I was always curious as to how people are selected to be in the police line up of suspects. Apart from the person of interest, who are the other people? Police officers in plain clothes was my guess. But this clip from a new comedy series The Lineup on YouTube suggests that I may be wrong. (Via Bluegal)
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Funny 🙂
I was (nearly) in a police line-up once. I was visiting a university I had no intention of going to (I’d already made my choice, but our school insisted we attended open days at at least 3 different universities whatever our plans -- besides, it was a day off school). So after a couple of hours in a group of 17/18 year olds being shown round a campus I had no intention of ever visiting again and being given a sales spiel I didn’t want to listen to I was pretty bored.
As we were going into the SU cafe to get lunch there was a police officer hanging around the entrance. He approached me and said they were looking for people for a line-up, I matched the description and I’d get paid £10 if I did it. Well £10 was not to be sniffed at for a 17 year old -- if nothing else, it would pay for lunch with enough left over to get fairly drunk in the afternoon -- plus I’d get to see if someone thought I looked like a criminal.
So I blew off the open day and spent the whole afternoon in the local cop shop waiting for the police to round up 4/5 other similarly looking guys. Either I’m extremely weird looking (in which case so was the suspect, so why did they need a line-up?) or I my personal estimation of the worth of £10 was something of an outlier. Eventually the police decided an ID parade with the suspect and one volunteer wasn’t worth it and told me to clear off.
Me: “How do I get the tenner?”
PC: “We only pay that if you actually take part in the line-up.”
Bonus: I missed my scheduled train home and had to pay for another ticket.
Interesting story. But not paying you was outrageous.
I’ve never committed a crime (well, other than speeding), but until a few years ago I’d have said that was the least outrageous interaction I’ve had with the police.
Makes me think of the Seinfeld episode where he’s dating the police officer haha and she gets him to do the polygraph test. Anyway Kramer gets to be in a line-up and, well, you know how it goes…