The revelation by the Pheu Thai party that the Democrat-controlled Bangkok Metropolitan Administration purchased more than 1,300 dummy cameras has led to further revelations.

It appears that in the wake of the New Year Bombings in 2007, the BMA decided that CCTV cameras posted in prominent locations around the city would deter further violence. Unfortunately they had no budget for real cameras, so they bought some empty look-alike boxes for about 2,500 baht each on the theory that potential criminals would think they were real and be deterred from their criminal intentions.

The Democrats counter that this practice is in general use around the world and was in fact used by the Thaksin government in the South. It is effective in deterring crime and in any case, Pheu Thai are only raising the issue to divert attention from the government’s mismanagement of the floods, the economy and Thaksin’s de facto command of the Cabinet.

There is of course a long tradition of dummy law enforcement in Thailand. Motorists have recently been treated to the reappearance of the smiling plaster policemen. These are placed at strategic intersections as a way of frightening errant motorists into obeying the traffic laws. Observers have, however, questioned whether a motorist myopic enough to be fooled by these slightly outsize statues should in fact be allowed to drive at all.

And there is the infamous case of the GT200 ‘bomb detector’. Consisting of nothing more than an empty plastic box, a telescopic car aerial, some laminated plastic cards and a whole lot of hype, these were bought, mostly by the military, at something around one million baht each. ‘Powered’ by the user’s static electricity and based on ‘para/dia-magnetism’, these devices were supposedly capable of detecting bombs, illegal drugs, laundered money, illegal aliens and lost golf balls at immense ranges.

A double blind test by the Ministry of Science and Technology proved that they operated at slightly worse than chance. While the rest of the country took this as proof of fraud, the military claimed they were ‘better than nothing’. The government banned all further purchases but said it was up to the military to decide whether they wanted to keep using the ones they already have.

But new allegations have emerged that in addition to dummy traffic cops, there are entire dummy police stations at certain locations around Bangkok. These are also based on the principle of deterring would-be criminals through false pretences.

They look just like real police stations, are fully staffed 24 hours a day by people wearing police uniforms and have a full complement of police vehicles, radios, etc. They issue reports for lost property, accept complaints of crimes and even collect fines for traffic tickets.

But they do no investigation of any of the crimes reported, never catch any perpetrators and never take culprits to court.

Asked to justify the substantial resources spent on developing and operating these dummy police stations, a high-ranking city police officer noted that a real police station would cost even more, but on the spur of the moment was unable to think of any additional cost that would be incurred.

The officer did however claim that the dummy police stations were extremely effective. ‘The crime rate in the areas controlled by dummy police stations is no higher that those with real ones’, he said. ‘The arrest rate is also very similar.’

When asked if this policy had been approved by the government, the officer was non-committal, giving rise to suspicions that this may be an ‘unofficial’ policy. Asked if there would be repercussions from the government now that these dummy police stations have been exposed, the officer was unperturbed.

‘Which government are you talking about?’ he asked. ‘The real one or the dummy?’