When a police officer gives chase to someone who they suspect of being in possession of a knife, then 99% of the time, the wrong-un being chased will throw the blade during the foot pursuit.
They do not care that a young child could find it and harm themselves, all they care about, is getting away.
Yesterday, the Birmingham City Centre Policing team ended up giving chase to a suspect who was spotted carrying a knife in full view of the public in Digbeth High Street.
Officers gave chase to the male as he tried to leg it from facing the consequences of being found carrying a blade in a public place.
His route took the male past a river and he no-doubt thought that this would be the perfect place to discard his knife.
Wrong.
Eagle-eyed officers saw the male throw the knife into the river.
Using some ingenuity, they thought better of waiting several hours for a marine unit (if one was available) and instead managed to recover the blade themselves using only cordon tape and a magnet.
A spokesperson for the team said:
“We have arrested a male on digbeth high street carrying a knife in full view of the public!
“The male threw the knife into a local river and ran from officers..
“however it was literally fished out using police tape and a magnet!”
When we first saw the image of the police cordon tape in the river, we thought that maybe someone had decided to turn the actual river into a crime scene!
But we will put that down to a lack of sleep and ‘fuzzy eyes’.
Fair play to the officer who thought of attaching a magnet to some police tape and then trawling the river for the discarded item.
What’s the bet also that they found several discarded wedding rings in the river too….
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Magnet ‘fishing’ is quite popular along some stretches of rivers and canals, things recovered have included firearms, for which the Police have been called to deal with and knives along with other stolen property, have a look on youtube. Well done to the officers involved. Oh and the stolen motorcycle recovery groups have been ‘fishing’ too, along one stretch in London IIRC they pulled out 16 stolen dumped motorcycles, bicycles etc