Originally Posted by
Clockwork
As far as I know, UK Police do not leave training college qualified to drive their high performance persuit cars (Area cars), only the (Panda?) patrol cars. I beleve that is a distict qualification that they can choose to undertake for that role.
I'd be surprised if that had changed over the past years.
I have the impression that some of them are trained to a far higher degree than our equivalent. For instance, any that have done the Brit motorcycle training course.
The manual that goes with the course contains a warning to beware of the "red mist" and to stay calm and safe. After high profile instances of police taking the citizenry out while attempting U turns in silly places , as in the Buller Gorge and at Te Kauwhata, one might have expected the word to have gone out. But apparently not, IIRC there was another instance over the Christmas break?
A friend once took me to task for saying the Police did not do driver training. He told me that G had just been for training. My reply was to the effect that G had been in the force for twenty years, so if it took that long there would be an awful lot of cops awaiting training.
A former Brit detective of my aquaintance said that he had "tactical driver training" in Britain but that's different, that's for dealing with terrorist situations. I believe some do pursuit training by whatever name that's called officially.
My information is that NZ Police have not been in the habit of training anybody very much. People at Training College were assessed, but not trained.
Following an incident locally where a Police officer punted his patrol car off the road into a bank in fairly public circumstances, the local hierarchy stated in the press that the driver had "Gold" status. Another officer of my aquaintance told me that he himself had the gold qualification, but all that involved was an extended version of the normal driving test that any of you would have done.
All of which doesn't mean that none of them can drive. There is a sergeant hereabout who raced bikes in the Isle of Man in his younger days. And his younger days were not all *that* long ago.
There is a grey blur, and a green blur. I try to stay on the grey one. - Joey Dunlop
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