It's been bandied around a bit on various posts, it's time I put a different view forward.
In 2007 we set up a group called the Intersection Safety Team. It was set up to deal with the intersection crashes in Christchurch, as far as could be done. I had 10 staff, including the 3 full time bike riders, plus various others.
We'd identify a set of traffic lights where crashes had become too frequent, and stake them out. They were run as spot'n'stop operations, where I would be in jeans and t-shirts, and would detect an offence. I'd radio the troops, and they would stop the driver further down the road, and write the ticket.
We originally set up by videoing each set of lights, but the constraints became really obvious really quickly. I can stand there and look for seatbelt offences, cellphones, shit boxes etc, all the camera does is what it's pointed at. After a while we just gave up on using the cameras (digital video tapes, old school), just because they were only catching a very small percentage of our offences, and weren't worth the trouble of setting them up, and storing all the data.
Regarding offences where we didn't stop the vehicle but the offence was caught on tape, those offences generate around 8 hours of administration from 1 hour of filming, so aren't terribly time effective either. Those are Section 118 offences.
There's a danger that when cameras become more common, the courts will start to expect footage. I see, say, Skoober Steve riding down the road with no helmet on. It's his head, his risk blah blah blah. If I just turn up in court and the courts expect a video, and I don't have it, would that mean he didn't do it? Any cop turning up without a video would be seen as a risky conviction. Whether the person accused did it or not.
There truly is a perception that's it's easy to video the offences we see, when in fact it's a very dynamic environment in which we operate, and as yet, I can't see a way to video every angle of everything I need to prove a case.
Re the balance of evidence, the courts often consider that the officer has little motivation to distort the truth, whereas the person accused often has a significant motivation to do so. That tends to swing the courts favout in the direction of the prosecution. I've also been in court and given evidence as to what I have seen, and had the JPs dismiss charges that I know bloody well are correct. And the smirking accused who gloats his way out of court, having escaped the charge when he knows damn well he did it, doesn't help.
Just some thoughts. I reckon cameras will come, but I don't think they are there yet.
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