Oops - Textbook Style

A very "interesting" event I am going to blab on about, it happened quite some time ago and was totally unbelievable!

There were several of us on an autocrime operation and tied specifically to this. Two collegues who will be known as John and Paul were in a car and I was with another collegue who we shall call George (obviously all these names are made up!)

John and Paul had parked outside a large out of town store to briefly talk to someone. This was what started everything off! Shop staff came out of the store and told them they had detained two shoplifters.

What should have been done: "Sorry sir, we are currently assigned to a specific operation, but I will get onto control to get an officer sent here to deal with this incident"
What happened: "ok, whats happened then". Oops, John and Paul have now began to dig themselves a hole. They went into the store, handcuffed the detained persons and didnt do much else. Myself and George then turned up as we heard they had an arrest and thought "fantastic! the operation has only been going 20 minutes and they have an arrest"
How dissapointed we were when we arrived!! I got onto control and told them the situation and how we were on a specific operation and could someone else deal with it. Unfortunatly it was a controller who seems to forget about you very quickly. Eventually it was decided that we would transport the detained persons (note that I am not saying prisoners . . . all will become clear!) and that a regular officer would obtain statements and book crimes on etc. Fair enough, better than having to do the lot I suppose, albeit John and Pauls job!

Halfway to the nick George gets point-to-pointed from John who asks him to caution the detained person who we are taking to the station, my collegue doesnt ask him why or anything, I had no clue what they were talking about as I couldnt hear!

So we get to the station and the others are behind us. We get out of the car and wait for Paul and John to get out to take over with the detained persons, which they do! So now these detained persons are in the back yard wanting a fag, so now they are uncuffed as they "dont post a risk" and allowed to carry their bags to the holding bay whilst going through them looking for their fags. All I can say is thank goodness they didnt just pull out a gun or knife or something!
So now all this is sorted, myself and George bugger off and carry on with our operation expecting the others to be done in an hour max (all they had to do was book the detained persons in!!)

About an hour later George gets a point-to-point. Take a guess what it was about . . .

"Who was the arresting officer??" You have to be shitting me!! It turned out, believe it or not, that neither John nor Paul had actually arrested them!!! Myself and George were absolutely gobsmacked!! Last time I checked, and have dealt with a shoplifter and handcuffed them, as strange as it sounds, I tend to tell them they are under arrest and caution them!!! Seriously, how can you forget to do this!! And from very experienced specials too! Thankfully this was a one off and was resolved, and they should just be thankfull that the detained persons were not clued up on PACE!!

In all honesty I expected to finish my shift and have Jeremy Beadle waiting by my locker!