I occasionally pop into Costa Lombardy for a morning coffee. The good news is, it's frequented heavily by the police who apparently get a discount so definitely no chance of getting mugged. Sometimes it's like a police station car park.

Now here's the weird thing. Twice in the past couple of weeks, there's been one police car parked outside while a couple of officers have their caffeine infusion .... and for the whole time they are there, they leave the engine running.

It was a different car on each occasion; the other day a BMW, yesterday this little one in the picture, whatever that it.

Does anyone know why on earth they would leave their unoccupied police car engine running for about 20 mins/half hour while they have a coffee???

No idea, sounds silly to me, anyone could drive off in one.

Maybe something gets disconnected when they turn it off and they get booked as off duty. Same as me when I'm WFH setting my Office Communicator status to 'away'.

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Lets be careful out there !

1. Someone else is paying for the fuel.
2. There is probably a lot of electrical demand on the batteries so they need to keep them charged.
3. Who ever in their right mind would nick a police car.
4. I suspect there is some time and motion device in the vehicle where it can be monitored from a central location. (Lots of commercial vehicles have sat comms in them these days).
5. Costa give them free coffee.
6. Old Bill NEVER pass the chance up of something for nothing.

It's funny you bring this up.
My wife and I was taking an evening stroll along Sharvile Lane by the London Shooting Club when we was passed by two Police dog handlers with their dogs.
Further down the lane, (at least ½ mile) we came across the car. The Back door was wide open and the engine was running. We both thought anyone could have driven off before the two officers could have got anywhere near it.
There must be some explanation for this..