The number of traffic police officers is plummeting alongside the number of roadside breath tests. As Christmas approaches and people are more tempted to drink and drive could the decline in numbers contribute to deaths on the road? Tina Orr-Munro reports
Christmas is here once again, but there will be little festive cheer for the Gonzales family in Cambridgeshire. December 25th 2004 is the first anniversary of their daughter’s death. A year ago, 18-year-old Amy Gonzales and her boyfriend, Paul Ray, were mowed down by a car travelling at 54 mph in a 30 mph limit. Craig Smith, the twenty-two-year-old driver, from Eaton Socon, Cambs, pleaded guilty in April to causing death by dangerous driving and to driving with excess alcohol. Amy and Paul were rushed to hospital. Paul recovered, but four weeks later Amy lost her fight for life. Her killer was sentenced to six years and given a 15-year driving ban, which was later reduced to four years, and a seven-year ban.
Deaths through drink driving are on the increase. Casualties have risen by about a third over the past decade. More than 500 people were killed by a drink driver in 2003. One in six road deaths are caused by people under the influence of alcohol. And, according to pressure groups, it is getting worse, especially among the young. In 1991, 11 per cent of drivers under 20, who were killed in car crashes, were over the drink drive limit. By 2003, this figure had doubled. In a survey of 1000 young people recently conducted by Brake, the road safety pressure group, a quarter of young people admitted to drink driving. More than one in ten of those had drunk three to five pints of beer or even more before getting behind the wheel of their car. Nearly half of the drink drivers believed alcohol had ‘not affected their driving’.
Traffic Police Cuts
As casualties have increased, the number of traffic police officers has dwindled alarmingly as traffic units are constantly plundered to shore up other areas of policing. In just one year, their number fell by 12 per cent, from 6,793 in 1999/2000 to 6,276 in 2001/2. Not surprisingly this has had serious knock-on effects, in particular, breath testing declined by a quarter from 825,000 to 624,000 in the three years from 1998. In short, the statistics point to a worrying conclusion. The police have reclaimed the streets, only to relinquish control of the highways. The rise in the drink drive death toll, coupled with a prolonged decline in the number of dedicated traffic officers, is no coincidence, says the Federation. It says that alarming as the drink-drive accident rates are, they simply reflect the lack of importance that is attached to roads policing by the Government. In fact, roads policing has been shunted so far down the list of policing priorities that it barely gets a mention in the Government’s national policing plan and is summed up in just two paragraphs.
The first of these is a vague reference that forces are expected to play a full role in the Government’s road safety strategy ‘in particular, that forces will continue to ensure they are actively engaged in reducing death and serious injury on our roads’. The second describes the Government’s intention to transfer network management issues to uniformed Highway’s Agency staff in liveried vehicles. This, says Jan Berry, chairman of the Federation, is a dangerous course of action. ‘The Government and chief officers are refusing to learn the lessons of the importance of road policing despite the 22 per cent increase in crimes relating to deaths on the road,’ says Mrs Berry.
Rod Dalley, vice-chairman of the Federation, says he is at a loss to understand why something as vital as road policing fails to merit greater attention in the policing plan. The fall in breath testing is cause for concern, but it is just one of many areas suffering as traffic officers continue to decline. ‘Their presence makes the difference between whether or not a person decides to drink and drive. But that deterrent factor is very difficult to measure. Chiefs have finite resources. Traffic units are expensive. They can achieve apparently better results by putting their resources into other areas. ‘But it must be remembered that road safety is a small part of a much bigger picture. The other part is having skilled officers patrolling on the road who detect crime, provide public reassurance and educate motorists by example and by using their discretion. They arrest offenders, they prevent collisions and enforce legislation among many other duties. Their value may be difficult to quantify, but that shouldn’t detract from their importance.’
Missed Opportunities
Fewer traffic officers have already impacted adversely on the drink drive rates, but inevitably all forms of criminality will prosper from roads that are devoid of police officers. Mr Dalley says taking officers off the road is a missed opportunity. ‘The bottom-line is we are a transient society and are much more likely to travel 10 miles for a night out, but also to commit crime. Criminals use cars too and they are at their most vulnerable travelling from a crime scene with stolen property in their car. Experienced traffic officers are adept at identifying criminals. They are among the best thief takers I have ever come across. Take them away and you are giving criminals a free rein.’ He added: ‘It won’t be long before the roads become corridors of crime linking towns, as travelling criminals realise that community constables have no road patrol vehicles to deter them or stop them getting away.’
The Federation is not alone in their concerns. At the Federation conference in May, the RAC called for 15 per cent of all officers across the country to be put on traffic duties to ensure the roads are safe. Ed King, executive director of the RAC Foundation, said: ‘The fall in the numbers of traffic police is actually enabling hardcore criminals to escape detection.’ He reminded the conference that the Yorkshire Ripper was caught by traffic officers and that they were not just about traffic, but also about tackling mainstream crime.
Unacceptable Decline
An influential Transport Committee report published in the autumn also questioned the wisdom of the Government’s failure to identify roads policing as a priority. It backed Federation concerns that increasing casualties are linked to a corresponding decline in traffic policing which it called ‘unacceptable.’ “Reductions in traffic law enforcement by the police appear to be linked to the number of road casualties. Four times as many people die on the roads each year as are victims of homicide. Better enforcement would save lives,” the report stated. “The evidence presented during our inquiry supports Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary’s suggestion that “most forces saw road policing as a peripheral task, often seen by management as a repository of vehicles and officers to be redirected to ‘more important work’,” according to the report.
The decline in the number of breath tests was also a cause for concern among committee members who were ‘extremely disturbed’ by the decline of the test. In the same way that patrolling the streets has increasingly become a civilian function, the Government has also plans to civilianise road patrols in the form of Highways Agency Traffic Officers. However, the Transport Committee failed to share the Government’s current enthusiasm for civilianising police roles. “We remain concerned that the transfer of incident management responsibilities to non police traffic officers will reduce the police presence on the strategic road network. “We also fear that too much priority will be given to minimising the disruption accidents cause other motorists, and too little to proper investigation of offences which may have been committed,” the document states. In conclusion, the Transport Committee said the action needed was clear. “Roads policing must be a priority of the National Policing Plan. Individual forces are failing to implement ACPO policies; the Home Secretary should use the powers to set performance targets and codes of practice contained in the Police Act 1996. “The Department of Transport has brought forward changes to road safety law, but roads policing is still not part of the core duty of the police and the transfer of responsibility for the strategic road network from the police to the Highways Agency effectively accepts it will never be. “This is fundamentally misguided; not only is enforcement the key to compliance with traffic laws, the evidence shows that dealing with traffic offences helps solve other, non-traffic related crimes. “In spite of the impression given by much of the media, the driver who regularly commits traffic offences is not likely to be a hard done by motorist, but a crook.”
The Federation echoes the concerns of the RAC, pressure groups and the Transport Committee. Mrs Berry says the committee was ‘absolutely right’ to highlight the need for effective, fully resourced road policing officers. ‘The Federation completely agrees that handing over this function to the Highways Agency will only exacerbate the problems. Speed cameras and CCTV are not the total solution either, as they cannot always detect these offences and prove useless without police support to act if a crime is witnessed. ‘The Federation is calling for an urgent review of roads policing and a change in priorities to recognise the benefits on having fully-trained road policing officers on patrol.’
How the Government plans to responds these concerns and demands from all quarters and give roads policing more credence remains to be seen, but more traffic officers could mean more lives saved and fewer families like the Gonzales would not be facing their first Christmas without their beloved daughter, Amy.
From:
http://www.polfed.org/1204fatal_abstraction.pdf
My emphasis .