No police on the roads.....

No police on the roads.....

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Discussion

LordGrover

33,546 posts

213 months

Wednesday 7th October 2015
quotequote all
La Liga said:
Policing the roads was eroded before the spending cuts. With Labour, it was a focus upon numerical targets around reductions and detections in crime areas like burglary, assaults and theft from motor vehicles. This resulted in traffic officer numbers being reduced to reallocate elsewhere. It's not just the officer, it's the training, equipment and cars that are expensive.

Clearly that is compounded now by the spending cuts. If you're making strategic decisions and are looking at the bigger picture, deaths on the roads have been reducing pretty much since records began, on a year-on-year basis. It'll probably take us to hit the saturation point and see this trend reversing before it becomes a sufficient risk / issue.

Forces are now merging their traffic with functions like firearms and other centralised areas to achieve greater savings.

This illustrates the point the numbers were being reduced prior to the spending cuts.

Does that say in 2003 100% of police officers were traffic police? confused

ETA Guess it may be attempting to illustrate traffic police has declined by 30% where overall police numbers had increased slightly but since dropped back to 2003 levels?

Edited by LordGrover on Wednesday 7th October 08:45

JimmyConwayNW

3,065 posts

126 months

Wednesday 7th October 2015
quotequote all
They are about on the M74 a lot. 3 points and a fine just over a month ago just after Abington services they were hiding up the on slip road completely out of view and got me as I drove away from them with the speed gun out of the window.

I do notice they tend to go through phases where you see them frequently for loads one week and then the next week you don't. I always thought they had specific campaigns like an anti speeding week/safety week etc.

anonymous-user

55 months

Wednesday 7th October 2015
quotequote all
LordGrover said:
La Liga said:
Policing the roads was eroded before the spending cuts. With Labour, it was a focus upon numerical targets around reductions and detections in crime areas like burglary, assaults and theft from motor vehicles. This resulted in traffic officer numbers being reduced to reallocate elsewhere. It's not just the officer, it's the training, equipment and cars that are expensive.

Clearly that is compounded now by the spending cuts. If you're making strategic decisions and are looking at the bigger picture, deaths on the roads have been reducing pretty much since records began, on a year-on-year basis. It'll probably take us to hit the saturation point and see this trend reversing before it becomes a sufficient risk / issue.

Forces are now merging their traffic with functions like firearms and other centralised areas to achieve greater savings.

This illustrates the point the numbers were being reduced prior to the spending cuts.

Does that say in 2003 100% of police officers were traffic police? confused

ETA Guess it may be attempting to illustrate traffic police has declined by 30% where overall police numbers had increased slightly but since dropped back to 2003 levels?
You've pretty much got it.

It's taking the numbers of traffic police and overall police at 2003 and placing their respective, and individual numbers at 100%. As we go across the X axis, the % change is relative to where both numbers start out in 2003.

So what it shows, for example, is that in in 2009 we had 6% (106%) more police officers overall compared to 2003, but we had 17% (100-83) fewer traffic officers compared to 2003.







Wills2

22,869 posts

176 months

Wednesday 7th October 2015
quotequote all
Just driven from Yorkshire to Essex, I saw;

2 x motorway patrol cars
2 x panda car
2 x video vans
2 x motor cycle

Those spots were spread throughout the journey, I generally always see police vehicles on most journeys I make...

I'll add on the return journey I saw another 2 x motorway patrols and 2 unmarked cars.

Either they are all following/after me or people aren't very observant!



Edited by Wills2 on Wednesday 7th October 18:52

Coldfuse

518 posts

195 months

Wednesday 7th October 2015
quotequote all
Drove from Aberdeen to Leicester on Thursday last week and did not see a single police car. Not even a mobile camera van on the M74 which i was very surprised about as i know its a favourite of theirs.

LordGrover

33,546 posts

213 months

Wednesday 7th October 2015
quotequote all
I saw a police car going into our police station last month, or maybe it was August.
They're not there often: opening times - note closed for lunch.

coppice

8,623 posts

145 months

Wednesday 7th October 2015
quotequote all
Police spending ring fenced ? I don't think so - at least not until each force stops being so territorial about its kit and systems. In a previous life I did a lot of legal work for the police and was staggered to learn each force had its own style of uniform (they all look the same to me but oh no-whole offices were devoted to commissioning bespoke trousers with subtly different truncheon gussets etc). Worse still I was amazed to find out that between neighbouring forces they7 don't even use the same calibre guns etc etc. Anything to prevent the erosion of little empires by having a national force .....

anonymous-user

55 months

Wednesday 7th October 2015
quotequote all
It must have been a few years ago as there has been a national procurement strategy in place for sometime as well as centralised services being shared across multiple forces like HR etc.


coppice

8,623 posts

145 months

Thursday 8th October 2015
quotequote all
It was. I was involved in police legals between early 90s and 2010ish - so are we saying that all vehicles , weapons, uniforms and IT are now standard? ISTR the procurement strategy still gave a wide choice to forces but enabled them to call off offers which had been centrally procured

anonymous-user

55 months

Thursday 8th October 2015
quotequote all
The procurement and tendering has got better as well as the more obvious economies of scale. This about vehicles, for example: http://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/2010/10/29/police-...


C7 JFW

1,205 posts

220 months

Thursday 8th October 2015
quotequote all
I saw a police car going Northbound on the M11 Tuesday night around 1800. I also saw one giving a convoy of ambulances an escort earlier the same day.

RemaL

24,973 posts

235 months

Thursday 8th October 2015
quotequote all
I did Bristol to Weston and back. Only a round trip of about a 100 miles from my house and seen 4. Which was unusual as I would be lucky to see 1 police car on the same trip most other times I do the trip

RegMolehusband

3,962 posts

258 months

Thursday 8th October 2015
quotequote all
La Liga said:
Policing the roads was eroded before the spending cuts. With Labour, it was a focus upon numerical targets around reductions and detections in crime areas like burglary, assaults and theft from motor vehicles. This resulted in traffic officer numbers being reduced to reallocate elsewhere. It's not just the officer, it's the training, equipment and cars that are expensive.

Clearly that is compounded now by the spending cuts. If you're making strategic decisions and are looking at the bigger picture, deaths on the roads have been reducing pretty much since records began, on a year-on-year basis. It'll probably take us to hit the saturation point and see this trend reversing before it becomes a sufficient risk / issue.

Forces are now merging their traffic with functions like firearms and other centralised areas to achieve greater savings.

. . the numbers were being reduced prior to the spending cuts.
Totally agree. I used to drive 50,000 miles a year in the 2000's and I noticed a marked reduction in visible police cars over time under labour. The understanding on here at the time was that they were too snowed under with paperwork to get out on the road.