Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, well it might be a little bit difficult to discern for folks that haven't been really keeping up with the news over here in Thailand so I will go ahead and get to it. I thought of making this video after reading quite a short article in the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Anutin wants legal action over tourist's unofficial police escort. Quoting directly: "A Deputy Prime Minister has demanded punishment for Police who provided a controversial VVIP escort for a Chinese tourist, saying it was against all rules. Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Monday, the police who provided the unofficial escort service had broken the law and regulations. No law permitted Police to operate such a sideline, he said. Quote: "Those who did this must be prosecuted and punished." unquote, Mr. Anutin said. He did not expect it would tarnish the country's tourism image. Quote: "We did not advertise any escort service for visitors." unquote, he said. 

So when we are talking about escort service here, what we are talking about is these are like motorcades apparently, apparently. This story recently broke in like the last week. Apparently there was a tourist who hired someone, something to assist them in having sort of a police escort, a police motorcade so they could be escorted through the city with sort of a motorcade, apparently. I think it is going to take a few more weeks to sort of dig down into exactly what happened here but yeah that appears to be the situation. Now understand, look Police oftentimes, parades are a really good example of this, Police often have what is called extra duty where they just simply have to provide sort of peacekeeping, I don't know how you want to put it, but basically just provide services, sometimes even escort through the streets and things for foreign dignitaries. Again, I always think of parades when I think of Police having to do "extra duty", it's just they kind of have to patrol make sure that fights or something or problems don't erupt. So there are good reasons for why Police have the prerogatives to for example provide escort services for example. However as I think was noted and I urge those who are watching this video go check out that article and read it in detail, but I think it pretty clearly summed up things in that article that this wasn't done for that purpose. This was just sort of a private person who just wanted this escort and it appears that that was not appropriate. 

Now what's the point of this video? Again sort of the thrust of these videos are for expats, possible tourists, well the thrust of the video and the thing to take away from it, if it sounds odd and it sounds like something that wouldn't normally happen, just because it's in Thailand, I mean if you are in Ohio, if you are in Cleveland, are you just going to walk down to like the local Police Precinct and say "hey, I've got a car and I want you to drive around in front of me and be my police escort"? Probably not. Now, if you have a legitimate reason, if you go down to the Police Station and say "hey we have got a funeral coming up; my grandmother passed away, we're going to have a procession, can you give us a hand with this? I don't know what that entails", oftentimes Police Officers are going to be very accommodating to something like that. This whole thing looks like it was some sort of I don't know, an almost pageantry or something but this person, it appears that sort of public resources may have been used improperly, again I don't know the full details. The thing to take away from this as sort of an Expat or a tourist is if it sounds, it's one of those “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is”. This doesn't quite equate to that saying but if it seems strange, if it seems like an odd set of circumstances, it's probably something to steer clear of.