Meredydd Hughes on the legal offensive
ACPO send in their legal A-team
ACPO has created the team, called Road Safety Support, to help forces struggling to cope with the increasing number of drivers contesting tickets over a legal technicality.
Meredydd Hughes, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire and ACPO’s head of roads policing, is on the offensive: “We are going to demonstrate that spurious cases get a slap. This team will defend the integrity of enforcement equipment and help us win high-profile cases.”
“We are saying to drivers who think they can try it on, ‘Come and get us if you think you are hard enough’. We have won every case we have supported.”
Mr Hughes added: "I respect competent lawyers who go through the evidence on behalf of their client. My job is to make sure the prosecution case is as robust as the defence."
He also criticised campaign groups such as Safe Speed and the Association of British Drivers.
"What these groups have done is encourage people to believe that there is something inherently wrong with enforcing the law" said Mr Hughes.
Paul Smith, founder of SafeSpeed.org.uk, said: "This action by ACPO is a dirty trick - they are attempting to put access to justice beyond the pocket of ordinary drivers. They are effectively saying - 'you are guilty because we never make mistakes'. But the newspapers are full of Police mistakes, and, to make matters worse, one of the key pieces of police prosecution equipment is downright dodgy. So dodgy, that it has been christened the 'dodgyscope' by Internet users."
“The ACPO is merely upping their bluff. The biggest bluff of all is that the resources do not exist to prosecute every speeding case. If drivers stopped accepting fixed penalties the system would collapse in weeks. This is the real reason for the ever increasing 'bluff and bluster' tactics - they need to force us into paying fixed penalties because neither the courts nor the CPS can possibly cope with much of an increase in cases.”
"What is wrong, Mr Hughes is the overzealous application of a law that simply isn't up to the job. You are damaging confidence in the justice system, the Police / public relationship and road safety itself. You can't even comply with the speed limit yourself, because you recently had 6 driving licence points for speeding."
"We encourage drivers to investigate the case against them. I would go as far as to say that MOST speeding cases are DEFECTIVE on the prosecution side. If you dig deep enough a fatal defect is quite likely to emerge. If you know you were not speeding according to law, or you do not know who the driver was at the time of the alleged offence then you are likely to have a winnable case."
"The whole thing has become a petty war of technicalities with ACPO and the Police throwing ever increasing resources against an increasingly untrusting public. In this ridiculous war road safety has been forgotten. Mr Hughes may well claim that the law is on his side but however much he may bleat about the law the fact is that millions upon millions of speeding prosecutions are not saving lives on the road. It isn't 'the law' that matters most here, Mr Hughes, it's the number of roads fatalities. You should know better."
Lets have a more intense driving test which will give drivers
a license which is graded to their ability (which can be up graded).
I was hit by a under cover police van a year ago, driven by a policeman
who was not driving responsibly in wet conditions. No appoligy from the local constabulary, indeed they were not even prepaird to give me and my elderly mother a lift home or to the local garage, until I made it plain that I would take it further!.....safty NO, money (sorry) revanue YES
and/or
"We got away with half arsed prosecutions that were legally flawed in the past, now we can't so we have to do the job we should have been doing anyway, and are now bigging ourselves up over it like it's something special to get a legal prosecution case brought against you"
Doh.
Dave
If only all cases were followed up with such robust support, or even investigated in the first place. But as has already been stated speeding fines is a bit of a cash cow, sending people into an overcrowded penal system costs money.
Maybe they only support the cases they think they can win.
up on the subject of speeding, no?3 points is unlucky. Six, for the ACPO head of traffic policing, is
ing inexcusable.In the recent news that all GATSO's will be converted to Digital to catch ALL of US, again at our expense I am sure...
...Where in any of the reports or consultancies etc etc have they mentioned SAFETY....all they harp on about is revenue.
The police are doing this simply because its a revenue generator if they get the scores marked high, receive bonuses etc. Better this than receiving points for catching a rapist....takes too long, too many resources and wont beat their Targets.....
And we cant have a Chief Inspector somebody or other being seen not to do their jobs now can we
WHAT A LOAD OF OLD BOLLARDS.
I will seriously be looking to emigrate from what is fast becoming a S H I T place to live, Open door/everyone in/everyone watched/everyone taxed UK
great to see our money being used to deal with the priorities in life....
I presume the next expenditure will be for a nice new uniform, why not change to a brown shirt, and rather fetching arm-band, and be done with it!
As for the prat in charge of this, if he can't keep to the law, why should the rest of us be able to?
Interesting isnt it that Meredydd Hughes is the cheif Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, yet south yorkshire has the highest number of uninsured drivers. In the estates in sheffield 1 in 3 drivers is uninsured, yet here is our cheif constable showing his priorities.
Mr hughes enough of the convienient scape goat of speeding and get back to enforcing the real problems, get more traffic cops instead of reducing their numbers and sort this sorry county out.
When asked he declared "I am the Law"
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