Law -
Zero Tolerance
The
principal behind Zero Tolerance is that any crime
or misdemeanour no matter how small, must be
pursued, prosecuted and the offender punished.
The theory being that such actions will encourage
people to desist from criminal activity and the
public will see that those who do not are
punished for their antisocial actions. No longer
will the police have the power to simply
reprimand or caution as in the past but a full
prosecution must ensue.
No longer will the police be able to stop a
person with the words, "Excuse me sir, that
cigarette packet you threw on the floor; that is
a crime called littering. I suggest you pick it
up now and we'll say no more on the matter";
no they will have to prosecute for littering.
Which means that the courts will soon be full of
trivial cases where nothing is gained by such
pointless prosecutions. Which will undoubtedly
lead to the police having powers to impose on the
spot fines rather than requiring a full court
prosecution. Which in no time at all leads to a
police state.
As the law stands now, it is a criminal offence
not to inform the police of a crime that you have
knowledge of. Which means that every time a
driver breaks the speed limit, even by one mile
per hour, they should turn themselves in at the
nearest police station. Imagine turning up at the
local station every night, joining the mile long
queue, and admitting that, "I did 31mph on
the High Street today". It wouldn't be long
before the desk sergeant was screaming,
"F--k off !", as soon as you entered
the station. Which just goes to show that Zero
Tolerance is a complete joke and is impractical
to implement or carry through to completion.
Another irony is, in the case of cars, that the
speedometer needs to only be 10% accurate at
30mph in order to pass an MOT, so even the most
law abiding citizen in the land may be tootling
down the road believing that they are well below
the speed limit only to find themselves hauled up
in court for breaking it. Or are we going to
allow some leeway in these circumstances? In
which case, what is the point of Zero Tolerance?
Forensic
science made a simple but huge leap forward with
the discovery in the United Kingdom that one of
the best places to track down criminals is in a
disabled parking bay. Sneaky drivers who
illegally use the bays are likely to be guilty of
other offences, according to six months' evidence
compiled by traffic wardens for the Home Office.
Prompted by a university professor's
"extreme irritation" with able-bodied
parkers in the bays, the scheme took over the
whole of central Huddersfield, in the north of
England, for a joint police-academic sting.
All the cheats, including some with home-made
orange disability stickers, were checked via
registration plates on the police national
computer - and the results were startling. A
third of the illegal parkers had criminal
records, half had committed previous road traffic
offences, and a fifth were "of immediate
police interest" because of suspected
connections with unsolved crime. One in 10 of the
cars were also in an illegal condition and a
fifth had been previously used in or linked to
thefts, drugs or other offences.
The study, praised by Britain's Home Office
Minister as a "practical and challenging
help to police intelligence", follows a
similar survey on traffic-light "squeegee
merchants" in New York. Like selfish
parkers, freelance windscreen-washers proved to
include a very large number of villains with
outstanding warrants or wanted on felony charges.
A second British study was being mooted, checking
people using mobile phones while driving. But it
was in doubt "because it might pick up some
of the research team".
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