If this happened in Canada

LONDON (AFP) - A police officer who killed a woman on a "hair-raising joyride" in a patrol car while running errands like taking a birthday card to his sister was jailed for six and a half years on Monday.

Malcolm Searles, 24, ran over Sandra Simpson, a 61-year-old grandmother, in Bromley, southeast London, in August last year. He was driving a marked patrol car with its blue lights flashing and siren turned on.

In the hour before the crash, prosecutors said he had delivered a card to his sister, visited a supermarket and picked up his father and uncle from a fancy dress party to give them a ride in the patrol car.

He was clocked doing 104 miles (167 kilometres) per hour in a 40 mile per hour zone and also drove at high speed through housing estates where children were playing on the pavement.

After hitting Simpson, Searles, who has now left London's Metropolitan Police, falsely claimed he had been following a stolen car, Southwark Crown Court in London heard.

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I suspect that if this happened in Canada -

• the cop would never have seen a courtroom or a charge, and maybe even be promoted
  

• may have been temporarily suspended with pay, while his peers "investigate"

• the investigation would have mostly involved looking for dirt on the grandmother
  

• a police spokesperson and perhaps a Con spokesperson would have suggested it was the grandmother's fault for standing in front of the lit-up patrol car obviously on police business

• no mention of a 'joy-ride' would ever have been made public

• public knowledge of the joy-ride element would happened through only through a leak or recording from a witness or third party source
  

• a Blogging Tory or two would have written a long post about how hard it is to be a cop and risk your life on the streets every day and we should all just shut up when these things happen and people should know better than to stand in front of speeding police cars and the woman was probably some sort of radical leftist drug addict scum anyway
  

• a Taser(tm) would have been involved, perhaps on a passerby/witness giving first-aid to the victim