well mark consider that lesson one
still full of confidence you will have completely reversed your opinion on UK policing within as year of full time life here, assuming you get out and about
how many people do you know who have been done for driving an inch from the car in front ? or driving in fog with no lights ? these common occurances are NEVER policed and yet cause far more accidents that a few mph over the limit in good conditions
even if you forget traffic issues plod have lost the plot in the UK, and I can show you known big time crims who have been living the life of riley for years - no fear whatsoever
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It saddens me greatly to read comments of those that the hold the Police in such low esteem. I have come across this before and have found and know that the organisation is on par with any other. There are good, bad and indifferent and I agree there is no place for the later. I also have come across a derogation minority whose concepts of the Police Service result from ignorance and take no account of the problems facing the Police of today. Officers are expected to be all things to all men an impossiblity in itself. They are manacled by constraints of manpower, an ever increasing burden of paperwork to satisfy Courts and the legal profession, an increasing requirement to watch their backs through the demands of the PC Brigade and in managing failure of a litigious, beligerent, bellicose and hedonistic public. Decisions made when up the neck in Alligators are nit-picked over item by item in the cool light of day and the slightest error subject to thunderbolts. Complainers should bear in mind that the laws of the country are made and passed down to be enforced by the very people they elect. Cocooned in their cottonwool ivory towers may I suggest they take time to view www.policememorial.org.uk and, ignoring the road accidents, read about those who willingly did their duty exactly like those currently serving would do if called to do so for Joe Public.
I have been out some 15 years now but retain through my serving daughter an interest in The Job. What she is going through I would not tolerate nor would I serve in today's climate. Be thankful there are still some that do.
Finally, I appreciate the comments of Mark(RBLS) and others of the same vein that go a long way to redressing the balance.
DVD
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Well stated DVD.
I get out and about, as I've done for the past 25 plus adult years.
I can hardly recall dealing with an unreasonable copper in all that time.....yes a few that wouldn't be my choice of desert island companion but absolutely no problems during the brief exchanges involved.
I've seen things that are not up to scratch in the police force management...but then the same goes for nearly all groups you meet in life.
David W
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Spot on DVD.
Andy Bairsto is going back to a country that values its police, has far more of them, pays them more and they enjoy a greater status in society.
Generally Germans accept laws and restrictions more readily than the British and the puerile anti police rhetoric, seen so often in the Backroom, is largely absent.
C
PS They also have speed cameras.
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DVD is absolutely correct in his defence of Police Officers who are a first class group of people trying to do a good job despite being handicapped by Politicians, Judges, PC brigade and everone in a position of authority.
These people have gone so far down the path of lunacy that it is almost impossible to carry out the tasks which the public pay for and want them to do.
It isn't only the police, don't we remember the soldiers in NI having to carry a little book which they were supposed to refer to when they were being attacked as to what force could be used.
And public enquiries decades after.
In my service in prisons it went just the same way with the same brigade laying down impractical rules with the whole emphasis on laying fault on the staff for any incident.
When the Strangeway riot was over counsellors waiting to give solace to the rioters for the horrors they had experienced. And of course compensation claims to start.
The lunatics have taken over the mad house.
But really DVD I think critisicm against the Police on this forum is a generalisation and not (I hope) against Policemen and women themselves, but the Generals behind the scenes which starts with the politicians (which includes Chief Constables) and works its way down through Judges, legal profession etc before we actually get to the men in the trenches who do the job. We know they only do what their daily detail tells them but they are the ones in the public eye and unfortunately take the flak.
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Alvin,
I absolutely agree with your sentiments except I don't believe you are correct in the above statement.
An unpleasant theme that runs through the Backroom is that the Police are anti motorist both as a organisation and individually. It is unpalatable to some contributors to opinion that the police generally exercise tolerance and use their discretion in dealing with the motoring public.
For instance the police are always accused of nabbing the poor motorist at every opportunity simply because he is an easy target and to raise revenue. Yet in a thread a few months ago, nobody even knew of anyone prosecuted for travelling at 80mph on a motorway. Some easy pickings there if they wanted!
I am not arguing that the police are without fault, but IMHO much of the criticism they receive here lacks objectivity.
C
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Cardew
The problem is one of perception.
One sees police sponsored cameras and manned speed traps in what are plainly low-risk locations.
In high risk areas such as urban main roads one sees no police presence, despite some frankly suicidal, or even murderous, driving.
One gets a response to other crime, e.g. theft or burglary, which is measured in hours or days, as opposed to instantaneous prosecution for a technical offence.
The threat to ones licence and maybe livelyhood from driving down an unfamiliar road concentrating on hazards rather than watching your speedo is very real. e.g. coming back from Stansted a four o'clock in the morning on an empty road last week I could have collected six points in half an hour and been half way to losing my licence through keeping an eye out for the foxes etc. which were crossing the road rather than my speedo. Do you really need a 40 mph speed limit in the middle of the night on a road with good visibility?.
I believe that if minor motoring offences were removed from police jurisdiction and placed in the hands of a separate body, then the esteem of the police would be raised in the eyes of the public.police
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>>if minor motoring offences were removed from police jurisdiction and placed in the hands of a separate body...
Nooooooooo!
Like who? Like the independent clampers and car-removers?
There are already proposals here for the privatisation of speed cameras... My God, can you imagine if the thing was done on even more of a profit-making basis?
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Brian,
I am not defending speed traps that are applied without common sense, like the examples you give. It is the blanket criticism of the police that I object to.
However I have to say that I personally do not have to keep my eyes glued to the speedo to maintain a steady speed.
You again rightly point out the lack of police response to crime in some areas. They only have finite resources and DVD points out the constraints under which they operate. The Saloon Bar solution is to either spend more money on the police(and Education, Health Service, Armed Forces etc) or change priority from traffic policing to fighting crime.
For the first solution most of us are unwilling to pay the increased taxes. For the second, the roads would be more dangerous.
Incidentally regarding your suggestion that "minor motoring offences were removed from police jurisdiction" the speed camera prosecution system has little police involvement and parking enforcement is normally privatised. Not a lot of discretion shown there!
C
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Cardew
Like you, I have no objection to appropriately placed speed traps, operated at appropriate times. But these are in the minority.
The principles being applied are those of blanket restrictions, not appropriate ones, and the solution of taxing something that the authorities know they cannot stop.
As to paying increased taxes, these are already being paid, but the revenue is being mis-applied and squandered. You could put three police on the beat for the cost of one Downing Street spin doctor. Look at all the public sector "non-jobs" advertised in the Guardian. Look at all the useless regulations imposed on businesses and the compliance staff taken on to enforce them.
And BTW my point was not that we should take police off traffic duties and put them onto fighting crime. It was that the traffic police in the driving standards enforcement sense are not there in the first place.
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Brian,
I see little point, in this thread, going into the rights or wrongs of Government spending priorities. We elect a government and we can vote them out if we don't like them, and no doubt the new lot will be the same.
It would appear we fundamentally disagree about the Police. I maintain that, by and large, they police with good humour and exercise their authority with discretion. Far more so than in Germany where I lived for many years, still visit regularly and admire.
I also believe that police are part of our society and the constant, and IMHO largely unjustified, criticism of them damages the society we live in.
C
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Cardew
We do not disagree about the police. I fully support them and believe that they do their best within the resources that they are allocated.
However, those resources are clearly inadequate, hence the choice that has to be made between catching dangerous drivers and catching criminals, with the result that neither function can be carried out efficiently, and the over-reliance on technical devices which do little to achieve the objectives but merely antagonise.
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>>well mark consider that lesson one
If it is a lesson, surely it is a lesson in the opposite direction to what you were expecting.
I don`t know why you dislike the police intensely, but clearly you do. I have heard the argument that \" I don\'t hate the policeman its the Police Force I hate\" or variations of it. However, that doesn\'t hold true in the comments that people make.
It also seems that anybody who disagrees and thinks the police do ok is immed. regarded as \"not getting out much\" or \"knowing nothing about the system\".
I do not dislike individual policeman, groups of policemen, or the police force overall.
My experience of them has varied, but virtually always been polite and reasonable, and *always* been honest. And in my time I have certainly given them reason not to be respectful or polite.
Do not lump me in with any statement beginning \"people think/want...\" because it almost cerainly doesn\'t include me.
NB: I reprimanded myself and edited this to be much less agressive than when I initialy posted it.
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Benny,
Part answer to your question on offences here to 1998.
www.transtat.dft.gov.uk/tables/tsgb00/4/42100.htm
You will see that accident offences halved in 10 years and speed limit offences doubled. Probably much bigger numbers of the latter in 2001/2002.
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Benny
Figures for 2000 here.
www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/motosupps00.pdf
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DVD Re
"It saddens me greatly to read comments of those that the hold the Police in such low esteem. I have come across this before and have found and know that the organisation is on par with any other. There are good, bad and indifferent and I agree there is no place for the later. I also have come across a derogation minority whose concepts of the Police Service result from ignorance and take no account of the problems facing the Police of today. Officers are expected to be all things to all men an impossiblity in itself. They are manacled by constraints of manpower, an ever increasing burden of paperwork to satisfy Courts and the legal profession, an increasing requirement to watch their backs through the demands of the PC Brigade and in managing failure of a litigious, beligerent, bellicose and hedonistic public. Decisions made when up the neck in Alligators are nit-picked over item by item in the cool light of day and the slightest error subject to thunderbolts. Complainers should bear in mind that the laws of the country are made and passed down to be enforced by the very people they elect. Cocooned in their cottonwool ivory towers may I suggest they take time to view www.policememorial.org.uk and, ignoring the road accidents, read about those who willingly did their duty exactly like those currently serving would do if called to do so for Joe Public.
I have been out some 15 years now but retain through my serving daughter an interest in The Job. What she is going through I would not tolerate nor would I serve in today's climate. Be thankful there are still some that do.
Finally, I appreciate the comments of Mark(RBLS) and others of the same vein that go a long way to redressing the balance.
"
I have absolute respect for the ordinary coppers trying to do their best while managed badly
they are on the whole inadequately trained
badly assigned, and directed
suffer officers put through the accelerated promotion with way too little experience of real life - leaving way too much responsility on the long serving junior supervisors on the gorund
and as an institution they have lots and lots to sort out
and compared with many other countries i have lived im afriad the british bobby is not best!
it is totally unacceptable what is happening in some of our big cities and rural areas
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Something I heard of interest on Radio 4 (so probably untrue) - New York - which isn't a cheap, low wage place but does have improving crime rates, has a police budget roughly the same as the Metropolitan Police BUT has twice as many uniformed officers. How do they manage it?
Secondly if you atend an average Magistrates court in the UK you will find a lot of fines/"totting" bans being imposed for the terrible trio of No Tax, No Insurance and No MOT - so someone must be giving them tickets.
SL
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Something I heard of interest on Radio 4 (so probably untrue) - New York - which isn't a cheap, low wage place but does have improving crime rates, has a police budget roughly the same as the Metropolitan Police BUT has twice as many uniformed officers. How do they manage it? Secondly if you atend an average Magistrates court in the UK you will find a lot of fines/"totting" bans being imposed for the terrible trio of No Tax, No Insurance and No MOT - so someone must be giving them tickets. SL
But Simon, what's the point when the fine for the terrible trio is less than one year's insurance (even at rates for non-criminal types).
And what effect banning drivers who just drive unlicensed anyway?
A lot of good speed cameras are against such drivers when the car won't be registered in the right name. And with virtually no police on the road stopping drivers, nothing will be achieved about this either.
About the only vaguely sensible suggestion for the use of cameras is to identify cars which are not taxed - because those which aren't taxed are normally not insurered or MOT'd either - but how can this work if the car can't be traced because the name and address on the log book is meaningless?
The police hours wasted on loitering by the side of the road to catch speeding motorists would be far better used if they were positioned to catch vehicles flagged up as not taxed - and like I say probably not insured or MOT'd either - and these vehicles should be confiscated on the spot as *part* punishment for this series of crimes.
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The WPC seems shocked that somebody would steal the back half of a stereo ...
That's what the crims want ... they broke in, hoping you, like a lot of gormless idjits out there simply 'hid' the face under the seat, or in the glovebox.
Now there is NO back-end in sight, so they know not to break in again ...
The same thing happened with fluorescent orange fibreglass rhinocerous horns - I kid you not!
Rangers dart rhinos, lop off horn, superglue a dayglo one on, yet the poachers still shoot the rhinos - so they don't have to track them anymore ...
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