September 01, 2003

More Keystone Terrorism Cops

While Lancashire police were surrounding a seven-year-old boy with a plastic gun and holding his father at gunpoint, Kent police were stopping all the cross-Channel ferries and stranded almost 2,000 people for seven hours.

In the biggest terrorist alert since the army was sent in to Heathrow airport in February, three men were held under anti-terrorism laws for carrying two or three taser stunguns - the kind used in the UK by police. Police first said that x-ray scanners had found bomb-making equipment. How you mistake a stun gun for bomb-making equipment?

I think the Kent police just got lucky to find anything on these blokes. Tasers are widely available on the black market. If this had been a real suspected terrorism incident, Scotland Yard would have taken charge. Instead, a Met source made this comment: “What they found was not what they thought they found. Kent police didn’t want to tell us what was going on. It isn’t going to make them look very clever.”

Posted by david at September 1, 2003 12:26 AM