Roads policing is a necessity and not a luxury was one of the key messages of the opening speech at the Police Federation’s annual Roads Policing Conference yesterday (Tuesday 28 January) by West Mercia Chief Constable Anthony Bangham, the roads policing lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).
Among the delegates from across England and Wales at the conference, which is being held over two days in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, was Mick Smith from Cambridgeshire Police Federation.
“Mr Bangham said RPU should be included as part of the 20,000 officer uplift over the coming years. Five people a day die on the roads in the UK, twice as many as those lost to homicide, yet it is not seen or reported the same. The message needs to be put across that road death is just as unacceptable as homicide death. Concerns were raised that this message was not getting across partly because two of the ‘fatal 4’ offences that contribute the most to road deaths do not have strong penalties, for example, seatbelts – fine only, and speeding – fine and points,” Mick explained.
“The message he was keen to get across was that roads policing should be a core responsibility – ‘if you stop cars you will catch criminals’.”
Kit Malthouse, minister for policing, did not attend the conference but sent a very short video message mentioning the Home Office-led roads policing review, the update on police driver legislation and confirmation of the introduction of a Police Covenant similar to that afforded the armed forces a few years ago.
The test in law for police drivers accused of driving offences, such as dangerous/careless driving, will, under the new legislation within the Police Powers and Protections Bill, be against similarly trained colleagues rather than against Joe Public, thus bringing police driver training and experience as a defence in law to driving offences that are currently not offered.
Paul Farley from the Motor Insurers’ Bureau gave an insight into the bureau’s work explaining that one in six fatalities on the roads involved uninsured drivers with 137,410 uninsured vehicles seized in 2019, one every four minutes. A MetPol study shows a 67 per cent correlation between uninsured driving and crime.
This theme was picked up in a presentation on Operation Tutelage, the ANPR-led operation sending letters to owners of cars without insurance ‘encouraging’ them to get insurance. An initial study of uninsured cars caught on ANPR whose owners were sent a letter revealed 80 per cent went on to obtain insurance. This allows police to target the ‘20 per cent’ who do not get insurance, which will often reveal more than just no insurance offences.
Frances Senior, national NPCC capability manager, Forensic Collision Investigation Network, spoke about the drive to introduce forensic accreditation for collision investigation which has to be in place for October 2022.
Mick explained: “This is to define, develop and implement quality standards nationally to ISO level. The regulator will have the power to force constabularies to cease collision investigation activity should the accreditation not be introduced by that force. Once introduced, should a collision investigator not have the accreditation then they will have to include this in any statement, thus reducing any impact in court.”
Mick explained: “This is to define, develop and implement quality standards nationally to ISO level. The regulator will have the power to force constabularies to cease collision investigation activity should the accreditation not be introduced by that force. Once introduced, should a collision investigator not have the accreditation then they will have to include this in any statement, thus reducing any impact in court.”
They now have 12 aircraft, 20 pilots and 24/7 coverage (not on call-out but available real time) whereby pilots actually have the drones with them on their day to day business. RPU has two pilots per shift, allowing fast response to most of the county. They are used in many areas, such as major incident, live feed, initial attendance at scenes, crowd monitoring, firearms deployment/warrants, searching remote areas, anti-social driving.
“Drones are not a replacement for NPAS but a very good substitute where the NPAS is not readily available or not available at all,” said Mick, “Surely, there is something all forces should be looking to expand.”
The panel discussion considered the role of a roads policing officer. DCC Terry Woods, the NPCC lead for police driver training, believes we have a golden opportunity with the announced uplift in officers to uplift the role and profile of roads policing officers.
Many panel members were keen to see accreditation of some sort for roads policing officers, such as CID have with the Professionalising Investigation Process training.
Simon Hill from the national Police Federation was keen to stress he did not feel the dual role of RPU (eg firearms/RPU combined roles) was a good idea as often the roads policing aspect will always take the back seat to other roles. A recent study showed that when the role of RPU was combined, the number of tickets issued plummeted.
Mick commented: “There were some interesting comments from Dr Helen Wells (Keele University) around single-crewing. Studies show when people try to do more than one thing at once their cognitive abilities are affected and, as such each, task is not done as well.
“For example, when using a phone when driving, it is not the holding of the phone that is the issue, it is the communication with the other party, the human brain will visualise the other party while doing so and this is what causes the issues with road safety as attention is taken away from driving.
‘This is the same as when an officer is single-crewed as they are multi-tasking with driving, listening or using the radio or ANPR, looking for offences and offenders and so on, each task is not done to the best of the officer’s ability, so there is obviously a safety issue.”
The day’s sessions ended with an input from DCC Woods. Newly into role, he believes our driver training is the best in the world, but can still be made better so officers have the greatest protection when driving when considering the majority of miles driven will be on blue light response.
In the evening, officers attended the Roads Policing Awards ceremony, the highlight of which was a very emotional speech by Lissie Harper, wife of the late PC Andrew Harper who was killed on duty in Thames Valley in August last year. She collected a posthumous Roads Policing Award presented by national Federation chair John Apter.
“Lissie got three standing ovations, a timely reminder of the Blue Family that will be there for any officer or their family at time of need,” Mick said.