Why Did the Policeman Cross the Road?
About this eBook
Stevyn Colgan spent thirty years in the police service—twelve of them as part of the Problem Solving Unit, a special team with an extraordinary brief: to solve problems of crime and disorder that were unresponsive to traditional policing.
They could try anything as long as it wasn’t illegal (or immoral), wouldn’t bring the police into disrepute, and didn’t cost very much. The result is this extraordinary collection of innovative and imaginative approaches to crime prevention, showing us that any problem can be solved if we can just identify its underlying roots.
In Why Did the Policeman Cross the Road? you’ll learn how bees can prevent elephant stampedes and what tiger farms and sex workers have in common. You’ll read about killer snakes in African cornfields and cholera epidemics in Soho. You’ll come to appreciate the advantages of sticking gum on celebrities’ faces, why the colour of the changing room might decide a football match, and how eating lobsters may help to save their lives.
This book is an amusing, insightful and sometimes controversial celebration of good policing and problem solving that reaches beyond law enforcement and into everyday life.
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Stevyn Colgan is an author, artist, public speaker and oddly-spelled Cornishman.
He has, among other things, been a chef, a brewer, a milkman, a comics publisher and the official artist for the 2006 UK National Children’s Book Fair. He’s written briefing notes for two prime ministers and TV scripts for Gerry Anderson, and he’s helped build dinosaur skeletons for the Natural History Museum and movie monsters for Bruce Willis to shoot at.
But for thirty years he was a police officer in London, during which time he was set on fire twice, was sworn at by a royal, met two US presidents and a pope, was kissed by Princess Diana and let Freddie Mercury wear his helmet. In between such events he was part of the Met Police’s experimental Problem Solving Unit.
He is a consultant for change agency Left/Field London and he is also one of the elves who research and write the popular BBC TV series QI and its sister show, The Museum of Curiosity, for BBC Radio 4.
