
ticket by adding stripes to his vehicle then submitting a
photo to the authorities claiming the eye-catching
decorations had always been there.

William Britton was snapped doing 74mph in a 60mph
zone but rather than taking the three points on his
licence he went out and bought stickers for his Ford
Transit and used them to pretend the vehicle caught on
camera wasn't his.

His deception was uncovered thanks to an
investigation which lasted 300 hours and involved
mobile phone movements, automatic number plate
recognition cameras, and bank records."

[covboy]

300 Hours ! Really -7+ weeks ?

[Ian Geary]

Go on then, I'll say it: are the police really underfunded?


OTOH, should idiots be allowed to get away with perverting the course of justice? Where would that lead ultimately..?

[Pica-Pica]

Read the story. In trying to avoid 3 points, he got a lot more, including a four months suspended prison sentence.

[Insert Coin]

Stripes on his van? What a tt.

[LosingGrip]

Ian Geary said:

Go on then, I'll say it: are the police really underfunded?


OTOH, should idiots be allowed to get away with perverting the course of justice? Where would that lead ultimately..?

Yes they are.

No they shouldn't.

[KurtFlew]

Ian Geary said:

Go on then, I'll say it: are the police really underfunded?


OTOH, should idiots be allowed to get away with perverting the course of justice? Where would that lead ultimately..?

They've got plenty of money to get a conviction and close a simple traffic violation to pad their records. They're skint if it comes to finding who nicked your bicycle.

[Evanivitch]

KurtFlew said:

They've got plenty of money to get a conviction and close a simple traffic violation to pad their records. They're skint if it comes to finding who nicked your bicycle.

Where do you start with a nicked bicycle?

[KurtFlew]

Any possible CCTV, the local spice heads, and anything else that might help.... even just being proactive for the sake of it, not just giving you a crime number like it's a receipt and dusting their hands off.

[NikBartlett]

I guess they decided this one was worth a proper investigation with a view to getting a rare prosecution and plenty of publicity to scare off anyone else trying the same. In reality they are not going to commit this much resource to every one of these investigations and most people will get away with it if they have the stupidity to try it. The downside is that they now have to balance this with the negative publicity as to why they don't bother even investigating most crimes.

[Plymo]

Evanivitch said:

KurtFlew said:

They've got plenty of money to get a conviction and close a simple traffic violation to pad their records. They're skint if it comes to finding who nicked your bicycle.

Where do you start with a nicked bicycle?

I imagine with 300 hours of investigation they could probably solve anything!
I remember a thread on here about a stolen motorbike, IIRC the guy had tracked it and narrowed it down to a few properties, police refused to even turn up.
300 hours, bank records, phone records etc would have solved that for certain.

I'm not saying the guy with the van shouldn't have been investigated or prosecuted but it seems a lot of resources for a single crime.

[Evanivitch]

Plymo said:

I imagine with 300 hours of investigation they could probably solve anything!
I remember a thread on here about a stolen motorbike, IIRC the guy had tracked it and narrowed it down to a few properties, police refused to even turn up.
300 hours, bank records, phone records etc would have solved that for certain.

I'm not saying the guy with the van shouldn't have been investigated or prosecuted but it seems a lot of resources for a single crime.

It's really not. The point is this investigation already had a time, place and most importantly a suspect.

[anonymous-user]

I guess the police have a particular dislike of someone blatantly taking the p*ss out of them, and there's clearly an incentive on their part to prevent society from creating ways of avoiding justice. As per the radar jammer bloke.

[martinbiz]

KurtFlew said:

Ian Geary said:

Go on then, I'll say it: are the police really underfunded?


OTOH, should idiots be allowed to get away with perverting the course of justice? Where would that lead ultimately..?

They've got plenty of money to get a conviction and close a simple traffic violation to pad their records. They're skint if it comes to finding who nicked your bicycle.

They're not closing a simple traffic offence though are they? The investigation was for attempting to PCOJ, somewhat more serious

[TCX]

Evanivitch said:

KurtFlew said:

They've got plenty of money to get a conviction and close a simple traffic violation to pad their records. They're skint if it comes to finding who nicked your bicycle.

Where do you start with a nicked bicycle?

When you tell the police said item is up for sale on gumtree,the seller provides different stories,IE lies,police can't,won't look into these, despite the person selling several bikes at a time is'known' to them,this happens frequently according to a stolen bike FB group I'm on hth

[Missy Charm]

Evanivitch said:

KurtFlew said:

They've got plenty of money to get a conviction and close a simple traffic violation to pad their records. They're skint if it comes to finding who nicked your bicycle.

Where do you start with a nicked bicycle?

The nearest canal?

One has to admire the van driver's ingenuity, even if it was doomed from the start.

[Pistonsquirter]

I just got flashed in the Honda Jazz doing 74 in a 50 (proper dual carriage way with central reservation btw!)

I was going to plead my case 'it's a 1.0L Honda Jazz your honour, you must be mistaken' but it sounds like it won't fool them these days

[martinbiz]

Missy Charm said:

One has to admire the van driver's ingenuity, even if it was doomed from the start.

Ingenious? No not really, just as thick as all of the others who make up stories to try and get off minor motoring offences and stupid enough to think that they're that clever their story is the one they will never have heard before

Why would you keep emailing for photos and then inform them that your van is different to the one in the photo weeks later, that's not likely to raise suspicion! Beggars belief really. Any genuine victim of cloning would be straight onto them after seeing the first photo

[J2daG1990]

silly bugger should have used the old Limited Company Loophole everyone's doing nowadays.

[martinbiz]

J2daG1990 said:

silly bugger should have used the old Limited Company Loophole everyone's doing nowadays.

Are they?