Misguided Motivations

As I may have mentioned before, sometimes a phrase or quote from someone just leaves me bemused, and wondering what the hell they were thinking at the time.

This happened to me again yesterday, reading the story about how a communications officer for British Transport Police lied about a significant fact,  which then caused a delay in finding the body of a missing woman.

He wrongly claimed to Essex Police that trains were fitted with sensors that would detect any collision on the line. This affected the police’s “perception of the likelihood of Natasha being on the railway lines”, the report said.

“The communications officer admitted he lied to an Essex police officer, initially telling IPCC officers that he did so to end the call which would allow him to get on with his job, and that he actually had no knowledge of train sensors,” the report said.

Now really, you’ve just got to wonder about the motivation there, haven’t you?

I guess it could be paraphrased as “I told a lie so I could get rid of the call, and go back to doing something else. Sure, the call was about a missing 17-year-old girl, but that wasn’t my problem or my job.”

I just think the entire thing’s weird, let alone the motivation for using that as an explanation of why he made that mistake…