Steve Cruwys is on patrol in Exeter with Razor and is called to a house where a young man, suspected of beating up a Big Issue seller in town, has taken exception to being questioned, to the point of retreating into a house and issuing loud threats about knives. Steve arrives to a scene of minor mayhem, where the suspect is still shouting furiously in a back yard. Flying on a combination of rage and adrenaline, he’s not calming down, so the next step is a blast of Captor spray (the third spray he’s had!) which finally does the trick and floors the bloke – having assaulted pretty much everyone who’s got near him in the last half hour.
Out on the M5, Taff and Chris are out looking for a wanted car – which is thought to be carrying a spot of class A. They park up on a junction bridge and wait for it to come by, and it does – coming off at their junction. For some reason, the driver seems unwilling to stop immediately, and the passenger is acting oddly, so haste is required when they finally get the vehicle to pull over. Being outside, it’s a return to the nick to undertake all the searches, where the passenger admits to having stashed a spot of illegal stuff in her undies. No wonder she was wriggling.
It’s TAG time, and Tony Willis takes his team out to Plymouth in search of a drug dealer who could be hiding at one of two addresses. He’s not at the first address, so they detain the woman who is before heading off to try door number two. There are three people here – including the suspect – and they’re all comfortably ensconced in the lounge. Halfway through the search, a visitor arrives and is rather startled to find the door answered by Tony. As they deal with her, all the phones in the flat start ringing, one by one in turn. Given that the team at the other flat have just left, it’s a fair bet that the woman there is trying to get a warning out. Nice try.
Out on the M5 again, just outside Exeter. Taff is mooching over the barrier of a motorway bridge looking out for a vehicle that’s got a ‘concern for welfare’ marker on it. It’s thought the car is heading their way, so they want to stop it and check that the Driver's okay. Out on the Motorway itself, Chris, with Ed Rowland, is playing catchup from some way off – but Taff, and Jon, have already spotted the vehicle and pull it. Safety is first priority so cuffs go on in case anyone is about to do anything silly to themselves. This is largely unnecessary as it turns out because no one in the car is the subject of the marker. The search of the car, however, turns up something interesting for Giles – a letter from the motor insurance board demanding a whopper sum of money for the victim of an accident - the driver at fault being uninsured. Armed with this evidence, the driver admits that he, indeed, has no insurance. And now, no car either. Or any of the drugs he’d stashed in a small hidey hole under the dash…
Another day, another ANPR operation. Mike is after illegal road users in Exeter that ding up on a number of ANPR vans located around the City, and is ready and waiting for the usual range of excuses that these exercises inevitably call to the fore. Today’s excuse is an astonishingly long-winded saga involving a car, a motorbike, a possibly changed policy on one or the other from one insurance company to a different one, then a works policy which apparently covers everyone in the company. This means, in Mike’s universe at least, that the guy definitely hasn’t got any insurance. Surprised? Nope.
Almost immediately upon leaving the insurance job, Mike is fortuitously (well, fortuitously for him if not the motorcyclist) placed to see a motorcyclist being nudged unceremoniously off his bike by a people carrier at a roundabout. By chance, there are quite a few coppers around as the roundabout is a busy one, but, although somewhat battered, there’s no serious damage done to the biker.
Giles and Roger, just on their way back out after a tea break at Collumpton nick, come across a Fiesta virtually at the gates of the yard which can only be described as demodified almost completely out of existence. Battered to the point of giving sheds a bad name, there is no suggestion of an MOT. Ever. The exhaust growls like an angry bear, the cabin fills with toxic fumes at every rev and – amazingly – it’s described as a company car by its driver who – equally amazingly – is a mechanic. He’s also got a spot of bad luck, as Giles happens to be the only officer on the RCU who is empowered to issue prohibition notices taking mega-sheds off the road, and his next trick after doing that is to report the mechanic for driving a dodgy car. He’s allowed to drive it one last time…to the garage where it had better be scrapped. Or else.
Taff and Jon are out on the A30 – somewhere, and pass a ridiculously overladen car. On running a check on the vehicle, the database advises that the car’s MOT has expired. It’s a simple error on the part of the driver, as all his paperwork is due for renewal at the same time and he’s forgotten which one expires first. Unfortunately, this also immediately invalidates his insurance. While they’re sorting that out, Jon advises what it was that first caught their attention – a surfboard precariously balanced on their luggage and secured, with disarming optimism, by string linking the tailfin to one of the support arms of the car’s tailgate. As they’re in a small hatchback, this doesn’t bode well if they have to suddenly stop. For a brief moment, it looks like they’ll be getting a discount on their fixed penalty, until Taff remembers it’s actually a £60 fine he should be giving out.
