Legitimate policing or big brother attitude?

[PJH]

Arrived later than Scotth.

It was set up on the A229 between Chatham and Maidstone to target drug dealers, criminals and benefit cheats.

The operation saw 27 vehicles seized for being dangerous, uninsured or untaxed.

So they target drug dealers, but appear not to have caught any.

 

[neilrr]

Brighter criminals probably tend to do long-term or big jobs and pay their bills etc so don't appear on the radar! It's only the dumb ones that get caught.

Brighter criminals tend to drive insured, taxed & MOT'd cars (even if they are registered in someone elses name)!

 

[bibamus]

Arrived later than Scotth.

So they target drug dealers, but appear not to have caught any.

Targetting them doesnt mean that they have to arrest them for drug dealing. How many drug dealers had their cars seized for no tax or insurance? We dont know, cos we werent there, but these Police check points serve more than one purpose. ( they arent road blocks by the way, but road block sounds more controversial for those with a downer on authority figures)
They catch people driving illegally and if they are advertised as this one was in the media, then it gives out the message that you could quite easily be caught driving without the necessary documents.

Airport security has been mentioned already in this thread, yet people are quite happy to be treated like cattle going through their security checks, taking off belts and shoes and shuffling along. What is it with being stopped by the Police that gets everybody so inflamed? Its a well known fact that almost everybody perceives their driving to be well above average ( many surveys have come to this conclusion and every Traffic PC will agree) , perhaps its because the Police are in a position to point out that actually, most peoples driving is crap that they get so inflamed.

But, if you think Police have too much power you should see what Customs and Revenue officers can do!!!!

Allan

 

[scotth_uk]

Brighter criminals tend to drive insured, taxed & MOT'd cars (even if they are registered in someone elses name)!

Some of the biggest crooks that I know lead totally legal lives on the surface. They are wealthy, intelligent and not yet caught! They'd happily be pulled over by the police, because the police aren't looking for them.

Its a well known fact that almost everybody perceives their driving to be well above average

You raise an interesting point. I wonder how many of us appropriately rate their driving skills. I think I'm coming to terms with the fact that I am not as good as I thought I was. Hard to deal with, but best to be aware of. :-(

 

[neilrr]

Some of the biggest crooks that I know lead totally legal lives on the surface. They are wealthy, intelligent and not yet caught! They'd happily be pulled over by the police, because the police aren't looking for them.(

I know.

 

[Dryce]

Same with speed cameras, more likely to be on a duel carriage way in the middle of nowhere than outside a school.

These are just exercises in revinue raising...

Lots of speed cameras along the dual carriageways I drive.

.... Apparently out in the middle of nowhere.

........ On the approach to junctions.

Judging by the way traffic behaves on these roads compared
with my younger days I think on the whole they work.

 

[andy_k]

speed cameras are great at catching criminals - those with no respect for the law are caught whatever the time

It's funny how nearly everyone on the forum thinks that it's OK to apprehend criminals who drive around breaking some laws but not others. Had the discussiion been about speed cameras (as has happened before) the tone of discussion would have been much different.

I would like to see every uninsured/un mot'd/un taxed car removed from the roads but I would like to see it done before they are driven not whilst they are being used on the road. Using the computers how difficult is it to interrogate the data bases to cross reference insured cars/taxed cars/owners/driving licences (the last would be harder because you don't have to own the car to drive it) but the others should be easy. Produce a list then send someone round to investigate - just like they do with TV licencing.

Sorry Toni, no axe to grind as you suggested just despairing at the sort of random policing we are seeing here. The police are there to enforce the law not to be the law in a sort of Judge Dredd style. They could easily have caught a lot more people in a more low key operation.

Put police back "on the beat" every time they walk past an untaxed car they radio in and someone comes out to clamp or remove it - that would stop an awful lot of people stretching the tax by 14 days.

Stand a policeman at every box junction and confiscate the keys of people who are so stupid to not understand how they work or so arrogant that they think it dopesn't apply to them.

Then to ensure we get traffic policed properly...

Fit red light cameras to every single set of traffic lights in the country and impound peoples cars who choose to ignore the changes. These are truly dangerous drivers (insured or not) and should not be allowed to drive anymore

Have speed cameras every 200 yards and set them to issue a fine for any transgression. Those who complain that they want more leeway should have it pointed out to them that in a 30 mph zone they actually already have 30 mph of leeway why should they get another 2 or 3 mph as a goodwill gesture?

I have serious problems with this type of "dragnet policing" (Timmy's words not mine) because all too often it results in various degrees of inconvenience to innocent people whilst attempting to catch a few stupid criminals. This inconvenienbce makes all the other people involved unwitting victims of crimes which should never have affected them.

The DWP involvement is comical as well as their computer system is as (if not more) flawed than everyone elses put together - before I get accused of making this up I'll put it in some sort of contextm my partner (who many on here know) and two of her sisters both work for the CSA, my brother in law works for inland Revenue and one of my closest an oldest friends is a fraud investigator for the DHSS (or whatever they are calling it now). Her best story was when they raided Romford's main shopping centre to catch street trading benefit cheats two weeks before Christmas. Armed with all the hi-tech equipment and bang up to date they made one arrest. Was it a street trader? Nope, it was a man in a red suit witha big white beard they dragged out of the shopping centre's Santa's Grotto because the computer said he was claiming benefit - once they had dragged him down to the office it turned out that he'd signed off that morning as he had started a new job

Relying on machines and computers is no way to enforce the law - we need proper policing from proper policemen and women who are still "human" not just robots relying on possibly flawed data from third parties

Still, an interesting debate though

Andy

 

[glojo]

I would like to see every uninsured/un mot'd/un taxed car removed from the roads but I would like to see it done before they are driven not whilst they are being used on the road. Using the computers how difficult is it to interrogate the data bases to cross reference insured cars/taxed cars/owners/driving licences (the last would be harder because you don't have to own the car to drive it) but the others should be easy. Produce a list then send someone round to investigate - just like they do with TV licencing.

Hi Andy,
I always enjoy reading your messages, they are expressing your opinion and make a great deal of sense.

I do feel however the above paragraph is flawed!! I say this with the greatest of respect, but do you honestly believe that you could knock on the door of some 'toe rag' and, "Good morning sir, are you the owner of the red Nissan ABC 123Y that is parked outside your house?"

Answer, "No, now f*** off!!!"

What would you then do? The car has NO registered keeper and was sold at auction.

If you want to target the individual rather than have a random operation, then this will have to be done covertly. How many officers will you use to keep this one person under surveillance??

You MUST allow the driver to at least drive the vehicle on the public highway to perhaps get a successful prosecution? "Not my car officer, I was simply starting the engine to see if it works!"

Will you chase it if the driver sees you and makes off?

My pet hate is folks that moan about something but do NOT come up with a sensible alternative.

I am in full support of targeting a known repeat offender, but it might perhaps be a less efficient method of using resources?

What is your constructive alternative?

John

 

[219]

I do feel however the above paragraph is flawed!! I say this with the greatest of respect, but do you honestly believe that you could knock on the door of some 'toe rag' and, "Good morning sir, are you the owner of the red Nissan ABC 123Y that is parked outside your house?"

Answer, "No, now f*** off!!!"

What would you then do? The car has NO registered keeper and was sold at auction.

John

Agreed you might not 'get' the 'toe-rag' (interesting expression - wonder about its origin) , but at least the car could be impounded if no registered keeper , insurance , MOT , Tax showed up on the databases.

 

[glojo]

Agreed you might not 'get' the 'toe-rag' (interesting expression - wonder about its origin) , but at least the car could be impounded if no registered keeper , insurance , MOT , Tax showed up on the databases.

The snag with this is that some streets are littered with 'dumped' or abandoned vehicles. Some criminal types will use 'pool' type vehicles that are either ringed, or bought cheaply at auction. Clamping them, or towing them away justs creates huge disposal problems. Like I say, it is very easy to be critical, the clever bit is to take POSITIVE action.

As stated earlier, here in Torbay there is an officer in the council office that operates the CCTV system, when they want to use the number plate recognition software, this officer merely directs the nearest unit onto the flagged vehicle. The problem with this idea is that there are just four operational units covering Torquay! Take one out and you can cope, take two out and calls start to go unanswered!! It needs a dedicated operation, but perhaps more clandestine than the one kindly illustrated by Andy. I still cannot get my head around FORTY officers and the alleged poor return.

Please don't get the impression that any force cannot organise forty officers for any type of operation. It would not be too much of a logistical problem and there are any number of very easy ways to organise this.

John

 

[andy_k]

Hi Andy,
I do feel however the above paragraph is flawed!! I say this with the greatest of respect, but do you honestly believe that you could knock on the door of some 'toe rag' and, "Good morning sir, are you the owner of the red Nissan ABC 123Y that is parked outside your house?"

Answer, "No, now f*** off!!!"

What would you then do? The car has NO registered keeper and was sold at auction.

not flawed at all I'd be very surprised once a tow truck turned up if the person who didn't own the car 20 minutes beforehand suddenly remembered that he'd left something important in a car he didn't own.

Quite frankly, I'm not that bothred if we don't get the toe rag and just get his car because a toe rag walking around is less likely to drive uninsured into the side of my car

OK, he gets another car the next week and the week after that it gets towed away again - sooner or later even the thickest and most stubborn person will give up and realise it's cheaper to pay one lot of insurance and road tax rather than buying a new car every two weeks

Andy

 

[219]

The snag with this is that some streets are littered with 'dumped' or abandoned vehicles. Some criminal types will use 'pool' type vehicles that are either ringed, or bought cheaply at auction. Clamping them, or towing them away justs creates huge disposal problems. Like I say, it is very easy to be critical, the clever bit is to take POSITIVE action.
John

I wouldn't have thought it too much of a problem to award a contract to a local scrappy , telling him to uplift said cars and keep in a compound until authorised to dispose of them .

When a car is uplifted , the council writes to the last recorded keeper , informing them they have 30 days ( 60 if you want to be generous ) to respond , otherwise the vehicle will be disposed of .

If they wish to reclaim it , they pay an uplift fee , storage etc as per the norm . Otherwise the scrappy can sell , break or crush the vehicle as he sees fit .

It would cost the council hardly anything to do , the scrappy either gets the fees for towing/storage or he gets to keep the vehicle for whatever it is worth .

Unlicensed vehicles are already dealt with in this way in my part of the country - only they have to be destroyed , cannot be sold . Shouldn't be too difficult to extend the scheme to other 'abandoned' vehicles .

 

[glojo]

not flawed at all I'd be very surprised once a tow truck turned up if the person who didn't own the car 20 minutes beforehand suddenly remembered that he'd left something important in a car he didn't OK, he gets another car the next week and the week after that it gets towed away again -

We are talking about disqualified drivers that will NOT have any insurance etc. I don't understand your point, do you seriously believe these folks even care what happens to their very temporary wheels?

sooner or later even the thickest and most stubborn person will give up and realise it's cheaper to pay one lot of insurance and road tax rather than buying a new car every two weeks

We are certainly NOT talking about drivers that are worried about insurance or tax??? Would they buy a 'new' car? I understand what your saying, but getting a car towed away by the local authority is not the end of the world.

If our friendly toe rag has a car displaying a current tax disc then it will not be touched by the local authority! If it is not taxed, then getting someone out to remove a car is not a simple task. The council will get fed-up with your complaints before joy riders, toe-rags etc get fed-up with using uninsured vehicles.

Regarding Pontoneer's post, it simply bears NO relation to a news item I saw last week on a deprived area of Glasgow!!! There were any number of abandoned vehicles on the streets. Dozens of them including burnt out wrecks, the streets looked like a war-zone... Baghdad!!!!

By all means claim the system works in your part of the country, but I would suggest you let the folks of Glasgow know just how easy you claim it is to get cars removed. I wonder if the recovery vehicle would disappear before the abandoned vehicle.

Like I say it is EASY to come up with theories, but sensible options are few and far between.

John

 

[Dryce]

We are talking about disqualified drivers that will NOT have any insurance etc. I don't understand your point, do you seriously believe these folks even care what happens to their very temporary wheels?

May not care for the car much but they will care for the dent in their
wallets (even at banger prices) and the inconvenience.

Trouble today is everybody looks for a quick fix whereas the reality
is that change generally comes about through attrition. Tomake this
sort of policy work it has to be enacted with commitment
over years -- not just a quick blitz for a month and then a focus
on something else.

 

[219]

Regarding Pontoneer's post, it simply bears NO relation to a news item I saw last week on a deprived area of Glasgow!!! There were any number of abandoned vehicles on the streets. Dozens of them including burnt out wrecks, the streets looked like a war-zone... Baghdad!!!!

By all means claim the system works in your part of the country, but I would suggest you let the folks of Glasgow know just how easy you claim it is to get cars removed. I wonder if the recovery vehicle would disappear before the abandoned vehicle.

Like I say it is EASY to come up with theories, but sensible options are few and far between.

John

Indeed !

The 'system' may not work , or be enforced , as well as it might , but there are a couple of breakers'yards which do get a LOT of these cars in for breaking .

One of my friends saw a 'minted' Beryl Blue W124 coupe which he enquired about buying - the dealer was unable to sell it as it had been an unlicensed vehicle and had a destruction order . Likewise , I saw a 'C' reg white W123 saloon in very nice condition , same story .

It is all very well in theory , the system is in place to get these cars off the road , but in certain areas where even the residents don't seem to care about their own environment , nothing seems to get done .

Local councils do have contact numbers you can phone to get abandoned cars uplifted , but if no-one phones they're not going to send guys out looking for abandoned cars . They have better things to do.

 

[andy_k]

there was a real purge on untaxed cars here last year and the local scrappy removed loads of cars. Also it seems we are on some kind of DVLA "hit list" as the town seems to get a visit two or three times a year. Last time they towed away about 6 untaxed vehicles from a local car dealers because they were parked half on his forecourt and half on the road. We know this was done because of complaints from the locals so moaning to your council does work

After the purge the number of untaxed cars fell dramatically and surely that is what we want to see.

Enforce the law and make sure thatillegally parked and illegally driven vehicles are impounded.

Now, as I said in another thread.... How many people will admit to buying a car and driving it home on the day of purchase without pre arranging their insurance? Unless you have an "any vehicle" policy please explain how that (you driving home uninsured) makes you any better than the toe rags we are discussing here

Andy

 

[glojo]

there was a real purge on untaxed cars here last year and the local scrappy removed loads of cars.

Pontoneer has tried saying the same thing!!! I can give examples of how the council have towed away cars, but by crikey I guarantee that I can go to any large town and find any number of abandoned vehicles that have been dumped! Quoting odd examples simply does not make it the norm!

Now, as I said in another thread.... How many people will admit to buying a car and driving it home on the day of purchase without pre arranging their insurance? Unless you have an "any vehicle" policy please explain how that (you driving home uninsured) makes you any better than the toe rags we are discussing here

I will not answer for anybody else, but my son recently part exchanged his car for a newer vehicle. He contacted his insurance company the day before and they simply put both vehicles on the same policy for the one day!! As we have previously discussed... Ten minutes after taking delivery of the replacement vehicle he was the innocent party in a road traffic incident in which the Police arrived and assisted at the scene! I have NO time for ANYONE that drives a motor vehicle on a public highway for any length of time without insurance.

Our 'scrappies' are getting VERY selective about taking motor vehicles. They will usually charge for taking the usual old banger! The council pound is quite a small secured yard which is usually over filled with abandoned vehicles, but I do know they will not usually want to know about an alleged abandoned vehicle if it is displaying a current tax disc!

John

 

[bibamus]

Relying on machines and computers is no way to enforce the law - we need proper policing from proper policemen and women who are still "human" not just robots relying on possibly flawed data from third parties

Andy

I think almost every law abiding person and Police Officer will agree with you here, unfortunately, they are not the ones who define Policing policy!

But, regarding your comment about Police Officers on the street walking past untaxed vehicles, Police and local councils are employing Police Community Support Officers ( PCSO) and Community Wardens who, along with other duties, will be doing just that. Police regularly run operations targetting untaxed vehicles. These are widely advertised and usually take place in areas that have loads of untaxed vehicles. Impounding / removal of these vehicles is very high visibility, seized cars on low loaders have big easy to read signs on them stating that it is an untaxed vehicle.

Great to watch!

Allan

 

[andy_k]

Police and local councils are employing Police Community Support Officers ( PCSO) and Community Wardens who, along with other duties, will be doing just that.

Yep, we have them here as well and the lazy gits won't walk up the hill to where we live (about 500 yards from the seafront).

Every night their patrol starts on the seafront at about 6 pm with a cup of coffee and slice of bread pudding (it's a regular order so the lady who runs the beach cafe has it ready for them) before they toddle off on their walk past the bandstand where the local junkies from Hastings have decided is a safe place to gather (because Bexhill''s part time police don't hassle them, presumably in case they get indigestion) along to the De la Warr Pavillion where the skate boarders all hang out despite being subject to various byelaws which outlaw what they are doing where they turn around and ignore all the cyclists riding along the newly designated "no cycling zone" which is also known as the seafront, take a left turn past the local Turkish car wash who have had an untaxed transit Luton parked on the road outside their premises (and our friends front window) for the past eight months before getting half way up the hill and being collected by their mates driving the local CCTV van at just after 7.30pm - we haven't seen them after that time so it's reasonable to assume they are either cracking down on crime just as efficiently in another part of this very small town or watching eastenders in the back of the van

I said proper policemen and women not just people who want a uniform and who weren't smart enough to become traffic wardens

Andy