Pete Owens wrote: ↑8 Jul 2021, 11:45am
So basically you are saying that the police should only prosecute criminals if they personally witnesss the crime being commited.
I can see that if you are only counting the police time spent on the preosecution you might consider that cost effective. However, you have to also add in the amount of time the police spend wandering about the streets waiting for a crime to be commited in front of their eyes.
One: not at all. I'm saying that with regard to traffic enforcement, police doing the enforcing is the most cost effective. A properly-trained police officer witnessing something has the evidence to hand, including knowing how reliable the witness (themselves) will be. They will generally be able to deal with identification on the spot, particularly now that driver licensing is normally online. To take any action on third-party reports, it's necessary to know the strength of the evidence, including the witness. A witness who wants something doing but isn't prepared to give evidence if necessary isn't much help with summary traffic offences.
Two: I must have posted several times before that the the Home Office decided in the twilight of the Major government (and the twilight of my career) that police patrolling was a waste of time. I had to get out of my bed early when I was on nights to trail half way across West Yorkshire to be told. There was something of a public reaction to the result so Baron Blunkett of Brightside invented PCSOs and empowered them to issue tickets for pavement cycling. It's a long, long time since the police spent time wandering about the streets dealing with traffic offences. No doubt people can point to time being wasted on all sorts of things but it's not being spent on traffic offences.
There are various arguments about the effectiveness of police patrolling but if there's one area where it seems to make a difference it's road traffic as anyone with a distant memory of seeing a police car on the motorway will know. One thing I keep coming back to is that once it's taken for granted that the police won't normally investigate collisions, it's weird to expect investigations of near misses.
I'm not suggesting the present carry on is as it should be, just that there's no point not seeing it as it is.