Snapped

[scumdog]

Spend half an hour watching a busy stop sign controlled intersection and see how many drivers actually stop, f**k all.

I pinged an old dude years ago who cruised through a stop sign at something like 30 Kph. He swore black and blue that he had stopped. I left him blabbering at the roadside and an hour or so later when I was next in the station I had the Senior Sergeant giving me shit because the geezer had phoned up to complain and the Senior had been getting it in the neck for about half an hour. Apparently after the lengthy conversation the old guy finished by saying that it was not fair to ticket him because he had "almost stopped".

Local old geezer failed his 70+ driving test because he cruised through a stop sign, was mightily ticked-off because "well there was nothing coming, was there?"

[scumdog]

[QUOTE=Stevo]I actually feel guilty now cos I SO should have dobbed a guy in two weekends ago. The Mrs and I road to Kaikoura with Kickaha who was on his way home to Chch, then we split and turned around to come home again. Just north of Kaikoura we passed this blue Lexus on the big long straights round that area then surprisingly half way back to Picton he caught up to us on the bikes and passed us and he must have narrowly missed being pinged by a marked car hiding of the side of the road........................
Point is....... What the two of us saw in the next 20 mins was incredible stupidity!!! Like overtaking coming up to a blind left hand corner (at which time I virtually prayed for another car not to come round it in the opposite direction) and other equally stupid but not quite as bad as that overtaking manoevres. We sat about a 100 yards or so behind easily keeping up by overtaking in more sensible places BUT am now kicking myself for not calling *555 to report him. Cos this Effwit got away with some REALLY DANGEROUS stuff.QUOTE]

DO IT! the life you save may be your own, it's not 'dobbing in' or narking', it's common sense and these f...wits are depending on public complacency to enable them to get away with it. - "all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing"

[Stevo]

Aye.
Realise it was a mistake to not do it. Been kickin my own arse ever since. Like I said............ At one point I really was praying for a car to not come the otherway

[MikeL]

The country needs to grow up a lot if people really do think like this.

I think we covered this in a similar thread some while back.

My point is that more and more people, rightly or wrongly, are reacting in this way to what they see as inappropriate police priorities. If you think this is an immature response (and I'm not going to argue on that one), two questions come to mind:
1. Is there any concern either at grass-roots level or higher up at the changing public perception of the police, or is it assumed that this attitude can be discounted, ignored, disregarded as irrelevant or unimportant?
2. If the police wanted to change this perception, how would they go about it?

BTW the suggestion that I would either resort to civil disobedience or refuse to come to the aid of someone in an emergency is an erroneous interpretation of what I wrote. I know what my legal obligations are and I will comply with them. Anything beyond that will have to be judged on a case-by-case basis, according to the circumstances...

[spudchucka]

1. Is there any concern either at grass-roots level or higher up at the changing public perception of the police, or is it assumed that this attitude can be discounted, ignored, disregarded as irrelevant or unimportant?

Yes it is something that is a constant hot potato in all police stations that I have ever had anything to do with. The troops at grass roots level get pretty slacked off with what is to them an imbalance in priorities. Ranks from Senior Sergeant upwards are generally all true company men, I guess they have to be to attain the rank in the first place. The police association often highlights this imbalance on behalf of the troops, the following is by Greg O'Connor, the president of the police association. If you want to see the article you can download the whole newsletter at http://www.nzpa.org.nz/

Sorry about the wierd looking text but it is a direct cut & paste from the online newsletter.

From the President
The government’s priorities
The first thing we all learn as police
officers is to do what we are told, to
obey lawful orders.
Despite the fact that much recruiting
and policy literature promotes and
encourages adopting a problem solving
and innovative approach to situations
officers encounter in their daily policing
lives, we all know that at times we all
must defer to and adopt organisational
philosophies and strategies.
Community policing is one of these
philosophies. Crime crash reduction is
another. Driver behaviour has improved
and road deaths and injuries have
reduced as a result of stringent policing
on the nation’s roads.
Police are specifically funded by LTSA
to police the roads, the crash element
of that philosophy. Strict auditing of
that expenditure is possible through our
time sheets and infringement returns.
The government have prioritised road
safety to the extent that what was 10%
of the budget at integration is now over
25%. However, it has under-invested in
the other two areas, which also impact
greatly on road deaths, education
and more importantly, better road
engineering - as two horrific head-on
crashes showed in late August. Instead,
the government has decided to rely on
enforcement to achieve its goals.
That decision has had two immediate
impacts on policing. The first is that
greater police emphasis has naturally
been placed on enforcement. The public
have felt the impact of this strategy
and in many cases reacted negatively,
even though the vast majority of people
accept they are driving slower as a
result, and therefore their chances of
being killed on the roads are reduced.
The second impact has been that the
government has failed to keep up with
population and monetary inflation in
the non-road policing area, i.e. the
crime component of the crime crash
reduction. That area of policing is
struggling, especially around reducing
methamphetamine availability and gang
activity. The public gain the perception
that their police have their priorities
wrong and react accordingly.
Perhaps it will take the Health
Department or ACC to fund the Police
and demand the same accountability as
LTSA to get action in this area.
In the meantime, the Police Association
will continue to place pressure on
politicians to use all the tools available
to them to make the roads safer. We
will also work to ensure that the public
understand that it is continued failure
of government to utilise strategies
other than enforcement,
which drives
the current
model of
policing.
“…the Police Association will continue to
place pressure on politicians to use all the
tools available to them to make the roads
safer”.

2. If the police wanted to change this perception, how would they go about it?

That is a far too broad matter to truely be considered with any merit on a public internet forum.

BTW the suggestion that I would either resort to civil disobedience or refuse to come to the aid of someone in an emergency is an erroneous interpretation of what I wrote. I know what my legal obligations are and I will comply with them. Anything beyond that will have to be judged on a case-by-case basis, according to the circumstances...

I wasn't suggesting that you specifically would act in that manner but rather that the attitude you presented suggests that a person with that attitude may behave in that way.

[igor]

I am really Pi#sed as I have not had a speeding ticket since 1988.

geez what am I doing wrong. I drive about 40000kms a year and no tickets.

All these people getting ticketed for 11kmh over the limit and still i never get one.

gee it must be because I always speed in the right place not like all the sensible people who speed in the wrong places. they may as well also walk into a pub in Otara and go "someone punch me in the head quick"

[vifferman]

I am really Pi#sed as I have not had a speeding ticket since 1988.

geez what am I doing wrong. I drive about 40000kms a year and no tickets.

All these people getting ticketed for 11kmh over the limit and still i never get one.

gee it must be because I always speed in the right place not like all the sensible people who speed in the wrong places. they may as well also walk into a pub in Otara and go "someone punch me in the head quick"

Thats exactly what you just did; you're fucked now, Igor.
The Biker Gods are gonna have you, Mate.
I'd been ticket-free since 1975, and MikeL for even longer.

[igor]

i ride a AG100

but it not a yahaha like evryone think

AG means something else

and 100 means something else

ya gotta think laterally

[badlieutenant]

The police association often highlights this imbalance on behalf of the troops, the following is by Greg O'Connor, the president of the police association. If you want to see the article you can download the whole newsletter at http://www.nzpa.org.nz/

Hmmmm very interesting.
I dont like the way the government funds its departments. My head hurts at what I can only imagine is a massive (proabably self sustaining) bureaucracy just in establishing who gets what from whom and how, I am assuming the other departments have to submit budget requests as well ?

OMG, Im in the wrong career, I should have been a civil servant.

Im betting that someone some where did a costing regarding road safety and found that short term funding (with the return it provides)of police measures to make sub standard roads safer was cheaper than any other option. Which is crap if true. With a growing population and road use it sounds like false economy to me. In the future things get dearer.

[marty]

so that'll be like A G S 1000 then maybe?

[scumdog]

Hey, one from left field: IF as the nay sayers keep tellling us speed has nothing to do with road safety how come bicycles do not feature so much in general loss of control crashes resulting in serious injury/death?

They are less visible than motorbikes and the riders wear less protective gear, they also rarely high/low-side either.


Their one MAJOR difference is the speed they travel.

Comments?

[rodgerd]

I know this is old ground but seriously Spud and Scumdog, can you hold your hand on your heart and say Johnboy's accumulative punishment fitted the heineous acts of minor speed infringements.

Missed the bit where he was overtaking on double yellows, did you?

If someone's stupid enough that even with enough demrit points under theit belt that one more ticket will cost them their license, they *still* hammer round town, are they in fact too stupid to be on the road?

[rodgerd]

Can the police expect co-operation and consideration from me when they need help, information or support? Give me one good reason why...

So you won't be bothering them if you get burgled? If your neighbour is murdered tomorrow, you'll tell them, "fuck off, I'm not helping you"?

[MikeL]

So you won't be bothering them if you get burgled? If your neighbour is murdered tomorrow, you'll tell them, "fuck off, I'm not helping you"?

Read my reply to spudchucka.

it would depend which neighbour...

As for getting burgled, I certainly won't have any expectation of the police actually doing anything constructive about it, such as apprehending the offender or returning my stolen property...

[scumdog]

Read my reply to spudchucka.

it would depend which neighbour...

As for getting burgled, I certainly won't have any expectation of the police actually doing anything constructive about it, such as apprehending the offender or returning my stolen property...

Not surprised, how much would that burg cost the tax-payer? - zilch.
How much would one injury crash cost the tax-payer? - heaps.

That's the way the pollys look at it and that's the way they deploy the troops and the dollars, sad to say