To celebrate the completion of a new and very expensive police station (complete with a shopping mall and restaurants apparently)(Copper Coffee? Cop Shop? Ye Olde Bill? this could be fun) at Northfleet (which is near enough to London to make us interested), some bright spark has suggested burying a time capsule full of things which represent the meaning of policing in 2007. Youngsters aged 11-18 have been invited to send in their suggestions, and there is a prize for the best.

We couldn?t let a story like that go, now could we?

Londonist likes police people generally. Most of them are hard working and long-suffering, some of them have a sense of humour, and they do make London (and environs) a safer place to be. But?.

Our suggestions for the capsule thus far are:

* an egg timer ? only when every last grain has gone should the police operator pick up the phone
* an episode of The Bill ? the half hour involved in watching therein representing the time it takes to respond to a 999 summons
* a police training manual (so officers can check whether they have been trained to deal with a particular situation)
* some acid drops, to assist retention of dead serious expression in the face of attempts to lighten up conversation

Well, that?ll do to be going on with, anyway. But Londonist reckons the police are just setting themselves up for satire with this idea?

Image courtesy of Keaggy?s flickr stream.