TRAFFIC POLICE

We are continually being told by the great and the good that the world is an unsafe place, with threats from terrorists all over the shop. In this age of austerity, we are also continually being told, not least by the police themselves, that they are short of manpower. Why is it, then, that police forces the world over spend so much time on traffic offences, often of a trivial nature?

When I lived in Tanzania, the answer was obvious. Nobody, and certainly not a proud policeman wishing to demonstrate the pot belly of officialdom, could live on a policeman's official pay. Traffic offences, real or - more likely - imagined, were the means of bridging this gap. They had to be imagined, since there was rarely any money (or electricity) for things like speed cameras. Though that was not much of a hurdle. If the policeman thought that you were going too fast, then he simply waved you into the side of the road, climbed into the car, and tried to negotiate some sort of deal. If you hung tough and refused to pay, then he might well accept the second best of a lift to the nearest town (there was no money for police cars either).

But in rich, well-paid Denmark, the answer is less obvious. Since the reforms of a couple of years ago, which merged many local forces into a smaller number of bigger ones, there has been a stream of complaints about the lack of policemen available to investigate (eg) burglaries, and about the time it takes for a policeman to arrive in response to a call. Income from traffic fines, on the other hand, continues to rise.

Some people might say that my grumpiness is somehow related to the fact that I have just been done for driving at 64km/hr in a nearby village with a 50km/hr speed limit, a transgression that will cost me kr.1.000 in due course. They would be right. It's not really the fact that it was in exactly the same place as I was done last time. Or that I would rather spend kr.1.000 on Christmas presents. What really sticks in my craw is the idea of having a policeman sit in an unmarked van all day, doing nothing except take automatic pictures of petty sinners like me while swigging coffee, when he could be doing so many other, more useful, things.

Walter Blotscher