18 1GM Thursday November 26 2020 | the times
News
Mistaking cakes for carrots
was honest error, says PC
John Simpson Crime CorrespondentPolice are increasingly turning to dash-
board camera videos captured by mo-
torists to prosecute dangerous drivers
amid a drop in the number of dedicated
“cops in cars”, according to research.
A study shows that the number of
videos submitted to police has risen
more than tenfold in three years.
The research, based on data released
under freedom of information laws,
shows that police forces are on course
to obtain more than 32,500 videos from
drivers this year alone, up from 2,612 in
2017.
In a third of cases the video resulted
in some form of action being taken
against a motorist, including a court
summons, fixed penalty, driver aware-
ness course or a written warning.
The research by What Car? magazine
found that one force, Dyfed-Powys in
south Wales, acted on more than 80 per
cent of “dashcam” videos it received.
Police forces have actively courted
the submission of dashboard-mounted
camera evidence. One national
scheme, Operation Snap, collects vid-
eos centrally and distributes them to
participating forces.
The majority of prosecutions are for
driving without due care and attention,
using a mobile phone at the wheel and
driving through a red light. A range of
careless driving offences are also cap-
tured including undertaking, drifting
across multiple motorway lanes and
tailgating — driving too close to the
vehicle in front.
The use of dashcams by drivers has
increased sharply since 2017 when in-
surance companies started accepting
videos as evidence for claims and the
courts first used them to convict driving
offences.
However, motoring groups warned
that cameras should not be used to re-Officers rely on
dashcam videos as
‘cops in cars’ cut
place roads police officers who have a
wider remit including road safety and
targeting organised crime. Separate
figures show that the number of traffic
officers has dropped by a third in a
decade because of cost-cutting.
Edmund King, president of the AA,
said: “We accept that there’s a role for
cameras — whether that’s speed
cameras or dashcams — but they
should not replace cops in cars because
they have a much broader role that a
camera can’t possibly replace.”
The study found that 35 of the UK’s
45 police forces had a system in place to
process and fine drivers and motorcy-
clists based on dashcam evidence from
other road users. Nineteen forces pro-
vided figures on the number of videos
submitted and those used to take action
against motorists.
It found that 52,174 videos had been
submitted since 2017. A total of 2,
were submitted in 2017, while the num-
ber has jumped to 16,287 in the first six
months of this year. Extrapolated for
the whole of 2020 it would be equiva-
lent to more than 32,500.
Police have acted on a total of 33 per
cent of videos submitted. Some 10 per
cent led to court prosecution, 9.6 per
cent resulted in a fixed penalty notice
and a further 10.5 per cent led to a driver
awareness course. Some 3 per cent of
drivers were given a warning.
Dyfed-Powys acted on 81.3 per cent
of videos, with 40.2 per cent receiving a
warning and 18.6 per cent being prose-
cuted in court. The rate stood at 51.5 per
cent for Norfolk and Suffolk police and
49 per cent in Northamptonshire.
Steve Huntingford, editor of What
Car?, said: “The vast majority of police
forces can now process footage from
dashcams in a matter of hours, mean-
ing reckless driving is more likely than
ever to lead to a fine or even a court
summons.”Graeme Paton Transport CorrespondentA police officer caught scanning a 7p
barcode for carrots instead of a £
barcode on a tray of doughnuts at a
supermarket checkout has told a mis-
conduct hearing that he made an hon-
est mistake while buying cakes for col-
leagues.
PC Simon Read said he was buying
the 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts to
repay a “cake fine” — a commonplace
practice in police circles, which is
intended as a light-hearted “punish-
ment” among colleagues and is gener-
ally considered to boost morale.
PC Read, who was on duty for Cam-
bridgeshire police and in uniform at the
time, told the hearing that he had not
realised he had scanned the barcode for
the carrots twice at the self-service
checkout at a Tesco Extra store in Wis-
bech, Cambridgeshire, on February 10.
“Cake fines are fairly common in the
police,” he told the hearing in Peter-
borough yesterday. “It’s a way of being
punished in a light-hearted way.”
He said that someone could be given
a cake fine if they were having a bad day,
or if they were joining or leaving a
department.
He accepted that he had failed toscan the barcode for the box of 12
doughnuts while purchasing four items
at about 11.30am — the doughnuts, car-
rots, a sandwich and a drink — but said
that this was not done on purpose.
Mark Ley-Morgan, presenting the
misconduct case, said: “He’s main-
tained from the outset that this is all a
horrible mistake, of him failing to pay
attention while scanning his items. We
say this is very unlikely to be the truth.”
He continued: “He would have had to
be standing there with his eyes closed
not to see what was happening on the
screen in front of him.
“You have to tap the screen. You have
to tap to check out, you have to tap to
say if you want any bags, you have to say
which method of payment you choose.
Do you do that without looking at the
screen?”
He said: “It beggars belief that he
wouldn’t at some point have seen that
he was being charged just over £4,
knowing that some moments before he
picked up an item that cost a tenner.”
PC Read is accused of breaching pro-
fessional standards of conduct.
Sharmistha Michaels, the chair-
woman, adjourned proceedings for the
panel to consider its findings. The hear-
ing resumes today.Footage released by Norfolk and Suffolk police is among tens of thousands of videos that have been sent in this year