Editorial: Police must clear air on tickets

Not for the first time, the issue of speeding fines has the police entangled in knots of their own making. An oddly defensive attitude sees them dealing in euphemisms and riven by contradiction. The Police Commissioner maintains there is no quota for traffic tickets; a Tasman district manger says one operates in his region. Therein lie the perils of not being upfront about the performance targets being used to gauge officers' traffic policing. Therein, also, lies the threat of dwindling support from people already irked by the police's low-tolerance, low-discretion approach to lowering the road toll.

The issue has surfaced spasmodically over the past few years. This time, it has been raised by a job sheet from the Central North Island District urging staff to target areas with high traffic flows "as it is the last week of the accounting year for us, a great opportunity to get our ticket count up to ensure we end up the top group in Central [police district]". Obviously, this crass message does not constitute official policy. But, equally clearly, confusion about that policy extends beyond the public.

That should not be the case. While in some ways the police are in a most unenviable position, it is not one that defies explanation. Performance targets are simply a means of ensuring that officers pay sufficient attention to traffic policing. They were the response to a rapidly rising road toll and increased speeding in the mid-1990s, following the merger of the police and the Ministry of Transport. Counting the occasions on which officers deal directly with motorists, typically by issuing tickets, is an obvious way of ensuring a concentration on reducing fatalities.

So, too, is the approach to breaches of road rules. This, however, has cast the police in a vastly different light. No longer are they seen as being concerned solely with protecting people from hardened criminals. Now, they are handling what many regard as minor driving infringements, and doing it in an uncompromising manner.

It seems hardly to have mattered to many people that the police tactics have succeeded in drastically reducing the road toll. An enduring sourness has led them to dwell on all sorts of hocus-pocus, including the idea that the enforcement strategy is all about revenue-gathering. Never mind that the money collected from traffic offences is of no relevance to the police.

Unfortunately, the incoherence of the police response to questions about their tactics has fuelled such suspicions. The only way to disarm them is a candid explanation of police procedures and tactics. Police commanders should not be afraid to admit that performance targets (or quotas, for that matter) are set for their officers, just as they are for workers in many occupations. Whatever the terminology, they deliver a high degree of accountability. Nor should they feel pressured to impose a uniform policy. Driver behaviour and road conditions vary from region to region, and district commanders need the discretion to act accordingly.

The public, for its part, must acknowledge the changed role of the police, and the overarching need to make the roads safer. Canadian research suggests a ticket issued for speeding reduces by a third the chance of a driver being involved in a fatal crash the following month. People might also ponder the difficult line the police tread in seeking to reduce the road toll while retaining motorists' support. And they might recognise that a cavalier approach to speed limits has been the catalyst for much of the present angst and acrimony. If driving standards were to improve, the better it would be for all of us.