The story about the cancellation of the Peterborough Half Marathon earlier today smells really fishy. According to various press reports and statements from Cambridgeshire Police, the race was called off after a member of the public spotted a man acting ‘suspiciously’ near the route of the race. This in turn led to what was called a ‘firearms’ operation which caused the race to be cancelled on police advice.

The police later ‘clarified’ the situation stating that a member of the public had ‘misunderstood’ something that had happened and that there’s nothing to see and nothing to worry about. Does anyone else share my desire to shout ‘bullshit’ about the police’s comments? There are a lot of people who look suspicious and who are reported to the police as suspicious by the public but they do not always end up with firearms officers being deployed and certainly not the cancellation of a massive event such as the Peterborough Half Marathon. It’s even more odd for the event to be cancelled half an hour before it was due to start.

I can’t help but think that there’s much more than meets the eye to this case? It’s quite possible that there was something to worry about and the police have merely tried to calm down the situation or put people off wondering about what’s happened by saying that the member of the public ‘misinterpreted’ the situation? This shifts the attention away from what the police were up to and onto the member of the public who reported, in good faith as the police said, what they saw.

There are several possibilities in my view as to what happened. The first is the police’s narrative which is that someone saw something and put two and two together and made five and the police acted strongly and swiftly, some may say overreacted, because of recent events of a terrorist nature. I’m really not sure that I completely believe the police on this. The second is that a member of the public accidentally compromised an existing police operation either against Jihadists or some other policing action against criminals, saw something that looked odd, reported it in, which led to the subsequent actions. The third possibility that comes to mind is that a jihad plot against the race was planned and one of the jihadi savages was seen acting suspiciously which attracted the interest of the as yet unnamed and unknown member of the public. The police then stop the race because of the danger of an attack but for reasons of political correctness do not want to let the public know that this is what has happened.

In any event, to stop such a major event for just a person acting suspiciously looks more than a little over the top. It looks to me as if the police know more than they are letting on about. If this is indeed the case then it will cause yet more distrust of police forces that have already sunk very low in the public’s estimation.

So, what do you think? Are the police and their narrative correct or are they lying to us?