It is generally accepted that the local police are useless. Underpaid, underfunded and under instructions from their supervisors to concentrate on raking in the cash for minor or fabricated infringements (looking at the officer in a strange manner - 100 baht please), rather than chasing real criminals.
And we have no shortage of real criminals. In the last 24 hours we have had some teenagers shot from stray bullets resulting from a clash between two motorcycle gangs. We have had a Lebanese tourist and his boyfriend robbed by people posing as police officers (they had two-way radios and guns, but no uniforms; not a particularly convincing impersonation). And we have had a local TV presenter being shot at while driving home in her car.
The normal police response to such incidents is that they are rigorously pursuing leads and hope to make an arrest soon. This is police-speak for “there is no money to be made from this and we are not going to do anything, and most people will have forgotten about it by tomorrow anyway (apart from the victim, who doesn’t count)”.
But suddenly we have a new message. In all these cases we are informed that the police are “analysing CCTV footage.” This is great step forward, or it would be if there were actually any working CCTVs producing output for them to analyse. I have never spotted a CCTV camera, and if there are any, the chances that they might actually be connected to electricity and recording is infinitesimally small.
Undoubtedly what this new approach really means is that the cops are in the process of proposing a scam to purchase an expensive CCTV system which will work for a week before they break it. To justify something they haven’t got, they are pretending that they already have it and it is proving useful in cracking all current crimes.
Tomorrow someone will steal and sink a jet ski five kilometres offshore. Shortly after, the police will be analysing CCTV footage.