Camouflage

New Office-in-Charge at the police station.

Without informing anybody else, he orders several police officers (male & female) to dress in mufti and of an evening mingle through the pubs. New OiC then calls a meeting between him and the town's main liquor licencees.

At this meeting he berates us no end, about the sort of stuff that the constables had seen in & around pubs (when out of uniform).

Apparently the constables-in-mufti had observed behaviour that people don't exhibit when there is a uniformed copper around.

Gee Sarge, ya don't reckon?

Anyways, the new O-i-C (at this special meeting) berated us publicans about how men had urinated in the street, right beside undercover police ladies, etc etc etc.

And now he, the new broom, was going to knock this sort of conduct out of the publicans of the town......

... about here Mine Host hit his pins to enquire just which publicans had been observed engaging in such...er.... street activities?

The meaning went right over the head of the really intelligent and brainy new O-i-C. Actually it ran deeper than that.

In his mind publicans knew this was happening, condoned it, and allowed it to happen.

The meeting was to "let you publicans know" that "this stops now!"

I don't know what this dickhead thought he was going to achieve by treating some of the town's leading businessmen like street hooligans (except to convince all of us that he was a dickhead).

Gee, we don't have any power outside our own buildings, and we aren't the ones with the guns & powers of arrest!