London Police Nabs Criminals Using a Tourist Bus - as part of the news series by GeoBeats.
If you thought the London's double decker buses are used only for tourism, think again.
Law enforcement pulled out all the stops to put an end to illegal gambling on the Westminster Bridge in London. Con artists from Romania had set up illegal dice and card games preying on innocent tourists, who could lose hundreds of dollars in a short amount of time. So police borrowed a double-decker bus, equipped with the usual driver and 30 plain clothes officers to catch the dirty con men. The police did have a rough start; the gambling ring had multiple lookouts and at one point orders came to ambush while the bus was in traffic leading an officer to say, ‘This is not going to make a Hollywood action movie’. However, cops were successful in making more than 25 arrests and retrieving gaming paraphernalia .
With the abundance of visitors arriving in London for the Olympic games, the sting couldn’t have been carried out at a better time. A recent survey done by the Confederation of British Industry found that 76% of participants think the games will encourage tourism. More than 10,000 athletes and hundreds of thousands of international tourists are expected to visit London during this time.
