jammers

[mercmanuk]

found this on another site

December 2004

A friend of mine who has been using a jammer for over 4 years got arrested this week. (Dec 04)

Here is the story of what happened.

At 6 am a police car and a low loader turned up outside his home. He was arrested and the car was loaded on to the low loader. He was taken to the local police station, his car was taken to the police vehicle inspection unit. The jammer was tested to see if it jammed, as you can expect it did. The jammer was removed, 50min job.

In the mean time my friend was questioned and then was charged with "perverting the course of justice". The worrying part is this. He had been seen in one county by a laser camera van that could not get his speed. A few months later he had been seen in another county by a separate safety camera van again it could not get his speed.

This then sparked the event at 6 am .... How you ask..

It has turned out, after speaking to several contacts in the police force, they have had the camera equipment software modified to photograph any vehicle that throw up an error, any error. When the video is checked at the camera units base and an error is reported the event is logged as a warning flag on the PNC database (police database).

When another camera van operator takes his video back to base to check over, if he discovers an error he will check on the PNC database to see if there are any warning flags on that vehicle.

If there are no flags on the PNC for that car then one is added. If the PNC has a flag on it saying they have had a problem in the past they will investigate further. This was the case for my friend and the guy in Northampton

To make matters worse my friend was not speeding on both occasions.

As I have said he was charged and then bailed to reappear. I let you know the outcome in late January.


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I have had a chance today to talk to several police forces and the DoT and they can confirm this is what they have all been doing. It is because the DoT wanted to know just how many jammers were in use in the UK. The belief is that there are over a million jammers fitted to cars in the UK. I think this figure is a little high but you never know.

This work has been conducted to gather data prior to the proposed application for a ban in January 2005. If the ban goes through its expected to take effect within 6 months.

The ban will cover, Radar Detectors and Laser jammers. GPS will be safe as they have no intention to ban them.

 

[Shude]

We don't have a DoT in the UK, it is the MoT. This reads like a hoax to me!

This would have made it to the news if it were real.

edit: I just read-up and it's now refered to as the "DfT in the UK

Still reads like a hoax though.

 

[McGreggor]

Doesn't add up to me. I've been out for a day with the guys that operate the anpr van for my local force (each force was given one from the home office), and they often get cars that the van doesn't automatically detect and check. Yes, they do get a still of each car as it passes, so an operator runs the check manually. This did happen every minute or two, so there are just too many to put a marker on each. The other thing is that these "jammers" either jam radar or laser speed detectors, but the van uses neither. They have a regular camera, and an IR camera, both fed in to a computer that pics out the number plate and reads it with software.

I don't doubt the incident happened with his car being impounded, but they got him some other way than described. Have to say though that using detectors/jammers is never safe, there are detector detectors and also detectors that detect detector detectors!

 

[Plodd]

Before any of you ask I have absolutely no knowledge of this whatsoever.

I must say though on a purely personal note that it sounds slightly unlikely.

 

[mapleleaf]

I'd be inclined to err on the side of caution here as the site the info was found on was the ukspeedtrapguide run by Steve Warren and he has generally been pretty acurate with his info in the past .

The full story & advice is here...

uk speed trap guide check out the jamlaw section

 

[Mondorich]

We don't have a DoT in the UK, it is the MoT. This reads like a hoax to me!

This would have made it to the news if it were real.

edit: I just read-up and it's now refered to as the "DfT in the UK

Still reads like a hoax though.

Sorry Shude, we don't have a Ministry of Transport anymore - despite the continuing acronym for vehicle inspections. It is now the Department for Transport (DfT) - renamed by New Labour from the former DoT.

Try here to have a look.

I reckon the author has simply failed to realise the modernised name for this gov dept rather than it being a hoax.

Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice assumes that some justice was about to be metered out to a law breaking individual - if the motorist in question was not breaking the speed limit then they were not trying to prevent punishment by the use of a jamming device. This could run.....

 

[Shude]

Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice assumes that some justice was about to be metered out to a law breaking individual - if the motorist in question was not breaking the speed limit then they were not trying to prevent punishment by the use of a jamming device. This could run.....

Yes, more likely to fall under "obstructing a police officer in the course of his duties" then.

Still sounds highly dubious to me. These stories are often about "a friend" but never is a name mentioned, not even a first name or an initial.

 

[Aswall]

Just asked my neighbour who is in a position to know about this and he says "it's b***ocks" as far as South Yorkshire goes and says he doesn't know about other forces but can't think of any possible way of working this without a huge investment in time and equipment. Think it's another one for the urban myths list. It wasn't on Petrolheads was it, the home of story telling schoolkids?

 

[glojo]

With these 'jammers' are they designed to detect a signal being transmitted on a certain frequency?

I thought I read that it was a similar frequency to electric garage door openers, or is this another rumour?

Seizing a vehicle for having a device fitted that was not operating at the time seems 'weird'.

Surely the only time action can be taken is at the time of the offence?

How can it be PROVED that the device was fitted weeks prior to the seizure?

'He wasn't speeding at the time' Of course they weren't. Every single car that passed was no doubt photographed.

Like the majority of contributors, I need more facts before I believe this one.

Regards,
John