The blurb on the back of David Copperfield’s Wasting Police Time says this:

Ever wondered why you can’t find a policeman when you need one? PC David Copperfield has the answer… they’re all inside the station, writing reports, photocopying, stapling and filing – when they’re not getting caught up in the petty squabbles of the underclass. Wasting Police Time is his hilarious and shocking diary of life as a modern British bobby. It’s the first book to spill the beans about the way senior police officers waste our money while fiddling the crime figures and scrambling to meet bogus Home Office targets. Copperfield’s chief constable won’t like it, and neither will the government. But honest taxpayers, sick of being fleeced while criminals rule our streets, will relish every word.

Well, the police in the UK have found something else to do to take their minds off the fact that they are not fighting crime: arrest those who do. Peter Drummond confronted a drug dealer, John Nellies and flushed his heroin down the toilet. What was his reward? Two months in the slammer.

Father-of-three jailed after confronting drug dealer who sold heroin to his family

Father-of-three Peter Drummond was so angry when he discovered someone had sold heroin to his family that he took matters into his own hands.

He confronted John Nellies in his home and flushed five of the drug dealer’s bags of heroin down the toilet.

But yesterday it was Drummond – not Nellies – who found himself being jailed in court.

The 26-year-old shook his head in disbelief as he was ordered to serve two months for breaching the peace by barging into Nellies’s home and threatening him.

In Les Miserable, the hero, Jean Valjean is imprisoned for five years for stealing bread while the policeman, Javert mercilessly pursues him after his release. While he was writing the novel Victor Hugo witnessed the fate of someone who stole a loaf of bread and this undoubtedly provided some of the inspiration for his great novel. Jean Valjean’s fate was harsher than Drummond’s, but considerably less bizarre.

Victor, if only you were alive today.