Irony Police: U.K. authorities reportedly resorting to 'theft' to discourage stealing

England is a very strange place. Not only do they like having a royal family, but they talk like this: "Oi. Buncha southy Londoners are suddenly stroppy over the constable's wonky plan to nick exposed swag from their unlocked cars. Kind of a bollocks plan, innit?" Naturally the coppers are chuffed about the whole thing, claiming they're just teaching gadges that couldn't be arsed to lock their cars a lesson.

In other words, in an area of South London called Richmond, police have taken to opening unlocked cars and removing valuable items like laptops and cells phones. They think they are doing nothing wrong and teaching careless people a lesson. Of course, because of British common law they apparently aren't doing anything wrong at all. Said police supervisor Jim Davis, "Technically we are entering the vehicle but we are not committing a crime. It's a common law duty to protect (people's) property."

Aside from, oh, you know, the police locking the unlocked vehicles, we have mixed feelings about this particular program. On the one hand, they are taking pre-stolen goods right out of the criminals' mouths. On the other, no jury (in Texas) would ever convict you for shooting someone taking property from your car. Seems to us like a lorra lorra gert plonker method to sort out the wheat from the chavs.

[Source: BBC | Image: Chris Jackson/Getty]