Role Of Trafpols - You Decided
Discussion
More a discussion point than a serious suggestion, but here goes...
Their involvement with traffic policing has always tended to make life difficult for the Police, in connection with all their other law and order related tasks. They police by consent, so public co-operation is paramount in deciding how effective they are, and this is easily jeopardised when the first contact most members of the public have with them is when they get nicked and spoken to condescendingly for a minor trafic violation. This has never been more so that the present.
So how about splitting off the entire traffic enforcement / management role into a completely separate agency, which is given an operating budget, all the tools of the current TrafPols (exemption from speed limits etc). Sole targets to be measured in terms of saving lives and maintaining efficient movement in the road network.
This agency would NOT receive any other income, such as fines, but would have freedom to choose whether to spend the budget on education or enforcement, within basic parameters. Thus they would have no axe to grind, other than to improve the safety and efficiency of the road network, and any negative image they generated would no longer bear badly on the rest of the Police Force.
Discuss...
Their involvement with traffic policing has always tended to make life difficult for the Police, in connection with all their other law and order related tasks. They police by consent, so public co-operation is paramount in deciding how effective they are, and this is easily jeopardised when the first contact most members of the public have with them is when they get nicked and spoken to condescendingly for a minor trafic violation. This has never been more so that the present.
So how about splitting off the entire traffic enforcement / management role into a completely separate agency, which is given an operating budget, all the tools of the current TrafPols (exemption from speed limits etc). Sole targets to be measured in terms of saving lives and maintaining efficient movement in the road network.
This agency would NOT receive any other income, such as fines, but would have freedom to choose whether to spend the budget on education or enforcement, within basic parameters. Thus they would have no axe to grind, other than to improve the safety and efficiency of the road network, and any negative image they generated would no longer bear badly on the rest of the Police Force.
Discuss...
towman - I'll keep locking up Mr S H Itbag using whatever powers I can legally use. Even if he doesn't get convicted, he is at least off the road for several hours while I make enquiries. I'll have his car off the road while I verify who it belongs to and whether or not it is fit to be on the road.
I'll keep reporting him for offences. Eventually, he will get a custodial sentence, because he will have been banned at some point, but will continue to drive. Magistrates have to lock up habitual recidivists... eventually.
The eventual punishment might not deter him when he comes out again, but at least for the period he is off the road, he is not a danger to you or me. And then I'll go back out and do it to him again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam...
I'll keep reporting him for offences. Eventually, he will get a custodial sentence, because he will have been banned at some point, but will continue to drive. Magistrates have to lock up habitual recidivists... eventually.
The eventual punishment might not deter him when he comes out again, but at least for the period he is off the road, he is not a danger to you or me. And then I'll go back out and do it to him again. And again. And again. Ad nauseam...
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