Police

Question: I'm just wondering if the computers inside police cars have access to all of ICBC's driving records and database? What if you have say three tickets in the last five years, but you have beaten two of them in traffic court. How would that show up on the police officer's computer?

When you are upset enough about the way someone is driving and you call the police to make a complaint about it, the last thing that you expect to happen is to be discouraged by the complaint taker. Worse still, when you insist and get to speak with a constable they tell you that there is nothing to be done as well.

Question: If a person is not satisfied with the response of the local police to a driving complaint, what is the next step? I know for a fact my wife and I had the offending vehicle, driver's description and B.C. license number correct.

In British Columbia, the authority of a peace officer during a traffic stop is broad, grounded in both provincial safety statutes and federal criminal law. While the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects against arbitrary detention, the courts have consistently ruled that the state's interest in road safety justifies certain "reasonable limits" on those rights.

I was working traffic enforcement and had stopped a speeding driver. When I was serving a copy of the speeding ticket to her I noticed a pickup truck pull in behind my police vehicle. When the ticket recipient pulled away the driver got out and approached me. "You can't write speeding tickets here" he stated.

Got your quota yet? It was a jab that I heard often at the roadside and some days I really wanted to respond to it. "Yes, thank you. This ticket means I get a new toaster!" Somehow I don't think the driver would have seen any humour in it.

BC's Director of Police Services has created standards aimed at promoting unbiased policing. Sub-section 6.2 of the standards deals with police stops, a term "intended to refer to any interaction between a police officer and a person that is more than a casual conversation and which impedes the person’s movement.”

Question: When driving I noticed a police car with flashing lights following the vehicle that was following me. I pulled over - the car behind me went by followed by the police vehicle - who put on his siren on a little ways up the street. Was I right by pulling over for flashing lights. My husband says I should have kept driving until the police used the siren.... who is right?

When a vehicle is in yaw it is rotating around a vertical axis through it's centre of mass. The long, curved yaw marks left by the tires on the pavement were characteristic of this motion. If they were striated and of constantly diminishing radius they were of great interest for collision reconstruction because the vehicle's speed could be determined from them.

First off, no disrespect to the police. I have a problem when day in and day out the police are pulling people over for traffic violations and running road blocks when there is so much crime going on in B.C cities and towns.