ROSS
Unless the man’s a complete idiot,
he won’t slip up at all. He’ll just go
on quietly taking the bread from
our mouths. unless he’s a total
ignoramus, he’ll keep a low profile
and won’t do a thing to call attention
to himself.
(voice rising)
Unless he is an utter moron…
Suddenly:
Sound: A loud sports car motor revs up outside the window. It sounds like the last lap at Sebring.
FULL SHOT – ROSS, VERA, LORELEI, and SIMPSON, startled at the sudden noise, go to the window to look out and see what it is.
POV: OUT THE WINDOW – The company parking lot. Zooming down one of the lanes, then executing a hairpin turn, burning rubber and pulling into a parking space is an incredible bright red Ferrari…the flashiest of sports car you could imagine;. Behind the wheel still dressed in his shabby, schleppy clothes, is GUS GORMAN.
It’s still shitty that they investigated him based upon what car he drove instead of real evidence. How do they know he didn’t save regular pay for ten years to buy it? Or inherit it from his uncle? It seems better to confront people based upon their actions rather than their stuff.
huh, I thought all cops drove Ferraris…
Yeah, they did it in Superman 3…
I’m not sure which is dumber - buying and driving an obviously insanely expensive automobile with ill-gotten gains, or the fact that the car apparently represents most of his ill-gotten gains. “Yes, I’ve done something wildly illegal that will result in my being fired and jailed, but at least I got a car out it!”
Or gotten a used one at a fraction of the price.
Aaaah, West Midlands Police. Still the same old same old 
I found a 13 year old <a href=“http://www.carsforsale.com/used-cars-for-sale/advancedsearch.aspx?make=Ferrari&model=Enzo&fromyear=-1&toyear=-1&zip=&fromprice=-1&toprice=-1&radius=100&location=&fueltypeid=-1&bs=-1"target=”_blank">Enzo for a smidge under $3M, what a bargain!
[edit] link added.
Um, because they investigated?
“I worked hard to ill-get those gains!”
They know first hand, is how.
Exactly my point. If they were ethical they would have investigated him based upon evidence, rather than investigating him first without evidence. Owning something expensive in itself is not evidence of a crime. They don’t know how much money he had or how much he paid for the car until afterwards.
Yeah. They looked at their -own- pay stubs and that was pretty much that.
Believe it or not, some public servants do actually get a small degree of extra scrutiny, to make sure they’re not on the take.
In this case, it didn’t seem to take much scrutiny.
Seems like a “You’re making the rest of us look bad” arrest. Like any consequence-resistant in-group, cops most likely get the most upset about stupid, obvious corruption. This guy could have brought IAB down on the whole department with his highly visible shenanigans, therefore, should be punished. It’s not that he broke the rules, it’s that he brought attention to rulebreaking. I guess hence the inclusion of “The bulls are across the street” parallel…
I dunno British law, but here in the states a cop with a Ferrari would be considered probable cause, but the grand jury still wouldn’t indict.
Um, investigating is what one does to see if there is evidence. A decision to investigate is (or should be) based on whether a reasonable suspicious exists, not whether sufficient evidence to charge has already magically appeared.
I get what you cats are saying about suspicion and/or cause, but it’s just my thinking that its people’s actions rather that matter, rather than consumer goods. I am pretty much anything but pro-cop, but I still try to use the same standard of ethics even for them. And expensive-item + poor-person still = classism to me.
Of course the story I read here could be greatly oversimplified. There might have been more they picked up on than merely seeing the car. Maybe the car just makes flashy news copy. But again - that’s the thing taking precedence over the actions.
A street cop driving a quarter of a million dollar car is what’s called a clue. You should get one - a clue, that is.
It looked suspicious (not as in racial profiling “suspicious”, either) so they investigated. That’s the way it should work. Not investigating a street cop driving a quarter million dollar car would have been willful negligence.
