Underwear Bandits In London... Remembering The Good Old Days in the 1980s... Several of us at my office were asked to accompany the local Hanau German Criminal police on a site seeing trip to New Scotland Yard in London. About 30 German police officers and five or six of us Army CID types had a good trip over the channel by plane, then a short trip to the hotel in central London, courtesy of the London police, who were sponsoring this trip. Another CID Agent known only as Jim, better known as Jimmy for this CID moment, shared a room at the hotel with me. We had some down time before we were to go to New Scotland Yard, so we took a quick site seeing tour of London. Before we left the hotel room we unpacked all our stuff and took our cameras with us for a few memories of old London town, thank goodness. While out and about we took numerous pictures and did the tourist thing as any good American would. Jim had only been in Germany several months and wanted me to take his picture next to an English police officer. Jim ran up to an English Bobby who was in the traditional hat and uniform and yelled for me to hurry and take a picture. Jim thinking the police officer did not speak English yelled at me to tell the Bobby not to move since he wanted a good picture. The fun started when the Bobby turned to Jim and gave him a riveting look and said, I speak better English than either of you two. You had to be there, we all broke out laughing, once Edgar the policeman learned we were guests of the German and London police we all had a good time as Edgar showed us the sites for the next several hours. When we finished this abbreviated site seeing tour we returned to our room to get ready for our trip to New Scotland Yard. You can imagine our faces as we unlocked the hotel room door to find our suitcases upside down on the floor and the room a mess. You guessed it; someone had a key, gained entrance to the room, tore up our room and took some of our clothing and other personal affects. Not sure why anyone would have wanted two of our leisure suits (yes those were the days of leisure suits) and all of Jim’s underwear! Yes, the vandal(s) had stolen all of Jim’s underwear. The vandal(s) did not touch any of my stuff other than the leisure suit, but did take the camera attachments and bag we left in the room. We felt silly, but reported the incident to the hotel management. The hotel management pointed out the sign on the back of the door that advised all guests to store valuable items in the hotel safe. Can you imagine what Jim and I thought of that, when leisure suits and underwear were the most valuable items stolen by the vandal(s)? Guess everyone but us kept their clothes locked up in the hotel safe! While we were discussing the problem with management a police officer arrived to obtain our information about the theft. It was the opinion of the police officer that our stuff was long gone and there was nothing he could do about the theft. Jim and I were in agreement with the police, but wanted to report the incident anyway. The police officer asked who we were, whom we worked for, and why we were visiting London. We did not make a big deal out of this since we were a little embarrassed over the incident. However as soon as the police officer learned Jim and I were U.S. Army CID Agents (we of course had our badge and ID with us) and were guest of New Scotland Yard, he turned red, white and blue. The officer then got on his radio mike, which was mounted on his shoulder, barked some comments I could not understand, and the entire hotel room became over run with police. Jim and I were really embarrassed now, but impressed that because we were Army CID, we were getting what we felt was special treatment. The plain-clothes officers arrived and believe it or not apologized for this theft-taking place. Jim and I knew this was just one of those things that happens when you travel, but the English CID did not intend for their Army counter parts to lose their personal property, no matter what the property was. We gave the CID our statements and the CID advised us they would take care of this incident before we returned from our trip to New Scotland Yard. Jim and I left with our tour group and headed for New Scotland Yard. We had a great time seeing all that one could see at New Scotland Yard on a personal tour by members of Scotland Yard. We then spent a lot of time in the New Scotland Yard bar with a lot of New Scotland Yard police. Of course Jim and I received a lot of off color remarks and jokes and remarks from the guys and gals about the theft of our clothing and about what we lost, but that is just part of life. We all laughed and had a good time. Some time the next AM when Jim and I returned to the hotel, we found all of our stolen items had been returned. Not sure how they did it, but the CID and the uniformed London police were just not going to let the vandal(s) get away. So Jim and I returned to Hanau with a lot of funny stories to tell everyone. So now we all know there are underwear bandits out there just waiting for us to not store the underwear in the hotel safe and that London police can speak English.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:48:34 +0000
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