The list, from a cannabis factory found on 3 January 2024 in the old bus depot on Ropery Road, Gainsborough, is oddly domestic. Thirty-two cans of Red Bull. Laundry detergent. Sweets, chocolate, biscuits. Coca-Cola. Two Lidl bags for life. A bottle of Fanta. Officers say items in the scene photos were gone the next day. The force says he took them to South Park in Lincoln in a police van, then moved them to his own car. He was, they say, alone in the scene for half an hour.
His barrister's question is the one you would ask. Would someone bin a career for pop, sweeties and detergent? He filmed the scene and invited the guard to look, which is a strange way to stage a theft. CCTV shows him with two Lidl bags at the station. He says they held kit that needed washing at home, and that he left them outside because people had complained about the smell of cannabis. He has bank statements from Lidl. The bags, his side says, must have magicked themselves there.
A second factory turned up next door weeks later. The defence suggests the people running that one may have come back for the biscuits. A scene guard, PC Richard Dalton, says he was suspected too, and that colleagues still joke when they do a scene guard. He also noticed the living area was stocked with luxuries. Most of these places, he said, are squalid. This one had a drinks cabinet.
I am not going to decide a misconduct hearing from a local paper. I am going to notice that the alleged haul is what you buy when the shop is about to shut and you have not eaten. Red Bull for the night shift. Detergent for the clothes. Biscuits for the bit in between. If it happened, it is the smallest corruption in Britain. If it did not, a man has spent a Monday explaining Fanta.
If the kettle is not enough, Amazon will sell you energy drinks. They will not come from a bus depot. They will not need a panel.
The hearing continues. So does the question of whether a Lidl bag for life can end one. Remember that the next time a crime scene has biscuits. Someone will count them.
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