Police union tells major parties it wants more traffic police on SA roads

THE state’s police union wants more dedicated traffic police on the roads to help reduce fatality and serious injury crashes.

• Speed cameras taking useless photos of dodgy motorists
• Police ditching the fines, warning drivers instead

THE state’s police union wants more dedicated traffic police on the roads to help reduce fatality and serious injury crashes.

In a pre-election letter to all political parties and independents, the union is seeking commitments from each to address this and a range of other measures relevant to police and public wellbeing.

In the letter, obtained by The Advertiser, PASA president Mark Carroll says repeated reviews of traffic policing structures had reduced specialist traffic resources.

“The overall number of traffic specialists has fallen over the last decade while the challenge of the road toll continues to grow,’’ Mr Carroll states.

He requests a commitment from the next government “to work with SAPOL to continuously monitor, and adjust upward when necessary, by increasing the 4713 FTE of SAPOL, the number of police allocated to traffic policing.....’’

The letter also seeks commitments on other issues including maintaining existing commitments on police numbers, the current enterprise bargaining system and other industrial benchmarks.

It also seeks commitments rejecting any privatisation and civilianisation of policing operations and funding of $2 million over four years for new mental health programs for police officers.

Over the past decade, traffic policing had been reviewed on several occasions, resulting in less dedicated motorcycle and traffic patrols in the city.

Mr Carroll said PASA had supported SAPOL’s move to reallocate some traffic resources to country regions, but not at the expense of traffic policing in the metropolitan area “which was what happened.’’

“We stopped the motorcycle police from being completely gutted because of their value as a deterrent,’’ he said.

“The mantra that traffic policing is everyone’s responsibility is true, but it is not everyone’s priority. We know that people’s behaviour on the roads is markedly changed when there is high visibility policing. “We say dedicated traffic resources — whether they be traffic police in sedans or motorcycles — will have a greater immediate impact on driver behaviour than either a fixed or mobile camera.’’

Mr Carroll said he was not critical of SAPOL’s efforts to reduce the road toll, but PASA did not believe specialist traffic policing resources could be reduced and success achieved in relation to that aim.

“The cost of serious injury and fatal crashes to the community, to individuals, to families is enormous,’’ he said.

Mr Carroll also reiterates that PASA will not support any proposed shoot-to-kill terror legislation unless appropriate safeguards for police are enshrined. The Opposition and the Government have committed to legislation giving frontline police officers the power to shoot terrorists, but the safeguards for individual officers have not yet been revealed.

“The civil and criminal immunities must be sufficient to protect police or we will not support the legislation,’’ Mr Carroll said.

He said recent argument in the Coroner’s Court highlighted PASA’s concerns and “clearly indicated this is a live issue for every police officer’’.

A fortnight ago, lawyers acting for police commissioner Grant Steven’s and deputy state coroner Anthony Schapel clashed over SAPOL’s desire to keep some information, including police officer’s identities secret, in the inquest into the suicide death of criminal Rodney Clavell.