Police working to a quota?? Surely not...

[Finn]

Shit, theres a surprise!

It was because of my military history Budfugger.

[Grahameeboy]

It was because of my military history Budfugger.

Yeah I have played paintball too..............guess it makes a change from getting egg on ya face....now I know why you wear those goggles.....

[Finn]

Yeah I have played paintball too

Don't recall using paintball rifles in Hereford.

[Grahameeboy]

Don't recall using paintball rifles in Hereford.

That explains a lot..........

[Grahameeboy]

Of course there is a quota - its called SAP hours, you have to get positive hours (i.e. a ticket) to get an qualified SAP hour, and there are directives of how many SAP hours each constable, even those not on traffic, has to get.

Doesnt change the fact that speed kills.

SAP hours are needed to make sure that cops are actually issuing tickets. Why? because people hate paying tickets and hate getting demerit points. For most people this means they will slow down to avoid them. For you brain surgeons out there this means that people are less likely to die on our roads. Speed,not alcohol, is the biggest factor in fatal road crashes.

Remember, Police only issue tickets to people who have broken the law.

Can't argue with that..................the only thing I always find odd though is that we pay Taxes ie GST when we buy vehicles that can break the speed limit........in essence the Govt are allowing illegal items to be imported....I guess you could argue that the user bewares but smuggled drugs are stopped before they get to the user.....

Just my odd twist on things

[Indoo]

Speed,not alcohol, is the biggest factor in fatal road crashes..

Driver error would actually be the biggest factor, speed just influences the drivers ability to recover from that error and the force of the collision.

Speeds just the easiest factor in fatals to Police and minimise. Either we take all the incompetent idiots who are unsafe off the road, or we dumb it down for everyone and just try to reduce the damage when said idiots make a mistake.

The former would mean completely overhauling our driver licensing system, introducing real and effective penaltys for dangerous drivers, improving our roads, introducing stiff new vehicle standards and increasing the unmarked fleet so that Police have an effective means of catching acts of idiocy.

[Jantar]

...Speed is by far the biggest killer as it is the one linking attribute in most fatal and serious crashes.

You don't really believe that do you? If so, at what speed do we die?

Speed in itself does not kill, its the sudden change of speed caused by an impact that kills. Naturally, the faster we go, the higher isthat change of speed, but what isn't being looked at closely enough is "What caused the impact in the first place?" That is unlikely to be speed.

The cause of the impact may be: lack of skills; inattention; driver/rider error; mechanical failure; etc. Of course these are all hard to police, so lets just set a tax limit of 100 kmh irrespective of whether you are driving a 1964 Morris Oxford with cross ply tyres on a 2 year old licence, or riding the latest FJR and are among the countries most experienced motorcylists.

[Swoop]

This morning's Harold...


Speed at cost of burglary?

Sunday July 9, 2006
By Patrick Crewdson and David Fisher


Police are having to ignore petty crime in the Prime Minister's own electorate but still manage to have one in five officers on traffic duty.

The new statistics on road policing, obtained by the Herald on Sunday, come as evidence has emerged of the police's inability to tackle petty crime.

A letter from a Balmoral police sergeant told a Mt Albert liquor shop owner that he was unlikely to get any help with shoplifting complaints because officers were working on "major inquiries".

It comes as new traffic figures show that the highest number of tickets given out in New Zealand were in Central District - the district behind the "quota" memo which saw police in a storm over ticket quotas last week.

Central officers handed out about 18,000 tickets up to May this year - almost double what most police districts handed out. Other figures from the Office of the Commissioner show that in Auckland's three police districts, 20 per cent of frontline cops were assigned to road policing as their first priority. Nationwide, the figure is 18 per cent. The figures, released to the Herald on Sunday, only account for the primary duties of sworn officers. Of the 2169 sworn police officers in Auckland City, Counties-Manukau, and North Shore/Waitakere, 589 are assigned to general duties, 587 to investigations, 290 to road policing, 646 to operations support and 58 to management.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said Labour had taken steps to bolster community policing because of the importance of nipping petty crime in the bud.

"I'm all in favour of trying to get an emphasis on what looks like the lower end of crime but is actually a stepping stone to serious crime if it's not apprehended and dealt with effectively."

Of the 1000 extra cops announced as part of Labour's election deal with NZ First, 250 are supposed to go into frontline community policing. The extra officers are to be introduced over three years, with 406 funded in the first batch. Police Minister Annette King and Commissioner Howard Broad both say that meeting the targets will be "a challenge".

Helen Clark also defended the police focus on traffic enforcement, saying the strategy had reduced road deaths and cut the average speed. "The public will rightly be incensed if they think it's being done for revenue collection, but the revenue must be down, because the tickets are down, because they've got the speed down."

Police Commissioner Howard Broad defended the police attitude to petty crime yesterday, although he acknowledged that police were under pressure in Auckland.

A spokesman for Mr Broad said police bosses had to deal with increasing levels of violent crime. On "petty crime" the spokesman said police treated burglary as important because of its impact on individuals.

He rejected a link between a strong commitment to road policing and being unable to deal with all petty crime. Also, he said, the approach was driving the road toll down.

National Party law and order spokesman Simon Power said violent crime took top priority.

But "people get annoyed when they see resources being diverted to heavy traffic flow areas rather than to burglaries or the like".

"The public have an expectation that when they report a crime they're going to get some action."

It's a problem the government says it's working to fix.

[spudchucka]

It was because of my military history Budfugger.

Deserter?
Dishonourable discharge?
Couldn't shoot yourself in the foot?
Or were you trying to go straight from boy scouts to the thin blue line?

[spudchucka]

Speed in itself does not kill, its the sudden change of speed caused by an impact that kills.

This is true but its also a pointless arguement.

You can't achieve one without first endulging in the other. Its like trying to say that one plus zero equals two.

[Ixion]

A few years ago William Bell killed three people in cold blood in Mt Wellington.

A few days before a member of the public had reported Bell to the police, alleging various crimes, and giving them Bell's address. The police made no effort to pick him up, later citing "staff shortages".

Yet, on the very day he committed the murders, about the time he must actually have been doing them, I passed three police units on traffic duty within 5 minutes drive of the murder scene.

If the police had diverted one of those traffic units to apprehending Bell before he embarked on murder, three people would still be alive.

Old ladies don't lie sleepless at night out of fear that someone may be doing 61kph. They lie awake because they fear the William Bells. Yet the police assign a greater priority to the 61kph than to the William Bells. Something's wrong there.

[spudchucka]

This is getting pathetic.

If there had been more TRAFFIC cops on the roads, one of them might have been able to catch Mark Edward LUNDY speeding between Wellington & Palmerston North the night he brutally murdered his wife and daughter in their own home and thereby prevent their horrible deaths.

Lifes full of "what if's" and "should have's". It doesn't make a f$@ken bit of difference to what happened.

If you want to villify any one in the William BELL case, take a look at the probation service role in the events.

While you're at it take a look at the roll played by southlands mental health services in the murder of the police officers wife in Queenstown a few years ago.

When you pricks are perfect you can throw as many stones as you like. Till then....... Get F&$ked!!!

[The_Dover]

You better run along Spud, it's nearly 12.00 and there will be some old ladies speeding on their way home from church.

God forbid the sunday dinner is late. 61km/h all the way Mabel, just watch out for the pigs.

[Jantar]

Speed in itself does not kill, its the sudden change of speed caused by an impact that kills.

This is true but its also a pointless arguement.

You can't achieve one without first endulging in the other. Its like trying to say that one plus zero equals two.

True, but the first condition (speed) in most cases doesn't result in the second condition (impact). So its still one plus zero equals one, not two.

To take the speed argument to its illogical conclusion, all accidents would be caused by speed. I have never heard of any accidents where speed wasn't a factor. ie the vehicle (or all vehicles in a multi crash) were stopped at the time of the impact.

[scumdog]

Maybe we should refer to it as 'unsuitable speed'? Which for some would be about 11kmh.