Road traffic policing levels – the debate continues

Senior police officers from across the UK are to debate the future of road policing at a seminar to be hosted by Richard Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales Police and ACPO’s spokesman on road policing (Local Transport Today, 17 June).

"I am expecting a small rejuvenation in road policing - an injection of enthusiasm into it, and significantly better organisation of it," Richard Brunstrom said. "We have to get real live cops out visibly in public because that’s what the public is saying it wants."

RSO Roy Buchanan's views about traffic policing, published here last week, have received support from other road safety professionals.

"As a traffic officer for 20 years with Avon & Somerset Police I and my colleagues were actively engaged in policing roads throughout the area," says Alan Hale, senior RSO with South Gloucestershire. "While our prosecution rate for a wide variety of traffic offences was high, it was matched by our success in detecting other crimes - good quality arrests, at a level that far exceeded that achieved by CID.

"During the 70s and 80s I was Police Federation representative for 250 constables policing roads from Gloucestershire in the north to Devon and Dorset in the south, from the Bristol Channel in the west to Wiltshire in the east," Alan Hale adds. "My understanding is that this enormous land mass is now policed by 140 traffic officers. If you spread that over nights, lates and earlies, plus rest days, training, annual leave and sickness you have just 35 officers (at the very best) covering that area.

"Enforcement is part of a package of measures to improve road safety - but RSOs are almost without support from the police service," he concluded.

This last point was also picked up by Vince Morley, senior RSO for the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. "I am a former Metropolitan Police 'Trafpol' and deplore the constant cutting of traffic division officers," he says. "Road safety and casualty reduction need to be targeted through education (training and publicity), engineering - and enforcement."