Highway Bloody Robbery
From today's Herald on Sunday
A highway police unit was sent out with orders to "get our ticket count up" in what makes a mockery of Government assurances that motorists are not targeted in a quota system.
A June 21 job sheet for police officers in the Central North Island area tells officers to set up road blocks so they can target high volumes of traffic to finish "top group" in their district before the end of the financial year.
Although police have argued for years that motorists were not subject to a quota, the memo was last night seized upon by opposition politicians to attack the Government's credibility.
Superintendent Mark Lammas, the boss of the unnamed officer who wrote the memo, said there was no quota but that officers did have "productivity targets" to meet.
"We do measure productivity by group and by individual. I have guidelines to productivity."
National's law and order spokesman Simon Power said: "The Government have been telling the public targets do not exist, that this is not a revenue-gathering exercise - but that is obviously not the case."
Act leader Rodney Hide said it made the police look like "just another branch of Inland Revenue". "This just proves what [Prime Minister] Helen Clark and the police have strenuously denied for years - that highway patrols are about government revenue gathering, rather than safer roads
New Zeal What kind of decent young man or woman, would want to join the NZ police to become a tax collector on wheels? No wonder the police are losing so many good staff.
A highway police unit was sent out with orders to "get our ticket count up" in what makes a mockery of Government assurances that motorists are not targeted in a quota system.
A June 21 job sheet for police officers in the Central North Island area tells officers to set up road blocks so they can target high volumes of traffic to finish "top group" in their district before the end of the financial year.
Although police have argued for years that motorists were not subject to a quota, the memo was last night seized upon by opposition politicians to attack the Government's credibility.
Superintendent Mark Lammas, the boss of the unnamed officer who wrote the memo, said there was no quota but that officers did have "productivity targets" to meet.
"We do measure productivity by group and by individual. I have guidelines to productivity."
National's law and order spokesman Simon Power said: "The Government have been telling the public targets do not exist, that this is not a revenue-gathering exercise - but that is obviously not the case."
Act leader Rodney Hide said it made the police look like "just another branch of Inland Revenue". "This just proves what [Prime Minister] Helen Clark and the police have strenuously denied for years - that highway patrols are about government revenue gathering, rather than safer roads
New Zeal What kind of decent young man or woman, would want to join the NZ police to become a tax collector on wheels? No wonder the police are losing so many good staff.
posted by Trevor Loudon at
7/02/2006 04:10:00 PM
1 Comments:
I have absolutly no doubt that the Cops have a speeding ticket quota.
My evidence?, the sight of traffic cops staking out each end of a passing lane in North Otago.
I blame the politcisation of the Police myself.
EXOCET
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