VicCop
Member
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2006
- Messages
- 369
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- 10
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- Members Ride
- 2011 Commodore SV6 SII
I have to make it clear to everyone that I never started this thread. I practically inherited it and it's really taken a dive.
Don't get me wrong, there are some really good points people raise and it's good to see someone taking the initiative in finding out something particularly to do with road safety. It's been beneficial both ways believe it or not. When someone asks a real head scratcher it gets me thinking and even doing some homework to make sense of it so then I come up with an answer not just for the next time I get asked, but if I ever come across the same scenario in the real world.
From the forum point of view, I guess this thread is a good way to stem the flow of legal and police related questions into one point. Rather than having threads pop up all over the place for specific issues.
The problem I keep seeing is the same types of people posting questions where they know the answer themselves, but when I read it translates to "I'm trying to find a way to get out of being penalised for doing the wrong thing". In other cases it reads as a blatant attempt to try and test and discredit those who know what they're on about (i.e. me).
I would advise those people that you have two options.
1. Join the job (or try to) and see what it's like on the other side if you reckon you're up to the task of making it better.
2. Become a lawyer if you think you're so good at interpreting legislation and evidence and arguing a persons innocence in court.
Don't forget that I have dealt with all sorts of 'customers' in a variety of ways. Victims of crime, witnesses, offenders (both crime and traffic), solicitors, barristers, prosecutors, magistrates, right down to the local little old lady who's lived in the area for 50 years and wants to tell me how concerned she is about the kids who walked past her house the other night smashing bottles.
I've had not just offenders but also victims lie to me to extort money from either a partner of some kind or the government or get something else they want through me taking some sort of action on their part. Something that usually gets figured out before anyone puts pen to paper. I've pulled over the less desireable of road users only to hear them tell me how it's my fault that they did the wrong thing.
I've stood up in court, in the witness box, in front of a magistrate in a court room full of a public gallery of 30 people to have a barrister try and discredit my evidence by asking me out of the blue questions to throw me off like "How much time had passed between this and blah blah blah... was it 30 seconds, was it 20 seconds, was it 10? Come on Senior, how long???!!!" all as just a ploy to take their fee from someone to get them out of, again, doing the wrong thing. Then to stand there and maintain my ground to fight through their testing of my evidence to finally have a case found proven (guilty).
I don't know how admin here runs this or what their threshold is, but if I were in that position I would have acted on a few recent posters rather swiftly and imposed some sort of appropriate sanction. I would encourage something like this for any future pointless posts or attempts to bait some sort of ugly response.
Don't get me wrong, there are some really good points people raise and it's good to see someone taking the initiative in finding out something particularly to do with road safety. It's been beneficial both ways believe it or not. When someone asks a real head scratcher it gets me thinking and even doing some homework to make sense of it so then I come up with an answer not just for the next time I get asked, but if I ever come across the same scenario in the real world.
From the forum point of view, I guess this thread is a good way to stem the flow of legal and police related questions into one point. Rather than having threads pop up all over the place for specific issues.
The problem I keep seeing is the same types of people posting questions where they know the answer themselves, but when I read it translates to "I'm trying to find a way to get out of being penalised for doing the wrong thing". In other cases it reads as a blatant attempt to try and test and discredit those who know what they're on about (i.e. me).
I would advise those people that you have two options.
1. Join the job (or try to) and see what it's like on the other side if you reckon you're up to the task of making it better.
2. Become a lawyer if you think you're so good at interpreting legislation and evidence and arguing a persons innocence in court.
Don't forget that I have dealt with all sorts of 'customers' in a variety of ways. Victims of crime, witnesses, offenders (both crime and traffic), solicitors, barristers, prosecutors, magistrates, right down to the local little old lady who's lived in the area for 50 years and wants to tell me how concerned she is about the kids who walked past her house the other night smashing bottles.
I've had not just offenders but also victims lie to me to extort money from either a partner of some kind or the government or get something else they want through me taking some sort of action on their part. Something that usually gets figured out before anyone puts pen to paper. I've pulled over the less desireable of road users only to hear them tell me how it's my fault that they did the wrong thing.
I've stood up in court, in the witness box, in front of a magistrate in a court room full of a public gallery of 30 people to have a barrister try and discredit my evidence by asking me out of the blue questions to throw me off like "How much time had passed between this and blah blah blah... was it 30 seconds, was it 20 seconds, was it 10? Come on Senior, how long???!!!" all as just a ploy to take their fee from someone to get them out of, again, doing the wrong thing. Then to stand there and maintain my ground to fight through their testing of my evidence to finally have a case found proven (guilty).
I don't know how admin here runs this or what their threshold is, but if I were in that position I would have acted on a few recent posters rather swiftly and imposed some sort of appropriate sanction. I would encourage something like this for any future pointless posts or attempts to bait some sort of ugly response.