"CENSUS" Police Checkpoints?
- Thread starter sufilala
- Start date
What I don't understand is why TFL are allowed to use the police to stop people, essentially for the purposes of conducting surveys.
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
Yes. The way they worked it here was to have the officers running the checkpoint directing traffic into lanes to speak to the census taker. You could refuse that, then drive-on, but as you began to leave the checkpoint, there was another set of officers waiting to direct you into another lane where the police/agencies were waiting to administer their own set of checks - Which you could not refuse.
Folk generally put up with it but the 2-tier system did hack-off a lot of people IMO.
Kanda
Diving wanker
Details????
It's the kind of choice muggers give you. Give me the money or I'll stab you.
citydreams
on the road again
Instead of allocating road side interview to points along a network, the idea is to have a number of watertight areas, say 1/4 mile squared, where all traffic in and out will have to go past a census spot.
In essence there will be around 100 enclosures over a period of three to four years covering the whole of London. These sites are pre-determined to maximise the amount of information based on a range socio-demographics.
These are to assist the modellers in determining the number of short-distance trips that are not picked up by the 'main-road' census points.
And the cost to the tax-payer? A bargain at about £4,000,000
1. A census point is NOT a police operation. It is administered by, and for, the traffic authorities. Uniformed police officers are ONLY there to stop vehicles for the census staff (as they have no power to do so).
2. It is an offence to fail to stop for a census point when directed to do so by a police officer in uniform.
3. There is no compulsion to provide any information to the census staff. It is not an offence to fail to cooperate once you have stopped.
4. Censuses have been around for donkeys years.
5. It is extremely unusual for the police to operate their own road check simultaneously with a census point (though if they note any apparent offences whilst processing vehicles for the census - e.g. no tax, dangerous condition, driver appears drunk (and now ANPR indicating the vehicle to be of interest for some reason - they never used to routinely check the police computer for all vehicle numbers but ANPR technology now makes that possible) they will deal with those matters. If there was evidence that officers were ONLY stopping vehicles which failed to coopperate with the census and ONLY doing so on that basis, there would be grounds for complaint.
6. The police can conduct a road check looking for suspects or witnesses under the powers given by s.4 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 - they must be authorised by a senior officer on specific grounds.
7. The police can stop any vehicle at any time on a road, without any reason whatsoever to check driver and vehicle documentation. They can do this in an individual way or as a structured operation with numerous officers.
8. The police can stop and search a vehicle under s.1 PACE at any time if they have reasonable grounds to suspect possession of unlawful items (i.e. just like a stop and search of a person). Again they can do this individually or as a structured operation whereby they observe all traffic passing and stop and search any vehicle that gives them reasonable grounds.
9. s.163 Road Traffic Act 1988 makes it an offence for a driver of a motor vehicle (or rider of a pedal cycle) to fail to stop for a constable in uniform when directed to do so for any reason whatsoever.
10. The police sometimes assist other agencies (e.g. HMRC looking for red diesel; DVLA re-untaxed vehicles; Vehicle Inspectorate re-condition of HGVs/coaches, etc.) in stopping vehicles for the staff of the other agencies to examine. In these cases it is far more common for it to be joint operation with police simultaneously checking things of interest to them.
2. It is an offence to fail to stop for a census point when directed to do so by a police officer in uniform.
3. There is no compulsion to provide any information to the census staff. It is not an offence to fail to cooperate once you have stopped.
4. Censuses have been around for donkeys years.
5. It is extremely unusual for the police to operate their own road check simultaneously with a census point (though if they note any apparent offences whilst processing vehicles for the census - e.g. no tax, dangerous condition, driver appears drunk (and now ANPR indicating the vehicle to be of interest for some reason - they never used to routinely check the police computer for all vehicle numbers but ANPR technology now makes that possible) they will deal with those matters. If there was evidence that officers were ONLY stopping vehicles which failed to coopperate with the census and ONLY doing so on that basis, there would be grounds for complaint.
6. The police can conduct a road check looking for suspects or witnesses under the powers given by s.4 Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 - they must be authorised by a senior officer on specific grounds.
7. The police can stop any vehicle at any time on a road, without any reason whatsoever to check driver and vehicle documentation. They can do this in an individual way or as a structured operation with numerous officers.
8. The police can stop and search a vehicle under s.1 PACE at any time if they have reasonable grounds to suspect possession of unlawful items (i.e. just like a stop and search of a person). Again they can do this individually or as a structured operation whereby they observe all traffic passing and stop and search any vehicle that gives them reasonable grounds.
9. s.163 Road Traffic Act 1988 makes it an offence for a driver of a motor vehicle (or rider of a pedal cycle) to fail to stop for a constable in uniform when directed to do so for any reason whatsoever.
10. The police sometimes assist other agencies (e.g. HMRC looking for red diesel; DVLA re-untaxed vehicles; Vehicle Inspectorate re-condition of HGVs/coaches, etc.) in stopping vehicles for the staff of the other agencies to examine. In these cases it is far more common for it to be joint operation with police simultaneously checking things of interest to them.
Maggot
The Cake of Liberty
What's ANPR?
Automatic number plate recording technology. It's linked to CCTV cameras and automatically reads number plates and instantly checks the database it is linked to (in this case the Police National Computer), sounding an alarm if it has any interest reports (stolen, involved in crime, no tax ...) on it. It can do dozens in the time it used to take for an officer to radio the details to the station and for an operator to carry out a manual check on the computer, read the results and radio back.
Bascially it now allows every number plate passing through a road check to be screened, flagging up those of interest to be stopped. In the olden days it tended to be the other way round - checks were only done on cars which had already attracted attention for some reason and been stopped.
