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Scottish cops finger villains with the 'Kevlar grope'

Hands-on approach to knife crime...

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Disturbing images are conjured by Scotland's latest anti knife crime measure. Fancy a Kevlar grope?

Scottish police are running a trial of battery-powered Kevlar metal-detecting gloves in Strathclyde and Central Scotland. The gloves, the Scotsman tells us, allow officers to scan an individual with the fingertips or the palms of the hands. So in order to search a suspect the officer dons gloves, runs fingers over the suspect's body ("Hey, what's your game, pal?") and, if metal is detected, the glove "starts to vibrate at the wrist."

And the Kevlar? It's a sort of 'safe search' measure, allowing suspects to be intensively fingered without there being any danger of the officer being speared by sharp objects, needles etc. 'Come on,' we hear you cry, 'these gloves can't possibly exist.' But we answer, Oh yes they do. And you can get them in one hand or two hand vibrating variants.

In largely unrelated news, the Sunday Times tells of a helmet-mounted video camera which, as far as we can figure out, virtually guarantees conviction for villains committing villainy directly in front of a police helmet. It also (and this we feel may impact on its popularity with the force) provides an opportunity for the powers that be to measure even more of the beat copper's daily activities - i.e., all of them. £1,700, well... spent? ®

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