| The jailbreak took place at the Old Police Cells Museum in Brighton, Sussex |
Consultants from Sussex-based c-hq security services who design prison and custodial installations found themselves on the wrong side of the bars in a fundraising jailbreak organised by Crimestoppers.
The jailbreak took place at the Old Police Cells Museum in Brighton, Sussex, and at the time of writing the event has raised £3,000 in total for the museum and for Crimestoppers which are both independent charities that rely on donations.
c-hq staff raced around the county by train solving clues that finally allowed them to spring a colleague from a Victorian cell at the museum which was the main Brighton Borough police station from 1830 to 1967.
Martin Grigg, a director of c-hq, said: “Modern police and prison staff benefit from technological advances such as PSIM, CCTV, PIDS and video analytics. But in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries they had to rely on their wits and basic access control measures. This was a case of gamekeepers-turned-poachers for c-hq, and Chief Inspector Bruce Matthews must have been surprised when he was asked to handcuff me since I’ve worked with him at custodial facilities.”
He continued: “The event has been a great bonding exercise for all the teams but none of us would have wanted to do time in the cells. The museum pays tribute to the achievements of police in this area and I was struck by exhibits showing how Irish Republican Patrick Magee was convicted of the 1984 Grand Hotel bombing during the Conservative Party conference in the town.”
In 2010/11 a total of 8,264 people were arrested and charged as a result of information received by Crimestoppers and drugs seizures exceeded £25m.