Who polices the police is a question I often get asked. Patrol cars themselves often break the law by speeding beyond the speed limits I was told. So I did some checking, and found nationally 685 police cars were caught speeding by police speed cameras last year 2007. Of those 435 were waived for
legitimate police work. Leaving 250 without a valid reason. There are no statistics for police being caught speeding by other patrol cars. Which would accrue demerit points. This in mind I decided to do my own local survey. Over the last month I followed ten police patrol cars at different times from their Powderham depot. Seven of which exceeded the 50k speed limit before they even reached the Liardet St traffic lights only 600 meters away, without any valid reason that could be seen. Emergancy flashing lights etc for doing so. This astonished me, If they were caught speeding like this only once a month for six months they would all loose their licence through demerit points. So who polices the police, it seems know one other than themselves. All we can do as civilians is report them to the NZ police with their reregistration number time and place. But without proof of speed of a police speed camera chances of a prosecution are zero. I still recommend that as civilians we do report police patrol cars speeding unnecessarily beyond the speed limits. In the hope that someone will take note. As the last thing we need is police officers who enforce the laws breaking the laws they are entrusted to enforce.
Rusty Kane NP. NZ.
