Diary of a former Bow Street Runner

To the police, some people are stupid...

...terminally stupid, in fact, because the stupidity doesn't just occur in small doses - it's a lifelong affliction. To fully reason out this generalisation would involve several volumes of writing, but here's an anecdote involving individuals who have the ability make two short planks look like a computer.

Last week we drove past a takeaway where there was an altercation of some sort. We pulled out and surveyed the scene - several of the usual suspects (drunken idiots from the nearby estate) crowded around one of their own, with another imbecile in the takeaway arguing with staff.

Once we'd parted the group to try and find out what was wrong, the guy in the middle took his shirt off and revealed a spectacular wound in the back of his shoulder. Several tried to explain what had happened to us, but the voices merged into a cacophany of drunken primordial noise. Fingers were stabbed (pun intended) in the direction of the takeaway, which I loosely interpreted to be the scally version of " 'E 'dun it ", so my colleague went over and asked for the takeaway staff's version of events whilst I arranged for an ambulance to attend.

Takeaway staff are regularly subjected to drunken idiocy from the dregs of the human gene pool, and I'm surprised they don't lose their cool on a more regular basis. According to the takeaway staff, this group of neanderthals were particularly bad, and whilst I've yet to find out what it actually was made the server snap, the upshot of it all was that someone standing outside had ended up as a human shish kebab.

Putting aside the obvious joke that some takeaways really will put anything on a skewer these days, we had a straightforward Section 18 assault fuelled by stupidity and alcohol, but mostly stupidity. The guy bleeding was a muppet for his intoxicated antics, and his group were nincompoops for acting in a similar fashion, whilst the server was a fool for trying to add "drunk muppet" to their menu. Of course he had to be arrested, and he was placed in a van.

Sadly, the stupidity didn't end there. The rest of the human kebab's friends had phoned around conveying the news of this abject horror, with enlightened phrases such as "they come to our country and they do stuff like this" peppering the conversations. Resisting the temptation to ask the chavs why it's ok for their ilk to inflict such misery on people, but worse when "immigrants" do it, I got the feeling that this incident would not end once the victim was off to hospital at the same time as the offender was off to the cells. Other patrols arived soon after.

Sure enough, the Scally Army arrived to save the day, in the form of a bloke with a pitbull terrier by his side, controlled by a metal chain. As the bloke went up to his bleeding mate, being treated by the ambulance which had now arrived, to console him, the pitbull sensed fear and anger in the air and latched itself on to the victim's trousers, nearly tearing them off and adding insult to injury. I retreated back whilst the group tried to point out (ironically) the stupidity of wandering into a group of people whilst having a dangerous animal straining at the lead. He got the message and left.

As if the god of inanity had laid a curse upon us, a hulk of a man then arrived with a nice full bottle of Strongbow in his hand. He passed several of us, placed his tipple on the floor, went into the takeaway and tried to swing out at the takeaway staff whilst yelling obscenities. We bundled him out, but he foolishly told us that if we left the scene, he'd go inside and do it again. With such cleverness outwardly manifesting latent moronic tendancies, he was locked up and placed in another van, to save him from himself if nothing else.

Further illustration of the stupefying obtuseness of the Gathered Unwashed was seen in their demands for summary justice. Due process and habeas corpus be damned, this lot wanted the perpetrator sorted, and sorted NOW! Would that society could be controlled so arbitrarily, I would at a stroke be arresting the majority of those we encounter on duty for offending against base human intelligence, or at least possession of Class A senselessness.

Unfortunately, when you encounter and interact with such people on a regular basis, you fear either for the future of the human race, or for your own sanity. Usually both.

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