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Who watches the Watchers?
He had heard about Bleakridge during his tour of Midsomer country - as the new DCI in charge of Causton Constabulary when Tom retired and moved on his way, it was important for him to get a good idea of the place that he would be working in; he had done it with his previous posting, but this county was vastly different - and he had learnt of how lawless the place was.
Indeed that had attracted every burglar, every joyrider, and every single thief within a 60-mile radius. The place was ideal for crime sprees since the thieves took advantage of the distance it took for the police to come, so by the time the police did arrive, they would arrive too late. The damage was done. And the police received nothing but abuse because they had arrived late, far too late.
Since he knew the history of the village, DCI John Barnaby wasn't too surprised the Bleakridge Watch was set up.
In some ways, he actually admired them; under the dubious leadership of Ingrid Lockton, they'd managed to bring the crime rate down, but the police had never truly bothered to investigate the watch or their petty actions.
John now realised they should, but the distance between the village and the rest of Midsomer County was too great to be ignored. In truth, the murder of Angus Colton had actually done the village a favour.
Ever since he had arrived in Bleakridge and he had learnt more about the watch's actions - their 'rules and regulations,' how they persecuted businesses like Mitch McAllister and Lena Ferrara who ran the local pub and told him and Winter when they first questioned him the watch had made it all but unbearable and impossible for them to run their business.
The pub was haemorrhaging money badly, not only were their plans for quiz nights, barbecues and other events have thrown out of the door by the watch members, Mitch had told them the watch had imposed a curfew on the pub and when it should close. And if they didn't they would make petty complaints to the local council. Barnaby had seen a dozen of them and he knew that the council had only gotten involved with only half of the information. But as the case progressed and more information came through, Barnaby became increasingly worried about the watch. He didn't care if they believed themselves to be a good law-keeping organisation, he found some of their methods to be verging on Gestapo like tactics, and some of them seemed to have let the power of what they were doing go to their heads.
Ingrid Lockton was the worst of them.
While he didn't know the full history of when things spiralled out of control, John had the feeling the watch had been welcomed by Bleakridge, but the members started taking their new roles with gusto, and the power went to their head as they started helping maintain law and order and stopping criminals from even coming to the village, and they'd simply found power in what they were doing. That was the problem when you got a position like the head of a watch.
Some of the watch members were unlikely to be power-mad, in fact, they had seemed to be law-abiding people who had just wanted to help, and they had just gone along with the watch's decisions like that.
But it was a lie.
The founding of the watch, the murder of Ingrid's brother Frank, which only came about because he was abusing his wife Maxine while his daughter Tara was unaware of the abuse - whether it was because Maxine covered it up or Frank had, John had no idea - and Barbara had run him down, knowing he was a bully and an abusive drunk. She had hidden the car she'd used as a murder weapon, unsure of what to do and even more unsure of what was going to happen next. She hadn't realised Ingrid would transform her brother into a martyr, the rallying cry she'd needed to found the Bleakridge Watch, but she was forced to watch and cope as her best friend was browbeaten by Ingrid who was idolised by her daughter.
But the watch was a lie.
They were running out of funding, and people in the village was essentially saying 'You've done your job, we don't need you anymore,' and that did not sit well with Ingrid.
John could understand her reasons for secretly getting one of her members to start committing burglaries and telling him where to break in so he would not be caught by any of the patrols.
The burglaries had been caused by Azeem, a member of the watch, but while the people in the village thought he had been using his position within the watch to get clues of where to burgle, the police weren't so sure.
For a start, Azeem's financial records were good. The man was not a criminal with no form. He had the things he had stolen in the back of his shop - most burglars didn't do that, some of the more clever ones kept them in sheds, they buried them, or they found a different place to hide things. It didn't take long to discover the truth, but John had to admit the planning of the burglaries and Ingrid's scheme was actually good - it not only ensured the watch remained important, but it got the organisation funded, so was well done, but Ingrid had made a big mistake inhaling an argument with Azeem in a crowded cafe, but truthfully even without that they had the text messages to go with when Azeem and they were going to discover whom he was texting.
Barnaby didn't have any problem about revealing the truth to the watch or the rest of the village for that matter, but John wondered what was going to happen to the Watch. The members knew thanks to her very public reveal as being behind the burglaries, and what Ingrid was doing, so they saw no reason to trust her anymore. But truthfully the watch was defunct anyway; Barnaby had begun pulling strings to make sure police patrols in this part of the county increased. He didn't want an organisation like the watch springing up, but if one of them did then he would prefer it if someone like Mitch was in charge.
The man might be a bit volatile at times, but he wasn't an arrogant bully as Ingrid was reputed to be.
He hadn't liked the idea of the watch when he learnt more about it. They had let themselves be drawn in by power, and many of them were beginning to take an almost Gestapo like approach to crime-fighting but they also saw the watch as a means of getting the village the way they wanted.
But where did it end, taking note of speeds from cars, harassing business owners, telling people what to do, who watched the watchers?