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Query from Anonymous Visitor
From The Notts MAG website: 28 March 2005 ANPR Issues - Website Question
Question: "I find it difficult to believe how Notts Police now catch road traffic offenders if they cannot stop vehicles. I would be interested to know how Notts traffic offence statistics compare with forces that still have a traffic section."
Answer: The situation is that they still WILL be stopping vehicles but the process will be automated and will feature a very small team of people and with claimed reductions in skills required along with the obvious massive productivity gains. Where you can target "road crime" as primarily automatable actions, eg. shift the political emphasis to tax, insurance, mot etc. - all areas which can be automated - you can build the basis for completely automating the monitoring of your citizenry.
The social role of policing will be of no interest to police chiefs when you consider the cost-savings benefits claimed by automation. The added benefit is that since you have redefined your "crimes" as ones which can be monitored automatically they, by definition, you can enforce the law on such a "criminal segment" by completely automatic methods and have both the minimum of skilled officers or "officers" with minimal skill levels issuing tickets or performing arrests. Common tactics used are false "associative claims" eg. crime X is associated with crime Y therefore Y proves X or viceversa. (Which is usually false and does not follow logical methods of proof.).
The most natural consquence of this which should be obvious to anyone with business experience is the potential to "outsource" such functions from the Police Force altogether and move them into the same area as parking and traffic control regulation (eg. congestion
charging schemes which are already being operated by companies like Capita).
The key points to note here which make the entire scam work are as follows...
1) Redefinition of the nature of crime using pseudoscientific and statistical analysis. Eg. support the Daily Express uninsured drivers claim then extrapolate any findings to suggest that 90+% of crimes are associated with no insurance thus other crimes can be eliminated by clamping down on insurance crime.
2) The presumption of guilt before innocence. This is a core requirement to automate and deskill.
3) Media campaigns to trumpet successes whilst glossing over the fact that the public is being conned. Ensure the media reinforces the perception that more crimes can be solved using automated methods. Gloss over issues such as bad driving, rising accident rates, decreasing driving skill levels etc. Supply fake data to the media to support entirely false claims that most accidents are actually caused by speeding or not having adequate insurance. (yes, the 2nd one is being claimed) rather than being associated factors. ie. confuse cause and effect.
4) Redefinition of the function of UK policing in line with production industry rather than as a social "service". This enables decisions to be made on the basis of costbenefit analysis and productivity as well as using skillreengineering to downgrade required skills.
5) Squash public distribution of detailed statistics or statistical data which would enable accurate cross-force comparisons as this would "blow the gaff". You can get hold of statistical claims but these are frequently erroneous. The only real challenge to them is to have your own statistical analyst check out the data for false assumptions, false comparisons and the like.
6) De-skilling of the role of the Police Officer and introduction of outside/contract labour or other outsourcing strategies. With automation, if you have engineered the law for presumption of guilt you only need a very small number of skilled officers to supervise relatively untrained staff who can issue automatic penalties. As we have seen with speed cameras, this can be almost completely automated. We call this "monkey syndrome" - pay peanuts - get monkeys. There are signs that the Police Federation are actually waking up to the scam themselves and we believe it will lead to subcontracting of traffic enforcement to companies already subcontracted to other security roles formerly performed by the Police (eg. Group 4 or Securicor now taking custody of prisoners or operating jails).
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