My day has been assigned to Castle Tower Station. The home of the Flying Squad. These are the different police, who actually carry guns and respond to violent gun crimes, other than homicide. Armed robbery, armed kidnapping, etc. However, its not what you may think. All guns are kept in a locker, in a locked and alarmed room. When they know they are going to have to go out and take down say a group of bank robbers, they go downstairs, and each member is issued a Glock 17, 9mm, and a magazine of ammo. The 9mm projectile is removed from the casing, and half of the gunpowder is removed, then the projectile is put back in. They explained it to me this way..."we really dont want to kill anyone, we just want them to stop what they are doing". These guns....have never been fired. Ever. They don't even know if they work ! When they go to the range, they use range guns. I looked over these Glocks, and they are the original Glocks from way back. Metal Glocks. Steel Glocks. If you pull your handgun from your holster, you have to explain in great detail why you did that. No low ready, no combat stance, no pointing your gun at an armed suspect. If he points a gun at you (bank robbers here use shotguns) then, you may pull yours and point it at him. If he shoots, you can return fire. However, if you kill him, your on your own. The option of carrying a gun is yours. So, if for some reason, say his shotgun was not loaded....you most likely will be charged with murder, because you were not actually in danger from an unloaded shotgun. There you go !!

Different culture boys and girls, a different culture.



Guard walks out of the blue van and into the business. Lookout across the street signals his two buddies when the guard comes out of the business with the money bag. They beat the guard and take the cash. One guard, no gun. And this is a pick up from a small casino !!
The girl, is a witness. She saw it go down, and wrote the vehilce license plate on the getaway car down on her arm !! Nice thinking for a 13 year old.
Notice the lack of red tape covering every square inch of bag. Notice the lack of initials, and dates at every corner, notice the nice clear tape closing the top of the bag, and her initials on the two little tabs...and this bag is ready to send in. Oh, and she can just hand it over to someone else to drop off....its considered secure.
Got to spend time at the garage where they process vehicles. This white van had been used in a gang fight, by asian gang members who killed the front passenger and beat up the other gang members who were in the back and on their way to fight the other gangs....they just got ambushed first. Lovely.
Vehicle processing starts here, in a dark room, looking for fingerprints, inside and out.
The little yellow dots on the car, are little stick-on arrows that one guy puts there if he sees a fingerprint after looking the car over with a lamp. Each print is photographed as it is, no processing. Then the print is later processed with powder, or superglue, and each print is photographed again. Then the car is dye stained and put under UV light, and each print is photographed again !! A fingerprint, is recorded on film, 9 times. If there are 100 prints on this car, they end up with 900 photos of just prints....and the fingerprint lifts also. Me thinks just a little over-kill for a stolen car ???
Now this...is a super glue fuming tank ! Pull the car in, close the door, and turn it on. Will turn any car into a useless mass. If they do this to your car, the rule is, the government has to buy you another car. You cannot have this one back. It gets crushed. No wonder taxes are sky high here !
....and a bay for fingerprint dusting....
These are cars that have been involved in crimes, and are waiting to be processed. They may get to one or two a day, depending on how much they find as they go along. This is what they do here, all day, every day, all the time.

This 50 thousand $ car can now go back to the owner. Sorry about the condition old boy, but here is your Mercedes !

Very good day, exciting day, very long day....back at it tomorrow.