'Hot Fuzz' recruitment video scrapped by Guernsey Police

Guernsey's police force has removed a recruitment video from Facebook after it was called "awful", "embarrassing" and "shockingly unaware".

The film portrayed a "usual" week for a police officer in the island as involving car chases and armed raids.

Some comments ridiculed the video for resembling the comedy film Hot Fuzz.

The head of law enforcement apologised for the campaign, but said it was designed to show "a variety of opportunities".

There were 266 incidents that resulted in someone being charged with a crime in Guernsey last year: mostly drug offences, theft and criminal damage.

Firearms teams were deployed on 77 occasions in 2019, with a weapon being fired during one incident.

While there were some positive comments on the Facebook post, many viewers were concerned with the way the video portrayed islanders as "violent raging lunatics", while others found the tone "glorified firearms" and was "not a good look from law enforcement".

Leah Wild asked: "Did you really just make yourselves look like Hot Fuzz? Except not funny at all."

"Welcome to Guernsey, where our police force are a bunch of violent raging lunatics. That's all I took away form this, sorry," said Elli Boucher.

"This advert is shockingly unaware. Unless it was dug out of a time capsule and was made by a 12-year-old boy in the mid-80s," said Xara Higgs.

Campaign group the Gun Control Network said the decision to promote law enforcement in a way "so completely at odds with reality" was a "serious error of judgement".

Guernsey's head of law enforcement, Ruari Hardy, said he was "aware of the community response" and apologised for "any concern that the content caused".

"The organisation had no intention to undermine public confidence in the island's police service or the police service as a whole," he added.