The Farce Awakens – crime on rise but police dress up as Star Wars villains

THE Force doesn’t seem to be with this police constable.

The officer – part of a constabulary battling rising crime – found time to dress up as one of the evil Galactic Empire’s Stormtroopers from the Star Wars series at a TV and film convention over the weekend.

The image of the officer posing in the back of a police van was tweeted by a Staffordshire neighbourhood policing unit.

It comes after officers in other forces used Twitter to share images of themselves dressed up as Frankenstein or wearing bear masks for the camera in recent months.

The Stormtrooper picture was tweeted just a month after the cash-strapped Staffordshire force was criticised for sending officers out litter picking during a community action week. The image of ‘PC White’ was taken at Stoke CON Trent – a TV, film, comic and memorabilia convention – at Staffordshire University on Sunday and attracted condemnation from a local crime victim. Fiona Fowler, 43, runs a day care service for the elderly in the city, but suffered vandalism to the minibus used to transport clients in January.

She said: ‘We didn’t even see a police officer when we reported the crime. This does seem an inappropriate use of this officer’s time when resources are said to be stretched.’

The number of recorded crimes in Staffordshire grew from 113,260 in 2016 to 117,752 last year, according to the force’s own figures. By last night, the force had been unable to call upon any Jedi mind tricks to establish which officer had donned the Stormtrooper outfit.