The grass in your pocket..

[Gob]

As pocket dials go, it was a fairly costly one: two suspected burglars have been arrested after accidentally calling the police on themselves, officers have said.

Staffordshire police confirmed they arrested a 49-year-old and a 42-year-old after receiving a call from one of them, who appeared to have unwittingly sat on his phone.

Officers said they listened in to the call as the men carried out the burglary and could even hear their colleagues arrive to make the arrests.

“I think we have just arrested the world’s unluckiest burglars,” said Ch Insp John Owen.

Police said they arrested the two men in the Middleport area of Stoke-on-Trent on suspicion of burglary after receiving the “suspicious call” on Wednesday evening. They were still in custody on Thursday morning.

“Whilst committing a burglary one of the bungling burglars has accidentally sat on his phone and dialled 999. We receive a call detailing all of their antics up to the point of hearing our patrols arrive to arrest them,” he wrote.

It is not the first time a set of robbers has managed to shop themselves with an injudiciously placed rear end. In 2013, a pair who were breaking into a car in Fresno, California, managed to call police on themselves.

The call handler on duty was able to track them down as Nathan Teklemariam and Carson Rinehart spent about half an hour discussing their plans. The pair were eventually arrested.

“This stuff just doesn’t happen – where a crime is captured from beginning to end,” Sgt Jaime Rios told Today. “The 911 call was still open at the time of the arrests, and the officer took the phone and ended the call himself.”

While 25-year-old Callum Tumilty managed not to call the police on himself when he broke into Cambois first school near Blyth, in Northumberland, to steal a load of laptops, his mother was less obliging.

Tumilty left his phone behind at the crime scene and was caught after his mother called it to try to track him down and asked the person who answered if Callum was there. Officers on the scene were quickly able to identify and track down the guilty party.

According to Newcastle’s Chronicle newspaper, Tumilty was later sentenced to 26 weeks in prison after pleading guilty to several charges.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... y-accident

[MajGenl.Meade]

Ass-dial grass!

[ex-khobar Andy]

I came here to post exactly that story from the Graun.

As an 'Andrew' I am often first alphabetically among friends' contacts. Thus I probably get more than my share of butt dialed calls.

[MGMcAnick]

Since Mrs Mc and I have been watching some BBC produced police dramas lately, most recently New Tricks, I have had to google more than one British slang term.

Here is "grass" which comes up often:
British Slang to Grass Someone
Posted by grantbarrett on June 26, 2015 ·
If you watch British police procedurals, you’ll likely come across the term to grass someone, meaning “to inform on someone” or “to rat someone out.” It’s a bit of British rhyming slang that originated with the 19th-century phrase to shop on someone. That gave us the noun shopper, which became grasshopper, and then got shortened to grass.

[ex-khobar Andy]

There is this alternate theory:

Policemen are often called "coppers" in British slang.
In London rhyming slang, a policeman or copper becomes a "grasshopper".
Someone who turns his pals, or their information over to the police "shops" them to the authorities.
That makes that person a "grass shopper."
Simplify a "grass shopper" and you end up with "grass".

That's more or less the way I'd always heard it.

[Bicycle Bill]

And I always thought it came from the old saying referring to someone on the wrong side of a predicament, fight, or argument —
— "his ass is grass, and I'm the lawnmower."

-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

Those Londoners of the East End, entomologists one and all. I well remember them in the late 19th century, skipping around the open green spaces of Haringey, Cheapside and Whitechapel with their nets and a jam jar with holes punched in the lid, gathering all manner of fauna for their collections. They'd meet together excitedly all over dockland, sharing anecdotes of the myriad grasshoppers and lepidoptera they'd captured and the ones that got away.

It was not long before one bright spark pointed out that 'grasshopper' rhymed with 'copper', so wouldn't it be a jolly jape to call the cops by the same name, since they'd gone all these years without being able to think of a suitable pseudonym for the peelers, the bobbies, the rozzers, the gaver, the coppers.

Inundated with grasshoppers was the old East End. Don't see 'em these days; too many people and buildings

[Gob]

And I always thought it came from the old saying referring to someone on the wrong side of a predicament, fight, or argument —
— "his ass is grass, and I'm the lawnmower."

-"BB"-

"Ass" is not a British term, unless you're referring to a donkey or suchlike.

[Long Run]

"Ass" is not a British term

Says a bum.