Shiny bums

[spud]

We always called Traffic officers shiny bums in the 1970's, that's cos they sat on their arse all day in a nice warm ford granda or 3.5 litre rover, and their trosers got all shiny on the rear.
They did know the law of the road though, and they kept their vehicles spotless, blacked tyres the lot.
The motorcylists even painted the lettering on the tyres in gold paint for Royal Ascot Races week.  Haven't seen a police motorcyclist round here for years...

[Deschain]

Some things haven't changed!

I would like to think that Traffic (Road Policing as we are now called) cops in our Force are pretty good all-rounders. We have the most amount of training compared with other cops and are generally speaking the most specialised.

As well as assisting our beat colleagues with general duties, we police the fast road networks, do VIP visits, Ambulance escorts and assist with drug stops etc.

We are multi skilled specialists with generally speaking a vast amount of experience in general policing.

Much more useful than the CID for instance ... LOL

[spud]

It sounds like it used to be in my force, but Traffic became Roads policing and now you hardle ever see a traffic car, and i can't remember the last time I saw a motorcyclist.  They used to parade for Royal ascot every year, loads of them, all tye tyres blacked and the tyre lettering in gold, they looked great. AND....if you wanted any help with any point of law regarding traffic, they ALWAYS knew the answer.  The trouble today is experience is no longer valued.  They think you can go on a course and learn stuff, but you can't get experience just from a course, it just lays the foundation, doing the job is the best way to learn.  Inputting stuff into computers all day is fine, but it goes in and how often does anything good ever come out the other end?  Without good old fashioned experience interrogating the computer that is, trouble is we are far too busy putting it all in to make any sense of gettingtoo much useful stuff out, except bar charts and stats that is, and that is just history in figures and pie charts. 

Bring back the proper shiny bums...........

[FN21]

That's the problem, it's useful inputting intelligence and information on individuals, but the vast majority of what we spend our time recording on computers is purely to do with either allowing the construction of statistics or creating records and audit trails.

[enforce-logic forum administrator]

Yep, it's all shop window stuff, looks great - the politicians can pick their statistics out of the window, shame there's nothing real inside the shop!
I also love 'performance indicators' - the staff that spend most of the shift compiling their performance indicator figures look great when it comes to appraisal time, those who spend too much time actually doing the job and don't get time to sort out their performance indicator stuff get crap appraisals, yet they are spending time actually doing the job instead of playing with the numbers, typical! If you want something done, find a busy person to do it....

[scottishcammy]

There is a lot of talk about the 'roads policing' department being removed enitely. I think there are already some English forces that have, at least, tried getting rid of them?