A freedom of information request lodged by the nation’s favourite newspaper depicting topless teens, The Sun, has revealed that only one in 1800 of the 48,544 Metropolitan Police officers caught by speed cameras in 2009 received a fine and/or points on their licence.
The Met is evidently more lenient than most forces (national average: 1 in 43 officers fined), but its approach seems harsh in comparison with that taken on Merseyside, where not a single one of 1913 speeding coppers was cruelly singled out and held accountable.
The law, The Sun reminds us, allows officers on emergency calls to ignore speed limits if obeying them would hinder them in the performance of their duties. Senior officers supposedly review all cases of officers caught speeding to determine whether any offence has been committed.
Clearly they are working with a generously broad definition of what constitutes an emergency and are eager for officers to perform all duties at maximum speed so as to minimise the need to burden the nation’s finances with costly claims for overtime.
The Police Federation told The Sun that offending officers “will be dealt with like anybody else”. Perhaps significantly, it did not say when this would happen.
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