Police news - Video: Police, camera, harpoon! - 2009

Friends of Top Gear, we need your help.

We've just been pointed in the direction of this hilarious YouTube video, which purports to demonstrate a piece of Finnish police technology dreamed up in the mid-1990s, and we want to know whether it's real... or a big massive spoof.

Spiked harpoons? Grapple hooks? Tear gas? It does all sound a bit... terrifying and incredibly dangerous, doesn't it?

Then again, the Finns are renowned for a somewhat cavalier attitude towards road safety. And, say, the welfare of the lower abdomens of potential car thieves. Or pedestrians.

Despite our best efforts to contact the Finnish authorities, we can't find out whether this was genuinely proposed as an addition to the Scandinavian police armoury. Anyone with further information should contact, er, us using those comment boxes below. 

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