Information related to the police.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that most people see a traffic cop as someone who writes speeding tickets and hangs around Tim Hortons. This is a very narrow view of the job, but I did not realize just how narrow it was until I participated in a project to define my job as a front line RCMP traffic constable.
Have you witnessed dangerous, aggressive or careless driving and wondered whether reporting it to police would accomplish anything? The answer is yes, but the success of your complaint depends largely on the information you can provide and how involved you are willing to become in the investigation.
Question: Friends of my parents were returning from Vancouver to Kelowna after a hockey tournament when they were stopped for speeding. They were travelling at 124 km/h in an 80 km/h zone—44 km/h over the posted speed limit.
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.”