Community Wardens and Traffic Officers

[mickthenick]

Has anyone else noticed that the government have given more and more powers to councils and the Highways Agency.  The Community Wardens will end up being like the Sherrifs Dept in the USA and the HATO's will end up as the Highway Patrol....They seem to be introducing the changes by stealth, why don't they just tell us about it and do it 'up front' ?? 

[County Mounty]

Yep, you dont want to go there.  The US has the "county Sheriff dept", the "city police dept" and the "highway patrol". 

Its a job to know who is kicking you.

  What a waste of resourses when they all show up up a scene.

  Or on the other hand none show up at traffic accidents because they cant figure out if you are on a county road a city road or a state highway

 

[enforce-logic forum administrator]

It is definitely the way things are going in the UK, just a shame the government are not upfront about it.  They will need to give some powers to these people at some stage, if they dress them up like police officers and ask them to enforce laws and rules, at the end of the day they are law enforcement officers and should have the same protective equipment that the police have, and without the powers they are a total waste of time, so they should hurry up and decide what they want of them before someone gets hurt.  At the end of the day the public will see them as law officials, and when people are drunk they often end up lashing out etc.

[spud]

I think they need some powers, who will ever take them seriously otherwise, maybe they should just make them all police officers.

[Fed]

If they get powers they would be even more of a nightmare than they already are. Just make PCSO's apply to be police officers and then we would have more on te streets and the useless ones wouldnt get a job!

[enforce-logic forum administrator]

The government will never do that, that would be admitting they were wrong to bring them in in the first place.  We will probably just give them more powers (as without them they have a difficult job) and police officers will move towards being more specialist (and in the future) armed law enforcement officers, dealing with the more serious crime.  All the domestic stuff will be dealt with by the wardens, a bit like the Sherrifs in the USA.  The HATO's will end up our Highwat Patrol, we are jsut following America as we always do 15-20 years later.  Look at the equipment, sirens, protective vests etc etc

[FN21]

Gotta love Jeremy Clarkson, he calls the Highways Agency "Traffic Wombles" as all he ever sees them doing is shutting the motorway to pick up rubbish! 

[jimbob]

You don't want to be giving powers to PCSO's, as I keep saying, crims have their rights, we can't make it too easy to catch them, whatever would happen next, people would end up getting convicted and we would have to spend loads of money re-locating them when they were released from prison, no don't help the detection and prevention of crime too much.....that would be going too far

[Litew8]

Personally I think the concept of penal colonies should be brought back... that way the government would be able to solve three problems in one fell swoop:

By sending scroats to a colony we could solve:

1) The overcrowding problem in our prisons... reserving them for all the other dregs of society

2) The burden on social services (fewer people scrounging of the state and from our tax contributions)

3) The housing problem - less scroats mean fewer houses required leading to more houses on the open market thus reducing house prices (if law of supply and demand hold true in absence of all other information/influencing factors), finally I'd be able to get my foot on the housing-ladder...

Here's to dreaming...

L.

[FN21]

Anything draconian and not compliant with human rights get's my vote!!

[Litew8]

I see you and I will get along just fine