Hare coursing patrol in Lincolnshire
The hare coursing season is in full flow and once again organised crime gangs are coming into the county to stream the barbaric act for online gamblers. We were invited to join DC Aaron Flint from Lincolnshire Police as he patrolled the county
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00:00Don't come to Lincolnshire. We will find you, we'll stop you, you'll be arrested, we'll prosecute you and you'll get some really hefty fines, court costs and you'll be banned from driving and like I say, just don't come to Lincolnshire.
00:14It's horrendously cruel. I mean they'll tell you that it's not and the hare has a quick death and that it helps with controlling the population. That's complete rubbish. It's really cruel. They chase this hare until it's exhausted and it can't get away. The dogs then get hold of it and then pull it to pieces.
00:38If they spotted a hare now, they'd stop the vehicle, get their dog out and allow their dog to course the hare. Sometimes we even see that they throw them out of windows. They'll have the dog in the back seat and they'll see a hare and they'll just pop it out of the window and then the dog chases the hare.
00:58It tends to be they video it and put bets on and gamble and make considerable amounts of money. There's cups as well like the Waterloo Cup where they'll have big competitions and again make large sums of money from that.
01:18So we have got some new powers and they have helped considerably. We've now got powers to stop them and their offences in relation to trespassing on land in pursuit of hares and there's also a going equipped kind of offence where if they're in possession of equipment that can be used for hare coursing then there's an offence there for us to charge with them.
01:46The new legislation also allows us to recoup our kennelling fees so the police spend a huge amount of money on kennelling the dogs that we seize. We're now recouping that money back from the offenders at court and we've seen some massive kennelling cost recovery.
02:06At the end of the day these hare courses over the years have laughed at us because they realise that if they go to court they're going to get virtually nothing whereas now we're the ones laughing because they're getting the proper punishments.
02:24In the height of the season we can get a lot of calls and I've known it where we've done runs on Blue Light from one end of the county to another and sometimes it's like chasing a ghost. You'll get to a field where you thought hare courses were and they've moved on and sometimes you can spend a number of hours just looking for them before you even find them.
02:48It is a long hard days of searching but when we do find them these days they're getting arrested, they're getting taken to custody, interviewed, held in custody whilst we make enquiries, their dogs are seized, their vehicles are seized, their equipment is seized and it's all forfeited at court and then the hare courses have to pay out the kennelling fees that are accrued from having to have their dogs in cuffs.
03:18For more information visit www.fema.gov.uk