Scotland Yard finds crime does pay at Cannes television festival

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Scotland Yard has set up a stall at a television festival in Cannes to sell footage of car chases and stake-outs. The sale is expected to raise £1m.

Action filmed from police cars and helicopters, including footage of the attempted Millennium Dome diamond robbery in 2001, is up for sale at the Mip-TV market. Interest in the Greenwich raid is expected to be intense. It would have been the world's biggest armed robbery and it was foiled by a police operation involving more than 100 officers.

The Metropolitan Police said an Israeli TV station was interested in buying 10 hours of footage and an Asian broadcaster wanted four hours of material.

The film is being sold despite a ruling two months ago by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that a suicidal man's human rights were breached when CCTV footage from Brentwood, Essex, was broadcast showing him carrying a knife.

For years, the police have been virtually giving away archive footage to programmes such as Police Camera Action. But the Metropolitan Police believes it can raise more money by selling directly to television producers.