Cerberus n. 1. Greek mythology A three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to Hades 2. A sop to Cerberus Bribe given to appease a potential threat
CCTV breaks new ground
Last month, producers of the top-rated TV cop series The Bill used a leading manufacturer's security control systems to add a further touch of realism to the much-loved programme. Screened on Friday 18 May at 9.00 pm, the episode – entitled 'Eye of the Lens' – featured a replica control room created using conventional keyboards linked to CCTV cameras, the 'evidence' collected on a video recording device viewable from a flat screen.

Thanks to Sunbury-on-Thames-based CCTV supplier Petards Vision, officers Carver, Spears and Singh were seen to watch over crowds in the street from their 'obbo' (aka the observation point) in south London.

According to the pre-publicity for the programme, the crux of the story illustrated "how CCTV technology can help catch criminals and thus reduce crime". Really? That's a new one on Cerberus...

Listen to the music
American citizens worried about President George W Bush's plans for national missile defence and related security issues should fear not. Cerberus has learned that, of late, Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter – the ponytailed former guitarist with folk kings Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers – has been advising the Pentagon on its newest defence project. Not surprisingly, Baxter says it rocks...

Apparently, the self-taught 51-year-old 'axe merchant' once wrote a paper on missile defence and passed it onto Republican Congresswoman Dana Rohrabacher, who was "most impressed".

Cerberus wonders whether Status Quo's 'dynamic duo' Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt might be in line for the top jobs at the Security Industry Authority.

After all, they've struck the safest three chords around for more years than your ever-faithful friend can remember. Over to you, Mr Clarke...

Cake defence crumbles
A former cop who blamed a whisky-laced fruit cake for tipping him over the drink-drive limit has been banned from our fair roads.

Magistrates had ordered Andrew Rees to produce a cake made to the same recipe so his excuse could be tested in court, but the father-of-two's legal team then dropped the claim after the cake was examined by forensic experts.

Taxi driver Rees admitted to downing two pints of lager before eating the slice of cake. He was later stopped by his erstwhile colleagues as he drove to the shops, by which time the good spirits had well and truly kicked in.

Rees – who has been barred from the roads for 12 months and fined £100 by Bridgend magistrates – blames his conviction on sultanas that "must have absorbed more of the spirit than they should have."

Either way, Andrew, this pooch suspects that you, for one, can't have your cake and eat it.

Sick of alarms
Ever alert to tales of the unexpected, Cerberus has learned of an inventive manufacturer that's devised an alarm which makes burglars sick!

The £700 gadget, dubbed 'Inferno', was actually devised by the Swedish army, but has been taken on board by Barnsley-based concern Corporate Security Services for the benefit of UK householders.

Sources close to Cerberus suggest that the Inferno makes a noise akin to someone "scratching long nails down a blackboard", thereby disorienting anyone who hears it.

When collared by Cerberus, Corporate Security Services' business manager David Midgley told your by-now intrigued canine: "It's no louder than a standard burglar alarm, but the noise is sickening. I could only stand to listen to it for about 10 seconds. The sound actually makes you recoil in horror. A burglar certainly wouldn't stand a chance."

What if the system were upgraded for use on commercial buildings? Forget the burglars. Many industry wags would suggest that the updated ACPO policy is making end users sick enough as it is without having to prove the point...

The Alien invasion
Police have had to scrap an 'E-fit' of a mugging suspect because their computer database did not contain a likeness for the Asian complexion.

Insiders at the Norfolk Police Force let slip to Cerberus that the victim of a recent street robbery was "amazed" when cops tried mixing the face of an African black man with the nose of a European – and the hair of a white woman!

"The result looked more like an Alien than an Asian," cried the stunned 24-year-old victim, who had been punched in the face and had his mobile 'phone stolen.

Meanwhile, Norfolk Police has admitted that its computer software needs updating. At the moment, its quite obviously E-fit for nothing.

What The Media Says

Met recruitment on the up
New Scotland Yard’s latest batch of figures shows a substantial increase in new recruits in the wake of a recent £7 million Government-backed TV advertising campaign. According to The London Evening Standard’s Home Affairs Correspondent David Taylor, Met recruitment jumped by 27% in the year to the end of March 2001. An end to liberalism?
A ‘totting up’ system under which persistent offenders will face more severe penalties for a wide range of minor crimes is a crucial element of New Labour’s ‘anti-crime package’. The package, reports The Guardian, will sound the death knell of the liberal philosophy behind the 1991 Criminal Justice Act of making the ‘punishment fit the crime’, which was introduced to keep prisoner numbers down. Currently, persistent offenders with 10 or more previous convictions still have a one-in-three chance of being handed a community sentence when they next stand before the courts. Some 80% of persistent offenders are reconvicted within two years of leaving prison. Police go back to school
Rising youth crime is at the heart of New Scotland Yard’s decision to station police in 19 schools across the south London Borough of Southwark, where ten-year-old Damilola Taylor was killed last November. Mobile ’phone theft is the biggest problem, accounting for a 20% rise in juvenile robberies across the UK. Detective left fuming
A detective has won compensation from his force after exposure to cannabis fumes left him with a permanent snore. A report in The Times suggests that Detective Inspector Brian Baker suffered damage to his nostrils after he breathed in dust from a powerful form of cannabis during investigations into theft from a police storeroom back in 1998. Pity that facial contortionist and Hollywood superstar Jim Carrey wasn’t about at the time. The man with The Mask would have saved the day, that’s for sure.