Moped muggers and police bike chase laws

[Dizeee]

Red 4 said:

The last time I saw 5 traffic cars together, one was driven by Elvis, another by Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, Mary Poppins and Mickey Mouse also put in an appearance ...

Must be nice to have the resources to even try to take on the little cherubs ...

5 is the max as there are 10 officers who actually use the Scorpion callsign.. That's 5 double crewed cars. You generally have one car off on admin or leave, usually 4 left. On a good day you can retain that but once they get involved in any sort of job, you could lose up to 3 of those cars and be left with 1. Generally though you have 3 to 4 double crewed TPAC cars who ground assign for 9 hours and move in line with the current crime trend. But, having 3 to 5 cars in close proximity means you often get a tactic in place before the control room has even mulled over any relevant authority for it. There is no waiting 15 to 20 minutes to bring 3 traffic cars from across London together and try and co-ordinate them.

10 officer taken from the pool of officers under the Mets "Roads Policing" pool is miniscule. I am not sure on exact numbers but spread across the entire pool of roads policing ( which includes Traffic, Safer Transport, Buses, Local Transport hubs on boroughs etc ) there are in the region of 2 to 3 thousand as far as I know. What they did with this late last year was to locate officers who had the relevant driving skills, who were pro-active and who were willing to engage the mopeds at will ( many are not ) and put them on a separate team. As London is leading the way in terms of numbers of moped interventions, the team has evolved and become a little famous. Most news crews have been out with them, multiple politicians, the Commissioner, you name it. Tomorrow a well known day time TV presenter is out with them, and so it will continue.

This in itself has lead to them becoming used for additional jobs involving violent criminals. Their core work will always be disrupting regional crime trends, but occasionally they get poached for high level warrants / jobs / operations where their skills can be utilised. They are let alone to patrol and not bogged down dealing with accidents, tickets, investigating crimes etc, so their time is maximised engaging these "customers on powered 2 wheel vehicles".