Police killing us again!

[carver]

The Harold, quoting Mr Tooman (whose negative and contemptuous opinions of motorcyclists are well known, and have been the subject of official complaint by BRONZ)



What a contemptable and weaselly evasion of responsibility . Amounts to a "tough shit, we will do whatever we want"

I had a chat to the said mr tooman over the phone after the stunt, he did not seem like a bad guy.
he lives 3 streets away from my old house too

[carver]

of couse, when there is a war on speed, or a war at all, people die

[Goblin]

It's the nature of the beast that you are going to get some corrupt cops, just as you are going to get some doctors who abuse drugs or sleep with patients, some teachers who have improper relationships with students etc etc....

And that should pretty much refocus the bashers...

Totally agree...there are bad apples in every proffession. It's only my opinion that all cops should be squeaky clean all the time. Those who uphold the law ought to be screened a whole lot better than they currently are.
This case will have to play out tho. I'm reserving my opinion until all the evidence is in. The KB Kangaroo Court is doing itself proud.

[idleidolidyll]

Replying to the statement posited that cops should never chase speeders because it might result in an incident:

That's a Black or White fallacy argument (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/eitheror.html) . It ignores the grey area between in which we ALL expect coppers to act.

To be precise: Coppers should pursue speeding drivers if and when it is perfectly safe to do so both for the general road user nearby and for the copper and driver/rider being chased.

Unfortunately there seems to be a mentality in the police force that makes them think speeding sometimes deserves capital punishment to the point of execution by car chase. The "I pulled off the chase 3 seconds before the crash" excuse doesn't wash I'm afraid.

[idleidolidyll]

replying to Bobby Taylors last post:

actually it's just debate

the crux of the debate, ignoring the side issues and name calling, is that bikers are cynical in general about the cops and probably for good reason.

what we want to see is cops who treat other cops the same as they treat us, who obey and respect the law and who don't lie or mislead; unfortunately too many of us have seen that the prevailing attitude of most cops is that motorcyclists always speed, whenever one crashes it was "due to excessive speed" but when they have done something incredibly stupid, illegal or otherwise wrong; they seem to hold themselves to a lower standard than they hold the general motoring public.

I'm not actually a cynic, I'm a realist through experience many times over

[NighthawkNZ:Me]

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-sto...orcycle-chase/

Then yah get dick head trying to kill them self and their pillions

[Smifffy]

Actually, all I'd really like from the police and their colleagues is an acknowledgement that this appears to be a bad place to turn around, and doing so would heighten the risk for other road users. An agreement that perhaps if this was done much less than 100m from the brow of the hill, and on a solid yellow line (I say perhaps, since as has been pointed out I wasn't there) then there was a possibility the policies & procedures may heve been breached, and that possibility will have to be considered.

Instead we get "We do this maneuvre thousands of times" or "In our business sometimes tragedies occur"

To me it sounds arrogant and self-protecting.

If turning in such locations to commence pursuit is not a breach of policies & procedures, then I submit that the policies & procedures require review in light of the 5 incidents since 2007.

The road toll MUST come down

[bogan]

actually it's just debate

the crux of the debate, ignoring the side issues and name calling, is that bikers are cynical in general about the cops and probably for good reason.

what we want to see is cops who treat other cops the same as they treat us, who obey and respect the law and who don't lie or mislead; unfortunately too many of us have seen that the prevailing attitude of most cops is that motorcyclists always speed, whenever one crashes it was "due to excessive speed" but when they have done something incredibly stupid, illegal or otherwise wrong; they seem to hold themselves to a lower standard than they hold the general motoring public.

I'm not actually a cynic, I'm a realist through experience many times over

I agree, those entrusted with keeping us safe should be held to a higher standard, with power comes responsibility etc.
and as you were saying before, excessive speed is not a number, its relative to the conditions. Making everyone drive slow doesnt really address the problem that we are still crashing!

[Katman]

and as you were saying before, excessive speed is not a number, its relative to the conditions.

As well as being relative to the experience of the rider.

Hence why the term "excessive speed contributed to the accident" can very well be pertinent to an accident on an open road corner with an advisory sign of 50kph if taken at the legal limit of 100kph. (I don't think Idle has quite been able to grasp that concept yet).

[MSTRS:Me]

As well as being relative to the experience of the rider.

Hence why the term "excessive speed contributed to the accident" can very well be pertinent to an accident on an open road corner with an advisory sign of 50kph if taken at the legal limit of 100kph. (I don't think Idle has been able to grasp that concept yet).

If they only used that word, or better still 'inappropriate', we'd have less to bitch about.
But they don't. Leading to a whole section of accident stats that has questionable value because it is misleading.

[Mr Merde]

"excessive speed contributed to the accident"

Couldnt this be applied to every accident.

You are travelling down a 50kph road at 45 kph and suddenly another vehicle pulls out from a drive or side road and your t-bone it or it t-bones you.

This fit all statement would now come into force as you were travelling at a speed that didnt allow you time to react to the situation and by that very fact, excessive.

[smoky]

I heard from someone who attended the scene (clean up), that there was a lot of talk between the officers attending about this so called speeding ute that was supposedly the reason the cop was doing a U turn. There was nothing locked on the radar to indicate he had locked on to another vehicle, and where the accident happened just happens to be a spot where this cop catches a number of people, the insinuation is that he was doing a U turn to park just off the road to sit there and catch people speeding over the hill. Not turning to pursue a speeding ute as claimed

Interesting to note a friend of Pauls has admitted to being the ute driver, so I stand corrected on the rumors, however he has stated he was doing 120, not the speed supposedly stated by the cop, and his ute was green, not silver as stated by the cop!

I think the police should at the very lest admit the possibility of a mistake or poor judgement, instead of being so publicly focused on finding out the speed of the motorcyclist!

[MSTRS:Me]

Interesting to note a friend of Pauls has admitted to being the ute driver, so I stand corrected on the rumors, however he has stated he was doing 120, not the speed supposedly stated by the cop, and his ute was green, not silver as stated by the cop!

I think the police should at the very lest admit the possibility of a mistake or poor judgement, instead of being so publicly focused on finding out the speed of the motorcyclist!

Come on. They are going to look at everything. Eventually.
I'm sure that they are going to be looking hardest at those factors in the crash that were nothing to do with them. They will be wanting to find the biggest wrong, and they won't want it to be what the cop did, will they?

[Mr Merde]

Come on. They are going to look at everything. Eventually.
I'm sure that they are going to be looking hardest at those factors in the crash that were nothing to do with them. They will be wanting to find the biggest wrong, and they won't want it to be what the cop did, will they?

Thats because in their eyes a cop can do no wrong.

Reme,ber they look after their own first.

That dickhead in the Buller Gorge incident was allowed to retire on full benifits prior to going to court, why?

Because if he was still in the job when found guilty he would have lost all his benifits.

Less than a year later he was booked for DUI and no licence.

[MarkH]

By the same token the rider is not blameless.

You might want to be a bit more careful with the language. Sure the rider MAY have been speeding - but you have worded it like a statement of fact - the speed of the rider is only conjecture at the moment.

TBH I am not concerned if the rider was partly to blame - he has surely paid too much already for any mistake he may (or may not) have made. The issue remaining is the police officer and what he should pay for HIS role in this as well as police policy and what role IT played in this incident. If cops are making dangerous turns thousands of times and occasionally injuring or killing motorists that they are supposed to be protecting then that issue should be looked at - even if some motorists killed or injured may have shared some of the blame themselves.

Shared blame does not mean that the police officer did the right thing or should not be punished for recklessly endangering the life of someone else. We should all be careful going over blind crests and around blind corners AND police should be careful not to perform turning manoeuvres in dangerous places.


Remember:
We don't know how fast the rider was going - I don't think we should pretend that we do.
We don't know how fast the Ute was going - he may have been clocked at 112kph for all we know, we only have the cops word to go by.
We do know a police officer chose to turn close to a blind crest and a collision with a motorcycle occurred with the rider ending up dead.

What we do know is cause for concern!