Safe Speed Forums

One reason why I'm opposed to speed cameras is the apparent replacement of police officers by PC Gatso and (part civilian) scamera pratnerships that can do nothing in the fight against real crime. This was brought home to me rather vividly last week:

My son, his mate (let's call him "Jim") and his mate's girlfriend had just left the night-club down the road when over half-a-dozen yobos set upon them. The battered and shaken trio turned up at my place. We called for the police and an ambulance to be told that the police would attend as soon as possible, but that the ambulance was already on call and "could someone take Jim to casualty?" Three quarters of an hour later, the police arrived. They'd just got into my door when their radios burst into life. There was another fracas in town that they had to attend. They apologised, then left promising to return as soon as possible. Apparently, the regular officer and one special was all they had on duty on Friday night to police a town of 5,000 inhabitants with a town centre that has eight pubs, one night-club, and can get pretty boisterous.

By the time the police returned, Jim's father had arrived on the scene. Jim's face looked serious. His dad wasn't prepared to wait, and so had already whisked him off to casualty. On the way to hospital, Jim started fading into unconsciousness, so his dad put his foot down a bit. Guess what, PING … PC Gatso got him. Turned out that Jim had a broken cheek and concussion and Casualty confirmed that Jim's dad's urgency was justified.

IMO, the police took far too long, were ineffective, and that was directly down to understaffing. Whether the understaffing was directly down to Gatsos etc. displacing proper police is open to debate.

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Will

Hi Will

Gosh! You are unlucky!

Jim's father (i he was pinged by Gatso) will need to write and explain to Scamship should he get ticket. More than probable the ticket will be cancelled on compassionate grounds given detail of your post. Not quite so inhumane! Know for fact this has been case before!

About our understaffing (the Wild cousin has already had similar conversation with a BiB called "gone" on PH She really gets under his and my skin! I am one of 3 BiBs in this family - and the entire bunch of them bend my ear all the time! I can never do right for doing wrong!)

Truth is - we are very much understaffed. We are directed towards politically hot potatoes and very much pawn of current government whims - which I know will not placate you in any way They keep promising to recruit more staff - and in fairness my patch does see some of them - but others do not!

The Gatso was supposed to free us to do other police work - but masses of paperwork and bureacracy - nightmare!

You will think I am making excuses - but there will never be enough police officers to combat the ever-increasing number of criminals. It is a very sad fact of life! But hey - get enough ear bashing from the Mad One and the rest of the family (BiBs apart )

One member of the family (another Swiss first cousin) is A&E in London area. He confirms that demands on paramedics and ambulances a peak times can compromise health quite detrimentally. Understaffing is serious - but that is down to government not delivering its promises - and we all know what we can do about that - don't we?

Thanks for that. AIUI, Casualty have already raised documentation to say that, in their opinion, journey time was of the essence. He has been told that 90% of such cases are cancelled and the few that go to court are usually dismissed because of the mitigating circumstances. I guess that he'll have to wait a couple of weeks to know for sure

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Will