Why didn’t anyone think of it before? Instead of paying millions for a Police Service, just ban crime with a simple prohibitive sign patrolled zones. So simple, yet so ineffective.
Yes, this is the latest bright idea from East Suffolk Council, designed to reduce crime, sorry, reduce costs in dozens of neighbourhoods across the county. At a cost of about £6,000, five-hundred street signs prohibiting all crime between the hours of 8am and 6pm are being erected in towns and villages in East Suffolk including: Aldeburgh, Beccles, Felixstowe, Framlingham, Halesworth, Lowestoft, and Southwold as well parts of the wider Ipswich built-up area including Kesgrave, Martlesham, and Woodbridge.
How much for patrolled zones?
A press release issued by the Town Hall declared that “not only do we expect to see a reduction in crime of up to 50% in the new ‘sign patrolled zones’, but we are also saving the hard-pressed council tax payers of the county around £1.3 million in cost reductions to regular crime prevention services. We intend to re-invest the savings into some overseas fact-finding junkets for councillors, a refurbishment of the Town Hall’s ageing facilities including a new bar, gym, and Jacuzzi, and long overdue inflation-busting salary increases for the senior management team including the chief executive, Steven Baker, who is only on £155,920. (true)”
Tennent’s extra! Read all about it!
So how effective are the signs? We hit the Kirkley Cliff Road promenade in Lowestoft to find out. So what we did, my colleague John & I was, we posed as a couple of old dossers sitting on a park bench on the front, with a few empty cans of tennent’s extra and a few loose chipped potatoes scattered on the street around us. We also had a very large vintage Philips D 8304 Boombox Ghettoblaster Dual Deck Stereo Cassette Radio playing 80’s jazz funk music enticingly placed about 15ft away from us. We busted a few moves and drank some of the brewskis, and waited…
Do you want vinegar on those chips?
Sure enough, at about 11.15 pm, as we pretended to be unconscious (me on the bench and John laying on the floor in front of me), a shadowy figure skulked towards us. We were videotaping everything on a camcorder secreted inside the chip bag on the floor beside us. The batteries on the Boombox were starting to wear down but ‘Break Dance Party’ by Break Machine could still just about be heard. The stranger began to close in. We were sure that we were just about to catch a thief in the act when – it started to rain. Or at least that’s what we thought was happening. In actual fact, the person who approached us had removed his penis and started to urinate over us both, FFS.
So there we have it, proof positive that signs patrolled zones do in fact work. The Boombox trap had failed.
Well done, East Suffolk council!
