My Brother was a Traffic Cop for many years. He would have stayed one but someone at the top decided that they needed to allow more people to do the role as people were finding it a difficult area to get into. So rather that having a trained and experienced group of drivers they rotated a bunch of wannabees in to keep the HR bods happy.
To be fair they'd still have to do a response course (which is very intensive and by no means an easy pass) before they we're allowed out in the vehicles. As such they were trained to a high level so if anyone thinks plod can jump in a car and chase criminals they know nothing.....mind you judging by some of the comments on this thread that's highly likely.
No I think experience has a great deal to do with it, and that by forcing people out of traffic and into other areas they lose that experience. Not saying the new ones aren't trained, just not as experienced.
To be honest Barstewardsquad most forces don't rotate staff into other sections as you're quite right experience is an important aspect to consider. My post was more aimed at the stupid comment made after yours.
There appears a rather lot of guessing on what the ANPR hit was..... i.e tax out of date etc, if a response car has his blues going then its a grade 1 call, you do not respond to out of date tax or anything like it on a grade 1..... ANPR is used for a lot of things. It could of been an offender at large, a kidnapping, armed robbery etc. Staff do not rotate into traffic, certainly not if the car will be able to pursue, that is just utter rubbish. The course's are still there and very hard to get onto. The car should of had its siren on, i don't know why they did not, especially approaching a junction or a set of lights. Lets see what the investigation comes up with before passing judgement on why it happened and who is to blame.
I agree with the comments made about jumping on the bandwagon and making assumptions. Until the investigtation is completed, to try and second guess the outcome or cause is just that, guesswork. As far as rotation is concerned, I should have clarified that the quality of training and expertise does vary from force to force. My old force introduced what is called tenure of service where an individual is allowed to to a maximum of 3 years on a specialist department. Thsi meant that old sweats with more fatals under their belt than you can shake a stick at were put back on the beat with a tall hat and replaced by youngsters who had no real interest in the job, but felt it would enhance their promotion or career prospects or simply fancied swanning about in a flash motor for a few years. The expertise and standards have been lost in many forces. I had to do a 13 week traffic law course as part of my training which was actualy longer than my basic training. If you did not attain a pass mark of 80% on the weekly exam you were sent back to your force and kicked off the department. Now the traffic law course is done in force and is 1 week. Probably just enough to cover the basics of the Road Traffic Act
I bet it wasn't a bike being nicked though... Hope the rider is OK. The coppers are probably a bit miffed too... Not sure I'd blame them without all the info. Although I have noticed quite a to of emergency vehicles running red lights WITHOUT sirens recently... Which always seemed a bit iffy to me (But the ones I've seen have always tended to treat the red light as a give-way and slow to check oncoming traffic). Not that I'd like to be he rider of course (And if I were, I'm sure I'd be pretty annoyed). And yeah, I believe it's a crap piece of the job... All your failures are quite public Whereas I can screw up a switch in the weekends without too much come back... H
Even on blues and twos, red lights have to be treated as a Give Way. There is no god given right yo jump red light just because they are on a shout. On the second point, there are occasions when wat is called a "Silent Approach" is required. The nature of the call or whatever may deem it appropriate that blues and two are not used, for example when attending a report of intruders on premises (and this is just one example) and so although it may seem that they are running red lights with not kit on, there has to be a justifiable reason, and if it goes pear shaped then the driver has a lot of explaining to do
I don't want to trivialise a horrible situation and there are some very interesting responses in this tread. But, looking at the photo via the link, I was trying to work out what happened ( incidentally I've been in a red light collision. I had a cyclist with no lights in raining gloomy twilight ride across me on my old Norton, ex plod rotary. I swerved just missed his leg and destroyed his rear wheel which apparently flattered and bent in two and shot up in the air. I locked and lost my front but fortunately got off with a sprained wrist and the the set of sliding down the road til you hit a kerb type minor injuries and £1000+ to patch the Norton up. The cyclist was seen hobbling off into the dark by one of the people who came to help). As I hinted don't start me on cyclists and red lights- daily live long hazard here in London. So what is the copper in the background doing next to that tree? Any suggestions? GaryS
It looks like he is taping of the scene to prevent anyone walking or wondering in and contaminating the evidence
