Ask The Copper

[Troy711]

canberra is from 8 till 4, no breaks

 

[Goon]

Legal size of a steering wheel in qld?

 

[satos]

whre is the copper to answer all these questions.

 

[Shounak]

My guess is they're doing their full time jobs..

 

[bangers]

in NSW the 40km/hr speed limit does not apply during holidays or weekends. easy way to tell is go to one of the zones during holidays and see if the lights are flashing. if not you're right to do normal speed.

 

[DavoTheGreat]

Bangers' right. School zone warning signs in NSW clearly say 'School Days' below the applicable times, so there's your evidence to cover yourself with. So any day where your kids don't have to go to school, these zones don't apply.

Btw it helps to have a school teacher for a Mrs as I don't have any kids and never know when it's school holidays or not

 

[helly]

Bangers' right. School zone warning signs in NSW clearly say 'School Days' below the applicable times, so there's your evidence to cover yourself with. So any day where your kids don't have to go to school, these zones don't apply.

Btw it helps to have a school teacher for a Mrs as I don't have any kids and never know when it's school holidays or not

Thank, yes that's right, should be the case in every sate... If there is no specofoc rule for this in your state legislation, then it will revert to the Australian road Rules, which is 'school days'... If school aint on even at a particular school you shoud be able to get off without a hitch.

I have assisted one particular driver getting off a fine from school zone speed camera when that particular school, being a private school, was closed one day earlier than the stae schools for hols, and I mean completely closed... He got a letter from the principal stating that this was the case afer I advised him to, and sent the letter in with the ticket and never heard anything about it again...

Sometimes common sense does actually rear its head...

 

[helly]

A few weeks ago around midnight coming home from work I was booked by a divi
van going through a red light.I explained to the copper the lights were just changing as I went through.The police constable did not want to have a bar of it,and promptly issued me with $205 fine.Just the other night this same police divi van at the same time and place was in front of me doing around 75km in a 60km zone.Now here is the good part,he approached the same intersection that I got booked and while the traffic lights had been red for a long time put on his flashing blue and red lights and crossed the intersection.He promptly turned of the lights once he was over.I felt like following him and giving him a piece of my mind,but thought the better of it.I got a big fine from those hipocrits and here they do what they like.The police are a law to themselves.

Dude, there is always the possibilty that they were attending to a job that was urgent but for reasons of their own did not want to alert a crook to their approach. Hence use lights only to warn the public when they have to, and turn them off when they don't, so the crooks doen't see them comming a mile away. As you said it was around midnight and you can see a police car with its lights on miles away in some areas...

Or its also possible as I often have done myself, that they were responding to a job and popped the lights on and raced through the intersection only to hear on the radio, "206 where just going off there now, no further cars to expedite, we'll advise." When this happens you stop attending in an urgent manner and just keep going at the normal speed or possibly also not attend at all cos there are like 3 cars off there...

This happens all the time, and every time it has happened to me I feel like everyone is thinking what you were Sato, but at the end of the day that's just unlucky. If we worried about what everyone thought we would never ever put our lights or sirens on.

And at the end of the day, we have exemptions to the Australian Road Rules, and we only have to explain if it was reasonable to utilise those exepmtions (which are in written law, so therefore not 'above the law', they're actually within the law) to our bosses and possibly a magistrate, definately not to you Sato. So if you had followed the police car and tried to give them a piece of your mind, I'd suggest you would have been advised to go away and do some light reading and educate yourself.

Look, its easy to criticise police and say, this happened and they did this and I think it was wrong, but hey you don't know what that particular crew is doing or what they are going to...

I even had a complaint made against me for going lights and sirens to Macdonalds and Stanmore years ago (so I always use that as a joke) but never mind that I was going there to an armed holdup, and we actually caught the crooks... But NO, the goody two-shoes in her car driving past only seeing about 2 seconds of it decided that she needed to complain, making the assumption that we were just really hungry... Oh well, **** happens, and I say if you are a cop and don't have any complaints against you at all after 3 or 4 years in the job then you can't be doing your job properly. I have had quite a few in my time, all of which have been invetsigated by independant police and also some by the ombudsman and all have been dissmissed, not because I'm corrupt or the ombudmsan is, its because poeple like to complain about things they really don't know about or when they have only a little bit of the story...

Oh well that's life, and it really is just part of the job these days, just more paper work for me and my mates to do!

So Sato, if you feel the need, then go ahead and report it to the inspector at your local station... He might look up the computer dispatch and be able to tell you that they were on their way to something really important, or that they were just trying to get back to the station to knock off on time, or maybe something else completely different, who knows!

 

[hakhawk]

ok, got a good one that i just saw on today tonight, no, not a hoons story for a change.

this guy got arrested and fined or something for standing on the sidewalk with a crappy little cardboard sign saying police radar and telling people to slow down, which they did.

so, to the coppers, would you guys arrest anyone for standing on the side of the road, not in a dangerous spot with a sign saying you were up the road hiding with your radar gun?

id personally like to see vic and other states if they dont, do same as qld and have to display a sign saying theyre there, although last one of them i saw was on such an angle that you only saw what it said once you were parallel with it.

someone told the cops it was distracting, so they say, yet most people gave him a thumbs up or similar and slowed down, so what if we were to put up a sign on a post? its no more distracting than a garage sale sign or even speed limit signs, etc.

what are your thoughts?

 

[VSSII]

ok, got a good one that i just saw on today tonight, no, not a hoons story for a change.

this guy got arrested and fined or something for standing on the sidewalk with a crappy little cardboard sign saying police radar and telling people to slow down, which they did.

so, to the coppers, would you guys arrest anyone for standing on the side of the road, not in a dangerous spot with a sign saying you were up the road hiding with your radar gun?

id personally like to see vic and other states if they dont, do same as qld and have to display a sign saying theyre there, although last one of them i saw was on such an angle that you only saw what it said once you were parallel with it.

someone told the cops it was distracting, so they say, yet most people gave him a thumbs up or similar and slowed down, so what if we were to put up a sign on a post? its no more distracting than a garage sale sign or even speed limit signs, etc.

what are your thoughts?

If it was on Today Tonight it must be true. If there's one thing you can count on from that programme its clear, factual non biased reporting. In fact I think it is only surpassed by A Current Affair. Am I taking the pi$$? You bet I am!
I think their motto is along the lines of, "Never let journalistic integrity or the facts get in the way of a good story."