If those were the rules, and he broke them, is he really innocent?

Detained on site by client 9 + 8 hours = OVERTIME BONUS!

Don't forget, free dinner and breakfast!

& I wouldn't complain at all for a free bacon\sausage butty or even a full breakfast if the police canteen ran to it.

They told me to bugger off and get a McDonalds and a taxi. Good Kip though.

If that was in the UK, I'm calling BS...

You can't just put someone in a cell for being tired, you could let them stay in the cell and get some kip if it's a quiet day, but there would be no grounds for forcing them to stay there whatsoever, or preventing them from driving as there's no rules around hours when it comes to car - you'd have to then follow them and then prove that in your professional judgement they were driving either without due care and attention or dangerously.

There's either another angle to this story, or it took place somewhere oversees with very different rules and a more relaxed attitude to powers of detention.

It's still a good dit though, so I'll let it slide.

>>it's a quiet day

You must be retired - you used the Q word!

/coat - mine's the black one with the dayglo over the top...

Could have been in the Nederlands, it used to be illegal to exceed working hour restrictions there. This was one of the factors in the Tenerife airport disaster, the KLM pilots knew they had to take off quickly in order to not exceed their working hours.

"Could have been in the Nederlands, it used to be illegal to exceed working hour restrictions there."

Note from your humble correspondent in NL: even if you're right I've never heard of somebody being locked up for that. And that would only be possible after they'd been convicted by a court. So not in NL, methinks.

Still, almost that time of the week again -->

No need to be convicted in court to be detained -how else would you get people to court if they were unwilling to do so?

Hm, I guess the "yeah, get some kip, I'll handle the pager and tell your boss to f' off" sounds far less interesting than saying "I was jailed for being overworked" ;)

> If that was in the UK, I'm calling BS

Hmmm.

I think if it had been me, I would have asked "officer, are you detaining me?"

If the answer is "yes" then there is a process they have to follow, records to be kept, (potential) lawsuits to defend. If no, then cheerio!

Though if "Julian" had then gone to his car, the same P.C. could possibly have arrested him for ... well, I'm sure he could have thought of something.

Presumably the Working Time Directive rules. Limited to ten hours a day if there is some driving involved.

Than allowed by whom ? The police handbook ?

And is that officer going to go around jailing firefighters because they took 11 hours to secure a building in flames ?

Ridiculous.

And is that officer going to go around jailing firefighters because they took 11 hours to secure a building in flames

Highly unlikely, as a replacement lot of firefighters would come along and relieve the first lot after a few hours

I had to go on site in a foreign country to help diagnose a problem on a bank's system. I did not speak the language, so had someone with me who could translate.

We were allowed into the inner sanctum operations room - having been through airport like security.

I was given very clear instructions do not touch >anything<. If you want to look at the next screen ask, and the bank's staff will press the key for you.

I was given these instructions several times, so I wondered why. It turns out the week before, someone from another vendor had scrolled a display to check something, and had been caught by the video surveillance. The person was taken away and put in a room while "management" were involved. I think a senior manager from the vendor had to come and apologise to the head of the bank's IT security.

As a result every visitor was told "Do not even thing of touching the system. Do not touch a screen to point out something - it could be a touch sensitive screen. Keep your hands in your pockets".

Despite this the bank's staff were very helpful and emailed me things of interest, so I could help diagnose the problem. Afterwards we went out for a meal to celebrate. It turned out that the previous year, a visitor had managed to cause a major outage which was national headlines for days.

just when he'd been given good cell coverage.

But I suspect there would have been lag

Depends on how many bars of signal he had?

Had a friend who was caught in a waiting area for hours due to a site emergency. Seriously locked down site, and you had to wait in dedicated areas before an escort arrived. He was in one of these areas when an alarm went off and the site went into lockdown.

On the flip side, I've seen a bank send sensitive information via unencrypted email (despite me warning them not to multiple times beforehand). Didn't even need that info for diagnostics.

50 years ago, when paper dumps were used for diagnosis, a secretive organisation in America had a problem. They reluctantly sent a dump in ... but any sensitive/secret information in plaintext on the right was cut out with scissors leaving holes in the paper. The people did not realise the data was in hex on the left hand side of the paper.

Someone else send in a word document with text redacted. They had just made the text white on a white background. So we just changed the style to be black text on white backgrond and showed it all.

I was building a studio and lifted some ceiling tiles to investigate cable routes.

Imagine my surprise to find I was looking over a 'stops at the tiles, not the floor-slab' wall straight into the bank next door's 'strong-room.'

The manager wasn't at all happy, and builders arrived at the bank in double time.

Before my time, but a tale from the era of a 'Crisis' somewhere bordering a large waterway in the eastern Mediterranean.....

Our company had a 'problem' at an important site. This was largely caused (in the company's evaluation of the issue) by a poor specification and so two Directors went to 'sort it out' directly with the Consultant and Customer/end-user. On arrival, they were promptly arrested and jailed until they had arranged for the problem to be resolved at the company's expense.....

I know this story because much later, I was searching for a special piece of equipment which was used at the time. I was informed (by the director's son!) that it never completed the return journey and the equipment was thought to be sitting in a wreck at the bottom of a particular stretch of water.

A salutary tale for trips abroad 'trouble-shooting'.

Caring plod gives overworked techie good excuse for some downtime.

Techie embellishes "into this cell you go" ("and would you like a cuppa?" left out)

El Reg embellishes: "jailed"[1] (and still not to the point of being charged)

Commentards strongly declare[2] that whole story is a pack of lies.

'Twas ever thus.

[1] ahem, "gaoled" if you would be so kind.

[2] rant

My employer had a rule that you were not allowed to drive to or from the airport if flying. We were allowed to get a private hire car (with driver) for the journey; this was routine and my employer had a contract with a local company providing airport taxi services. This was always described as an H&S issue, but I'd be interested to know whether driving while on company business is covered by rules similar to those for HGV drivers, with time in the aircraft counting as work hours. I suspect the whole thing is a legal can of worms! Even if not covered by law, I'd imagine the HGV rules would provide context for any ruling on H&S issues in the event of an accident.

As others have said, I think the real situation has been "improved" to make a good story - the police officer judged that he was too tired to drive safely and OFFERED him a bed in a cell! And as I know of at least one RTA that was caused by fatigue (a nurse coming off a long shift), I think the officer behaved correctly.

A police officer also once told me that very few vehicles - even brand new ones straight off the dealer's forecourt - were completely legal; there was almost always some tiny thing that would allow them to take it off the road. It's little things like numberplates that do it (in the UK there are strict rules about the size and shape of the letters and numerals, as well as rules regarding obstruction by fixings).