back to article Celeb pics row shows ACPO in frame for shake-up

Allegations by the Mail on Sunday that the UK police may be making improper use of speed camera pics were dismissed last week as wholly inaccurate by ACPO affiliate Road Safety Support (RSS). Nonetheless, the story raises further questions as to the role and democratic accountability of the police when they form up into non- …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To be, or not to be: who really cares anyway ?

    Nothing will happen.

    The service will still be stuck with endless seat-warmers, mostly at high-command level.

    More interested in big cars and big salaries than fighting against crime, although they will troop-out bloody fast to fight against anyone threatening their dosh.

    More brass, less brains.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      ACPO

      The fact that ACPO is a limited company shocked me. Why on earth would the police need the protection of a limited company?

      Basically, whatever they do, they cannot be touched. Teh directors could be in extreme curcumstances but that's unlikely.

  2. oldredlion
    WTF?

    Huh?

    I might be a little slow here...

    RSS Ltd is affiliated to ACPO and accepts £900K from "speed camera partnerships". What happens to that 900k?

    Isn't this just a front organisation for ACPO members to get a load of cash, and apparently legally? Or does it go back into public funds (I doubt it!)

  3. LawLessLessLaw
    Boffin

    Just wait until you elect your Chief Constable

    Then the thiefs can be in charge of the fiefdom.

    1. strangefish

      the obvious question I suppose...

      ...is what on Earth makes you think that will be a change?

  4. oldredlion
    WTF?

    And another thing...

    this company are using images taken from speed cameras and selling them to the media?

    This just seems so wrong on so many levels!

  5. blackworx
    Black Helicopters

    Damned if you do

    Thought it was considered better to keep criminal gangs like these out in the open where we can see them, rather than forcing them underground?

  6. Jacqui

    31mph

    There have been a number of speed traps in the berks/surrey areas at the bottom of hills (usualy hidden behind bushes, in unmarked vans on bridges, parked behind a white van etc) catching people doing a few MPH over the limit - usually 30 or 40 limits.

    These people are given the option to plead guilty and take a course (paying some largish sum).

    We now find out the money goes to a Ltd owned by high-up plod who may be taking the cash as expenses? This focus on ~1-7mph over the limit drivers seems to be a recent response to the speeding fine funds being kept by central gov? Why target high speed drivers when there is no money in it?

    If anyone was not convinced road safety partnerships are focussed on getting your money this activity should prove it to you! Late night "boy racers" are ignored and traps located to catch those who let the car idle up past the limit - again in every case at the bottom of a hill.

    Jacqui

    p.s. in certain forums it has been stated that the trappers should have discarded ~1 to 4mph over the limit. Those who opted for a court hearing for said speeds said they had the tickets "revoked".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      31mph?

      The law is pretty clear on what speed you can actually be prosecuted for speeding. IIRC you must be exceeding the limit by 10% + 1mph. So in a thirty limit you would need to be doing 34mph before you could be prosecuted.

      I've certainly never heard of a case of somebody being prosecuted for 31mph in a 30 limit.

      As for unmarked speed traps, they can't be cameras they can only be handheld radar guns. Which means you have to be stopped by the police in order to be prosecuted. Cameras must have waning signs, the vans we have round here are pretty clearly marked. Upper half of the rear door is open with the camera and (for some reason) an old compaq laptop visible. The lower half of the door has a large camera logo on one side and the usual luminous police striping on the other. If you consider that hidden then you probably don't have good enough eyesight to drive a car.

      I've heard lots of unconfirmed stories about hidden speed traps, the trouble is most of them aren't true. I'll give you an example. A friend of mine got pulled over on the M1 near Leeds recently. The story he told everybody was that he'd been nicked by an unmarked car lurking on the on slip. He wasn't. I was in the car in front and slowed when I saw the marked patrol car parked on an elevated platform almost a mile away. He didn't slow, came zooming past me at 90mph and got nicked. The trouble is that these stories circulate and become part of speeding folklore even though they are only told by drivers to try to make themselves look less stupid.

      Another problem with the 31mph story is that almost all car speedometers overread. Usually by about 5%, sometimes more. So the "he pulled me over and I was only doing 41mph in a 40 limit" stories are doubly untrue. Not only does the law not allow for you to be prosecuted for doing 42mph in a 40 limit, but if your speedo was reading 42mph it is very unlikely that you would be doing more than 40mph.

      In short I believe that if you are breaking the speed limit you should be willing to pay the consequences, however you are caught. Unless of course the limit is not clearly stated. However I still have a major problem with speed cameras. Cameras should be there in additon to traffic officers in order to allow those traffic officers to deal with other offences. However most "safety" partnerships have used them as a replacement for traffic officers. Speed cameras catch people speeding. Traffic officers can catch people doing all sorts of things.

      1. Steve 6

        31mph? again

        The law is very clear with what speeds can be prosecuted for: anything over the speed limit, even 1mph. The 10%+2 is a regulation for automated enforcement (because machines do not apply discretion). Police can pull for speeds less than the 10%+2 if they feel there are aggravating circumstances (assuming they can prove the offence).

        Cameras do not need warning signs - they never did!

        85% of camera enforcement needed to comply with various regulations to enable netting off (15% of sites/time were exempt); so some cameras weren't affected by that policy, and others simply may not have qualified for cost recovery.

        This scheme ended in April 07. Regulations such as signage are now defunct - all cameras can be hidden and made inconspicuous, without consequence.

        There are plenty of hidden speed traps:

        http://www.speedcam.co.uk/game.htm

        (Don’t forget you’re at an advantage because you know there’s a cam in each photo)

        Yes, cameras gather evidence of just 1 technical infringement (folks who do +10mph on a clear motorway or dual carriageway deserve to lose 25% of their entitlement for 3 years?)which determined criminals easily evade anyway. Yes, traffic patrols detect and immediately halt all manner of anti-social, careless, dangerous, impaired driving – and they prevent circumvention of justice.

        There is only so much budget to go around, and our reliance on cameras has seen traffic patrols substantially reduce – cameras have replaced tools that were far more effective.

        Speed cameras are not effective. It has been long proven and accepted that cameras effectiveness is substantially overstated thanks to ‘Regression to the Mean’. The 40-70% KSI reduction claims you hear from the camera partnerships are greatly misleading; at best the figure for camera effectiveness is 10% (table H7, Four Year Evaluation Report), but even that’s not accounting for other factors such as ‘Bias on Selection’ (other safety measures installed camera site, which make the camera appear more effective than it actually is), and traffic displacement. Camera partnership folks don’t tell you that, they like you to hear that mystical 40-70% figure.

        Some of the people who run RSS used to be camera partnership managers – go figure!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          RTM again?

          I'm so bored with people simply quoting "regression to mean" as a reason why speed cameras don't work. It's generally a very lazy misuse of statistics. Those who use it either don't have the figures to back up their claims or come up with a couple of sites which they claim prove this. The problem is that often the statistics quoted so no evidence of RTM. One magazine article quoted a site with low-ish KSI for two years, then high for one year, then low again the fourth year. They omitted to mention the high KSI for the three years previous to the figures they quoted.

          I can show you stats for camera sites where KSI incidents were consistently high for five years and dropped after cameras were installed. Where is your RTM now?

          Lies damned lies and RTM.

          Speed cameras are not the answer. But nor are they the evil things that many sheep believe them to be. How do you identify these sheep? They always quote the same facts and figures and haven't bothered reading up on easilly available data themselves.

          1. Steve 6

            Yes, RTM again, and again, and again....

            I summarise from appendix H of the Four Year Evaluation Report, the one that was based on a three year study, the most comprehensive RTTM study of its kind - ever!

            From the 216 urban speed cameras sites showing an AVERAGE 55% drop of KSI , only 10% of that (19% of that portion) is a genuine KSI reduction.

            Now I'm sure you could show one or two sites where KSIs were consistently high beforehand (that’s what statistical distributions are all about), but the inescapable fact is over the whole system, the net benefit is a small fraction of what is claimed. It also follows there are some camera sites that suffer a far worse RTM effect.

            Indeed initial work demonstrated that rural cameras suffered from stronger rates of RTM than these urban ones, but no quantitive work was ever done on those!

            But there’s more.

            I did also allude to ‘bias on selection’ (an effect independent of RTM), which could explain how ‘KSI incidents were consistently high for five years and dropped after cameras were installed’ even when installing generally ineffective/dangerous measures like cameras. All you need do is introduce a genuine safety measure at a camera site, which isn’t unreasonable considering the cameras analysed for RTM were URBAN ones (camera sites can cover stretches of road up to 5km in length).

            A TRL analysis of various safety measures showed that treatments like pedestrian crossings/barriers, junction re-layout and resurfacing, lighting, etc, are many times more effective than cameras. So any camera site having one of these other treatments would also fit what you described; but still, all credit will always go to the “camera site” – as it always has done.

            Why am I a ‘sheep’ when I am leading the arguments with something new?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Weazel Words?

    How can such allegations be "inaccurate"?

    Right or wrong, founded or unfounded --- but *inaccurate*?

  8. JMB

    ACPO plc

    Doesn't "not for profit" just mean that all the millions earned by ACPO plc's subsidiary companies is used up on higher salaries, bonuses and plusher offices for the senior employees of the organisations.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RSS Scam

    RSS Ltd. is a sham company run by ACPO top brass. Basically they profit from their public sector policies, and act like a protection racket to Local Authorities. It's a scam and a sham and must be stopped. When the establishment is so crooked and corrupt, the people ask Why should I bother?

  10. Stratman

    title

    "The picture of Jimmy Carr’s vehicle related to a speeding offence for which he was sentenced on 12 January, 2010."

    That's the first time I've laughed at anything to do with Jimmy Carr.

  11. JMB

    Photographs

    Today's newspapers have reports of some police officers playing on a zip wire when they should have been investigating a burglary.

    A member of the public took pictures of them and was ordered to delete his pictures by one of the police officers. So much for it not being illegal to take photographs and the police having no right to tell people to delete pictures in their camera.

  12. Lynnzer

    RSS without principles

    RSS is a non profit making company alright. It must spend everything it gets then so the salaries and pensions and other benefits, perhaps health insurance, company cars etc all come out of the "profits".

    As they are also up to their necks in making stands in court as expert witnesses against anyone who dares to challenge a speeding ticket they make substantial costs awards from this activity too. The whole organisation stinks as there is a requirement in law for an expert witness to be independent and unbiased. Since the company is in partnership with many SCP's and receive massive amounts of money from this cosy little deal, there can be no semblance of impartiality, or independence. They even have a CPS lawyer acting within the company who they claim they pay for. This is due to the fact that the lawyer is paid for by the CPS but his wages are reimbursed by RSS.

    When challenging a speeding ticket, they tell one thing in expert witness statements then in court tell exactly the opposite when they realise they have given evidence which is useful to the defence. This is another breach of the rules for expert witnesses and such a case has been challenged in the ECHR where it found that a change in opinion from an expert witness report to the spoken testimony denies the accused a proper defence. Of course this is of little concern to RSS as they are doing their buddies in SC{P's a big favour.

    In fact speaking of inedependence, SCP's are formed with many organisations such as the CPS, Local Authority, and even Her Majesty's Court Service. If a partnership exists between a SCP and RSS then even the independence of the court is brought into question.

    It's about time this organisation is shut down or at the very least challenged on it's independence at the highest level in it's activities of expert witness providers.

    1. JMB

      RSS

      I read a story recently of someone in Canada who used to watch their speed camera vans parking near his home booking people at the bottom of a long hill. He went out one day and rattled some keys in line with the speed gun, the plod did not like this and booked him when he refused to stop. They took him to court and it was only when they got to court that they realised they would to admit that the speed camera could give false readings if they were going to continue with the prosecution so dropped charges.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Hearsau

        Any evidence to support this story?

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