Driving whilst using mobile phone

[Spiderman]

Originally Posted by Milky Bar Kid

Just for the record. I don't do traffic tickets. I very very very rarely give them out. I tend to "give suitable advice" unless the person has been given "suitable advice" previously.

I take great pride in the amount of crimes I manage to detect and I work hard to detect these. Sometimes, however, there is just no sufficient evidence or a lack of lines of enquiry.

Pete is a traffic cop. It's what he does. I would like to hear you if one of your loved ones were killed by someone committing a "minor" road traffic offence? It suddenly wouldn't be such a minor offence.

It's like the "I will chose if I want to wear a seatbelt or not" argument. Well, would any of you actually jump on your bike and go for a rideout without your helmets on? Not many I wouldn't imagine.

No matter what the Police do, the public will never be entirely satisfied. We work with what we got, and a lot of the time, it's not very much.

I forget when this thread became about you and not the police farce as an entity.

however you raise the seatbelt and lid issue so let me address this. i know that even the slowest speed spill on my bike can lead to me hitting my head on the ground or anything else, very very hard. So i CHOOSE to wear a lid, not do it cos i'd face a fine.

Equally i've been in a multi car pile up on the motorway and was the driver and not wearing my seatbelt. I estimate i hit the stationary mangle of vehicles in front at about 50ish after scrubbing off some speed by sliding along the armco. I headbutted the windscreen and smashed it into a nice spiderweb affair (fitting eh?) and still have a tiny bit of glass embedded in my skull bone at the front. I chose not to wear my seatbelt and i'm not dead. If i died, it would have been my choice. I am not a fan of Govt telling me what risks i can take for myself. i asses the risk and do as i please form there.
Govt seatbelt laws are simply there to raise revenue as so many other things they are hidden behind the "its to protect you" smoke screen.

Originally Posted by Spiderman

I forget when this thread became about you and not the police farce as an entity.

however you raise the seatbelt and lid issue so let me address this. i know that even the slowest speed spill on my bike can lead to me hitting my head on the ground or anything else, very very hard. So i CHOOSE to wear a lid, not do it cos i'd face a fine.

Equally i've been in a multi car pile up on the motorway and was the driver and not wearing my seatbelt. I estimate i hit the vehicle in front at about 50isn after scrubbing off some speed by sliding along the armco. I headbutted the windscreen and smashed it into a nice spiderweb affair (fitting eh?) and still have a tiny bit of glass embedded in my skull bone at the front. I chose not to wear my seatbelt and i'm not dead. If i died, it would have been my choice. I am not a fan of Govt telling me what risks i can take for myself. i asses the risk and do as i please form there.
Govt seatbelt laws are simply there to raise revenue as so many other things they are hidden behind the "its to protect you" smoke screen.

I wasn't trying to make it about me, or about Pete or about any other individual, but what I was trying to say was - we are not all Robocops. not all of us are like the cop that dealt with Mark. I was only trying to make the point that some of us take a bit of pride in our work and try to do our best for members of the public.

Originally Posted by Milky Bar Kid

I wasn't trying to make it about me, or about Pete or about any other individual, but what I was trying to say was - we are not all Robocops. not all of us are like the cop that dealt with Mark. I was only trying to make the point that some of us take a bit of pride in our work and try to do our best for members of the public.

Like I was trying to say earlier...people only remember the bad drivers who use the phone, and people tend to only remember the bad bits of the police force and the sh!te coppers, as opposed to the good ones.

[Spiderman]

Originally Posted by Milky Bar Kid

but what I was trying to say was - we are not all Robocops.

Do me a huge favour...read my posts properly. I take time to choose my words very carefully when i make my sentences. I dont need you paraphrasing what i write to misinterpret them to suit your arguments.

the reference i made to robocops had nothing to do with the person who dealt with Mark, it was about scameras.

You did the same thing on the "daddy" thread to either me or Thulfi but have no replied to either of our comments on that either. Its getting a bit annoying now.

Originally Posted by Spiderman

Do me a huge favour...read my posts properly. I take time to choose my words very carefully when i make my sentences. I dont need you paraphrasing what i write to misinterpret them to suit your arguments.

the reference i made to robocops had nothing to do with the person who dealt with Mark, it was about scameras.

You did the same thing on the "daddy" thread to either me or Thulfi but have no replied to either of our comments on that either. Its getting a bit annoying now.

No, I knew you weren't calling us Robocops and I understood you were saying about the cameras, I just made the mistake of repeating the phrase in a different manner. It's a phrase I use to describe people that just go out to meet targets.

Originally Posted by Milky Bar Kid

It's a phrase I use to describe people that just go out to meet targets.

I think you may have spilled the beans - are you saying that some police officers intentionally book people so as to make up their force's crime resolve target?

If it's true, that is diabolical.

Originally Posted by Ed

I think you may have spilled the beans - are you saying that some police officers intentionally book people so as to make up their force's crime resolve target?

If it's true, that is diabolical.

Well, not in our Force as we don't have targets and as I have not worked in any other Force, then I cannot comment on them. I am going on what I read in the general media. How true it is, I don't know.

[Spiderman]

Of course its true Ed, c'mon we all know it.

In the local paper where i used to live a woman had written a huge rant, rightly , about how the local cops refused to take her report of having had her bag snatched by 2 guys on mountain bikes.
They said they can give her a crime number for her insurance but will not investigate it as a street robbery but are putting it down to her losing her bag on the street.
If they refuse to record crime they have less recorded crimes unsolved.

The woman who i went to the cop shop toi report for causing a crash and not noticing it cos she was on her mobile...they gave me a form to fill in, it was a self reporting collision form. I kept explaining i was not in a collision but witness her causing one and not knowing about it, was asked by those involved to catch up to her thru the almost gridlocked traffic and tell her they are waiting for her to return and give her insurance details and still the tw@ at the desk insisted i fill in a form hat required me to also produce all my documents

No revenue in taking my report...but possibly some if i filled in the form wrong or one of my documents wasn't up to date according to one of their oh so sophisticated and never gets it wrong databases.

Originally Posted by Ed

MBK - you make a good argument here, and as you're a police officer I think you have an extremely valid axe to grind. What you are effectively saying is that there is a lack of resources. Now where have we heard that before...

The public continues to think that the police are there to raise money for the government, and the comparison I have drawn simply confirms that appearance. Now it might well be unfair, I was simply linking two entirely separate issues that were on the front page of IB, and if it is unfair then the senior management of our police forces have completely failed to communicate how and why they allocate resources as they do. To cynical me and to equally cynical Spidey, it seems that greater priority is given to traffic police who can collect £££ than to protecting people such as Mark.

Just seen this.

I totally understand why this is the public perception. They see the traffic cars pulling people and booking them or they get pulled and get booked. They don't see us running from call to call to call to call, trying to do our best for people.

I don't know that it is so much that they spend so much more money on the traffic police, jsut that they are seen more obviously.

I don't get paid enough to fix this. Me, and the rest of my team, just get on with what we have and try to do the best for the people that we deal with.

Y'know - I suddenly feel a bit scared. I know that police forces do book people purely to increase the resolve rate - but it had never dawned on me before that a police force might apply inverse logic and have a policy of refusing to accept a crime report for crimes that are difficult to solve because of what it will do to their statistics.

I think I'll write to the chairman of West Mercia Police Authority and ask him what their policies are on these issues.

And meantime I'll keep a low profile in Greater Manchester. Especially to any passing X5