In my 26 years in a blue suit, the sniffer dogs where only deployed on return from "druggy" runs ashore. I was once asked to help the dog handler get his mutt down to a flashed up boiler room on a Leander, with only limited success.
Ever since then, I've been fairly cynical about the whole process.

Originally Posted by supermatelot

Wont discussing this here get the site in shite..sub judice and all that??

Just a thought...

Freedom of expression?

'She must have earned a decent salary because she could afford to pay for a flat that was empty most of the time and she sent money to her mother in Africa.’

In that case she's not in the same fcuking RN I was in.

She had just got British nationality - could this be taken off her for this act?

Originally Posted by Mr_Deputy

She had just got British nationality - could this be taken off her for this act?

I bloody well hope so!!! But doubt it very much

In 14 years and fcuk knows how many deployments I never saw any dogs when anchored in the sound. We were just piped by messdeck to the dining hall to declare if we had anything etc. Most of the time - if anybody said they had bought a gucci watch or clothing etc, they were told to simply take it out of it's wrapping and wear it etc etc.

Any HiFI equipment or other cheap electricals was stored under the mess seats and in false bulkheads etc :D
The Mod plod at the main gates DO check for DF fags though.
Never knew of anyone ever even thinking about bringing drugs back. They would have been castigated anyway.

Originally Posted by walt_of_the_walts

Originally Posted by Mr_Fingerz

Originally Posted by walt_of_the_walts

Originally Posted by The_Seagull

I'm surprised it's not been covered on ARRSE already.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8207755.stm

Good find! Though 12 Kilos of the stuff, which I dare say they knew about already, wasn't too hard to find.

Not a stuffer or swallower then?

SOCA have of course been tipped off by an informant, as they couldn't find there own arses with both hands and a mirror in broad daylight.

The report is odd in that it refers to HMRC, which ceased to exist, has been purged, liqiuidated, airbrushed out and rehabiltated into the UK Border Agency for a while now, thanks to our glorious leader Comrade Brown, who shines brighter than our glorious august weather. Hoorah!

Not strictly true. The National Investigation Service was subsumed into SOCA (along with the National Crime Squad) - probably as a result of Groovy Gordy being hacked off at being asked embarrasing questions about London City Bond. HMRC Detection (by and large - some teams remain in HMRC) have moved into UKBA - which means the the Home Office rather than the Treasury get to answer embarrasing questions about the paucity of uniformed staff at ports and airports outside the South East of England.

HMRC retains primacy on Customs and International Trade issues (and the Excise has been left to languish by itself because the Dark Siders don't understand indirect taxes that are based on the production, and holding and movement, of goods.)

edit to add a final bracket

Yeah, you're right. But the remaining HMRC maritime/airport tax function is surely the shit bits Detection don't want? So they have palmed them off to what is now, to all intents and purposes, the horrible Inland Revenue of old again.
(Now that the anti smuggling bit has left for pastures new under the Home Office sky to gambol through the barley with its new love, the Immigration Agency. )

The drugs detector dogs are surely all UKBA though, even when currency dogs are deployed?

In fact, it's still a fcuking dogs breakfast AFAICS

Yep, that about sums it all up.

"They" keep telling us that it's a merger and not a take over. Maybe that's why in the "rationalisation of the estate" the bulk of the buildings that have closed are ex-C&E, and the pages on the website all start with an "inrev" addy.

Not that I am in any way cynical about the merger.

The Board of HMRC are not achieving their full potential, and they are perfectly aware of that fact (trans - they're shoite and they know they are)

Originally Posted by supermatelot

In 14 years and fcuk knows how many deployments I never saw any dogs when anchored in the sound. We were just piped by messdeck to the dining hall to declare if we had anything etc. Most of the time - if anybody said they had bought a gucci watch or clothing etc, they were told to simply take it out of it's wrapping and wear it etc etc.

Any HiFI equipment or other cheap electricals was stored under the mess seats and in false bulkheads etc :D
The Mod plod at the main gates DO check for DF fags though.
Never knew of anyone ever even thinking about bringing drugs back. They would have been castigated anyway.

Seconded.

I am surprised that she got caught, there are so many decent hidey holes on a 42 and the stupid bint put the gear in her locker! I went to Japan on a stumpy 42 and pretty much every member of the ship's company bought samurai swords. I remember gleefully walking out of Pompey dockyard with two of them sticking out of the top of my rucksack without so much as a nod from the guys on the gate. Try and walk out with some DF tabs though and you are fcuked.

Originally Posted by walt_of_the_walts

SOCA have of course been tipped off by an informant, as they couldn't find there own arses with both hands and a mirror in broad daylight.

And of course HMC&E/HMRC were never assisted in their detections by a timely little snippet of information given rather than found...in fact I think the infromant line at the NCU remains quite popular even to this day.

She should have tried this, no-one would have noticed

http://www.independent.ie/world-news...s-1864281.html

Pensioner caught with over €300,000 worth of cocaine in his underpants

By Ben Leach

Wednesday August 19 2009

A German pensioner was caught by customs officers in Barcelona with €325,000 worth of cocaine stashed in his underwear.

The 160 canisters of the drug, which had been sewn into his underpants, were discovered after customs workers were alerted to his suspiciously large behind.

One official said: "He wasn't a big man but he had a very bulky rear end. Then when he sat down it was like he was sitting on eggshells. His backside and his legs looked like they belonged to a weightlifter."

Officers found 6.6kg of cocaine stored inside the neoprene shorts he wore underneath his jeans. The 65-year-old German, who flew into Barcelona from South America, was arrested and jailed.

The customs officer added: "We've seen all sorts of stunts but the big pants were a first for us." It is just one of a series of imaginative smuggling attempts in recent months.

On Monday one man was arrested after he stuffed 25kg of cocaine into 407 courgettes and attempted to get to New York. He was intercepted at the airport of Las Americas, Santa Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.

Meanwhile a more substantial, if unimaginatively packaged loot was rumbled in north Ecuador on the same day. Six tonnes of the brown paper-packaged drug were seized during an operation in Esmeraldas, which saw four people arrested.

In June the Mexican navy seized more than a tonne of cocaine that had been hidden in the carcases of 20 frozen sharks.

And in June last year inmates at a Brazilian prison were found to be using pigeons to fly drugs in from the outside.

Guards at the jail near Sao Paulo had noticed a rise in the amount of narcotics being seized from prisoners and were mystified until they spotted some distressed pigeons struggling to remain airborne.

They found that inmates at the prison in Marilia had been training the birds to fly in goods with the aid of small pouches on their backs, avoiding the hi-tech security faced by visitors.

© Telegraph.co.uk

- Ben Leach