POHB said:Paul - censored said:It's one of the problems, I reckon, with having speed cameras instead of
Police. If they'd introduced Speed Cams and kept the level of traffic
policing the same then IMHO there might have been a more significant
trend towards safer driving.
As it is you can drive almost anywhere dangerously and get away with it,
because there are no coppers about to stop you anymore, it seems ...
I hear this often, does anyone have any real figures about the rise or
fall in numbers of police on the roads or on the beat? Are there
really less coppers about than there were in days gone by, or is it
one of those myths like not being safe to cycle "these days"?
I believe there are less beat police - the police moved from being a
visible presence to a reactive force. That is, the idea recently was
that you'd never see a policeman until you were subject to crime, then
they'd appear. It was shifting them from bikes pootling around
heading off trouble before it occurs to being in panda cars zooming to
trouble and dealing with it.
This was supposedly a good thing.
It's interesting to contrast with firemen. Traditionally, they were
the opposite - you'd never see a fireman unless your house was
burning down, when they'd zoom in and deal with it. Increasingly,
however, fire brigades are becoming pre-emptive - if you 'phone my
fire station they'll send some chaps round who'll tell you you don't
have enough smoke detectors and the ones you have are in the wrong
place. They'll give you two or three more for free, then pootle off.
They've shifted from zooming to trouble to pootling around trying to
head it off before it occurs.
This is supposedly a good thing.
I'm not sure how 'they' (the ones that run such things) reconcile
these two apparently contradictory ideas. Admittedly, the police are
now heading back to more community interaction, but it's fairly token
(from what I've seen).
The thing that's baloney is the assumption that speed cameras have
anything to do with it. I think the change was well before speed
cameras, it was (as I said) panda cars.
The odd thing with cameras is that the 'anti's can't seem to make up
their minds - one minute they are nothing but revenue raisers, the
next they're taking up resources that could be spent on ye olde bobby
on the beat. One minute they are proliferating, the next they're not
where they're needed. They're catching too many people, or they're
not catching anyone which is bad because it was a waste installing it
or bad because it's doing no good. It's very hard to keep up with
which reason it is why cameras are evil. Strangely, it's never
because the complainant doesn't like being caught breaking
the law..
regards, Ian SMith
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