OFFICERS should arrest themselves for wasting police time after ‘a joke’ operation saw cops try to arrest a suspect at his old house after he had already been taken into custody.

This is the view of Colin North who has been left baffled by the policing methods of the Met after his encounter with the long arm of the law.

He was awoken by two police officers banging on his door in Havelock Road, Bromley Common, looking for an old housemate who had not lived at the property for at least six months.

The 29-year-old thought they had got the message and then learned the cops had arrested his former housemate at an address in Chelsfield.

But then two days after the first visit his girlfriend answered the door to five policemen who had arrived in a police van.

Mr North said: “She told them they had already arrested our old housemate.

“The officers should arrest themselves for wasting police time.

“If they turn up again it really will be a joke, it will be a joke in the way they are handling the investigation.

“When they made the arrest you would think it would be down in their information banks instead of them being sent out to arrest him at a house he does not live at just two days later.”

The machine operator added: “At first when I opened the door and saw the two police officers I thought the worst.

“And when they said can we see ID and I had to get my passport I felt under suspicion.”

A Bromley police spokesman said: "Police called at the address looking for a male in connection with an allegation of criminal damage, assault and theft, but were advised he had left the address six months previously leaving no forwarding address. “The male was tracked to a new address and arrested the following day.”

He says they have no record in the police computer about a second visit to the address in Havelock Road.