Special forces
THE LEGENDARY film director Alfred Hitchcock once said, “I’m not against the police, I’m just afraid of them.” Anyone who spotted the X-TYPE in full police livery patrolling a busy Merseyside road between 2003 and 2011 would possibly have felt the same. The car’s smaller size and traditional Jaguar design aren’t naturally scary, but when in full police livery only the hardest of criminals would have continued to speed past without a trouser accident. After a successful career with the force, the car was decommissioned and sold, but has since been sympathetically returned to full police specification ready to frighten us all once again. Me included.
In late 2000, the Merseyside Police created a new anti-crime initiative, Lancsafe, which operated along a section of the A580 that cuts through St Helens, colloquially known as the East Lancashire Road. A dedicated marked police car patrolled the area looking for either stolen cars or those known to have been used by criminals, and to be available to respond quickly to recently reported crimes.
In an April 2003 interview on the BBC News website, chief inspector John Martin of Merseyside Police said, “The aim of the project is to reduce theft of and from motor vehicles and forecourt crime,
