Saturday 5 April 2008

Getting serious on the roads


Devon and Cornwall Police Constabulary took part in a joint police campaign with other police forces last week to target road crime.

The campaign made use of fairly new technology called Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), which is able to determine if drivers hold a licence, insurance and tax for their vehicles. Devon and Cornwall police reported that the week long exercise was successful and put to good use the ANPR technology.

Supt Tim Swarbrick of Devon and Cornwall Police told BBC news that ANPR is “…probably one of the best bits of technology we've had for the past 20 or 30 years.”

Last month a quarterly newsletter was launched by the Police Federation called ‘Roads Ahead’ and will feature news about roads policing. The newsletter states:

“Our aim is to use this publication to open up informative channels of communication between all roads policing officers and associated bodies. We intend to focus on key issues that influence the delivery and professionalism of traffic officers around the country.”

The newsletter calls for “a national and consistent standard of competence qualification recognised” for police. Shouldn’t they be qualified to a consistent standard of competence anyway?

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