Odd webs

    Imagine: You receive a report that an expensive push bike has been stolen from the bike compound. The fence around the compound is of the steel paling type, with the spiky, fleur-de-lis type tops. You are too busy with other happenings to do an imediate review of CCTV, but will be able to do it, perhaps, tomorrow. As it is, you are dealing with a couple of shoplifters and what appears to be a stabbing. A cyclist has, he claims, been stabbed by a female on Charge St, he has fallen off his bike, due to loss of blood. A couple of good Samaritans have called for an ambulance, but you cannot assist as unfortunately there are no cameras covering Charge St. The female has left the scene with the victims bike, so you start an area search with the cameras, looking for the female, as obviously, this could be an attempted murder, and she is the prime suspect.

    Meanwhile, the on site engineer, after messing about with a reluctant work station (all damn day), admits defeat, and offers to check the recording for the stolen bicycle. This will test the workstation realistically, and relieve you of a probable nothing to report. And make him feel useful. With some success. He actually sees the suspect, he is with a woman with a push chair She wanders off, and the suspect is seen to climb over the fence into the bike compound, and about 5 minutes later, sees the suspect throw the bike over the fence then climb out.

There is lots of radio traffic referring to the stabbing. Police are being mobilised, descriptions passed...

   Your shift relief has come in, been another loooong day single manned, with only a very sweary engineer for company. You have to carry on what you are doing, whilst you brief the relief. Your handover includes what the engineer is doing because, well, it may be relevant. At this moment, a description of the victim of the stabbing is passed over the radio... You look at your relief, the engineer looks at you, your relief looks at him. Realisation dawns. The 'victim', and the 'thief' are one and the same thing!

Further quick study of the CCTV, shows as the thief climbs back over the fence, he slips and impales himself on it! Why he tells his good Samaritans that the female has stabbed him we do not know, but now we can understand why she ran off. After all, theft is much worse than attempted murder isn't it? The thief is carted off to hospital, (at our, the taxpayer's, expense) the female has absconded with the stolen bike. The child in the push chair? Sadly we do not know. 

    Much later: In hospital, the female arrives to find out how her partner (it turns out) is. She is arrested for receiving stolen goods. The bike is recovered too.