some of my mates are in the heli footage in the first video.. I think its from 2008 or so and the amount of kit in their special ops room give a idea of how seriously things were being taken.
Them dual monitor stands alone and wide screen monitors would have been about £300-500 back then. mind you even my two LED’s and stand is about £250 worth. A dual head graphics card wasn’t that cheap either, especially as the public services often bought the middle-top range Dell kit (some sort of bulk contract). Dell were virtually giving it away in comparison to what private individuals would pay but even then it was a fair bit of taxpayers money.
The older woman is either talking on a telephone circuit or onto the Airwave radio, the young detective sat at the computer has his airwave handset to the left of him. the keyboard on the female officers machine is from the early 2000s which gives an idea of how long that ops room has existed for. Certainly around 2004/5 it slowly started ramping up the enforcement gaainst raves.
Both of them can talk directly to a landowner or local yokel grass on the normal telephone which wasn’t as easy before without going through VK (the main controll room, you miay have heard their name mentioned by the heli) which is of course handling all the other comms traffic on a saturday night. In previous days there was a limit to how many circuits could be switched to special ops as they had to go through British Telecom cable and there often wasn’t enough in the Police station. Now with VOIP the comms can be sent anywhere where a desktop computer exists.
note how the BBC cameras have been kept a distance, and how many computer monitorrs are cleverly angled towards each other rather than all straight and have a extra filter sheet on them. Normally if you point a video camera at a monitor, particularly the decent ones Auntie have, you will see everything on there, but these monitors have been filtered (each one of them sheets is about £40-£50). I get asked about them at work (as some monitors display peoples confidential medical info) but when the managers see the price of what is basicallly a sheet of glass or polycarbonate they just suggest to the staff that the monitors are positioned so casual visitors cannot see them (at worst case a VGA extension cable is about £15).
Its more likely to be someone like the young detective reading PV (one the filtered monitors) than the older “Gentle Touch” type inspector, as she wouldn’t know the rave slang and/or be more emotionally affected by her work as there is a very good chance she has teenage or young adult kids of her own (who may well be rebelling) and is really concerned by the issues regarding drug addiction and organised crime that raves pose. The young lad (or a similar female officer) without kids who is the same age as the ravers or maybe only slightly older, backed up by a DS or DI about my age (who is either single, childless, or estranged from his wife/kids), would handle the job better. although that does sound like a film script this actually is true – I have to do a certain amount of security related work nowadays and it helps to be emotionally detatcheed from the people you are monitoring/judging, and not to place excessive faith in trust and human relationships. this is advisable not just for cops but journalists, IT security managers. forensic accountants and security/investigative workers of all kinds.
Forget all the 90s stories of corrupt cops “turing a blind eye” and reselling the drugs, nowadays its not worth their badge and shield (there are random drugs tests) to do so, events such as terrorism, riots and recession and the knock on effects of drugs culture have made many people more accepting of the cops role in society even its only begrudgingly.
A younger person who joins up knows that they aren’t going to be popular anyway with their own peer group so they have already psychologically prepared for having to bring their peers to judgement, at the same time todays lot are less likely to simply try and fit someone up to get a “result” like a older cop with kids might do “for the children”. After all they don’t need to when people brag about crime on facebook anyway and post pictures.
BTW He is very likely to be University educated, intelligent, articulate. if you encountered him he’d come across as a relatively friendly cop in comparison to the meatheads of the 1970s/1980s, but you’d still get arrested end up getting a long lecture about why what you are doing is wrong and that its not your call (or even his) to disagree with the laws and take direct action for such a trivial matter like playing music when licenses are available, and that other crimes occur at raves. Yet that same cop would turn up at a Sizewell protest or one against NHS cuts (all of which have happened loads recently without incident) and maybe take some photos of protesters but do absolutely jack shit else unless they actively tried to disrupt the power station or damage property.
