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Despite the thousands of bullets that were found, the police did not feel the need to evacuate the couple

Gaz wrote: These stories of "GIANT CACHE OF DEATH NEUTRALISED BY BRAVE COPS" are invariably based on police press releases made available to local and national reporters alike. Some of those pictures are obviously taken with a phone camera by the family themselves, while the pictures of the dud ammo has all the hallmarks of police PR - gloved hands (intended to make the reader think "ah, forensics, they'll catch the buggers!) and zoomed out far enough to make actual details difficult to pick out.

This type of thing usually makes it as a page lead on a local paper because it's relatively rare, and because neither reporter nor editor nor (the vast majority of) readers actually understand that the greatest danger from hauls like this is more likely to be lead poisoning rather than any ability to explode or be fired.

Police like to plug these things heavily to try and win brownie points for their "public confidence" agenda. With a bit of nouse you can see most of what they recover tends to be either stolen tacticool .22s or rusty old pistols that haven't seen any maintenance since May 1945.

The logical conclusion of this police PR strategy is the shocking and disgraceful raid on Mick Shepherd, which was done hand-in-glove with the press (who enjoy being invited along to see a few doors kicked in, heads banged together and some hardware to play with - as would anyone here, I suspect) purely for PR purposes. As we all know well, Mick was as innocent as a newborn lamb and the police fishing expedition failed to turn up anything.

I would put money on the couple in this story being interviewed either after a briefing from the police PR, to "suggest" things to mention to the reporter, or with the PR handlers actually present to prompt them to say how terrified they were when they found the corroded old brass (clue - not so terrified as to pick it up, walk off with it and show it to their mates!) and how glad they were to see brave PC Plod turning up to save them from CERTAIN DEATH or some such rubbish.

As a local news editor I always avoided running these PR pieces unless I could tell for myself that they'd found something worthwhile. That happened rarely.

Burner wrote:What pray tell could a cat have done with it?

Sim G wrote:Goodness me Gaz, haven't seen such anti-police rhetoric of this magnitude, from you in a while...

Go on, give them a bell. Ask if they did as you suggest....

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Dougan wrote:

Burner wrote:What pray tell could a cat have done with it?

That's exactly what I thought - Does the cat have a grudge?

Gaz wrote:"Good morning. Tell me, will you admit to briefing members of the public before they were interviewed by the press?"

"No comment"

... :roll:

Sim G wrote:

Gaz wrote:"Good morning. Tell me, will you admit to briefing members of the public before they were interviewed by the press?"

"No comment"

... :roll:

Now, now Gaz, judging from the time of your post, you didn't call them. So is the conversation an assumption or "British reporting standard Number 1"....?