The real irony here is that the CSO witness statements describe how my parking was causing danger to other road users. That may be so, but if they could see danger, they would have been serving the public better had they bothered to go into the small garden party which was obviously taking place adjacent to where the car was parked and request that the car is moved.
For those about to suggest that this would be a dangerous thing to do-who knows what violence may have been visited upon them-it is worth pointing out that the garden party was taking place in the vicarage. There was a brass band playing.
Obviously the more sensible course of action was to simply drive off.
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Obviously the more sensible course of action was to simply drive off.
>>>>>>> The right thing was done in my opinion,why should these people have to argue with a lot of people at a party of any description
If there had been a fatality on the road because somebody had misjudged an overtake on a single unbroken line then the outcome could have been very diffERENT
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"Obviously the more sensible course of action was to simply drive off."
I thought CSO's patrol on foot?
CSO's are getting a reputation for being tough and using their limited powers to the max, and showing zero tolerance. More power to their elbow, I say.
In this case, good job done.
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You'll find that the application of the laws of the land are highly selective, from the top od soceity to the bottom.
Who can tell me the last time a 'traveller' was taken to court for a motoring offence and told to fill in a form of his/her income?
Also, in our vicinity a group of 'travellers' has moved on to a pay and display car park where normally you would be clamped if not paying.
Guess if they have been clamped
'Soft targets'- spot on , an easy way to get the numbers of tickets up. They cruise around the easy sites, don't want to get beaten up do they?
me a cynic- not realist
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In reply to BellBoy - Eh? So they see something that they describe as dangerous and they drive off? What's their primary purpose then, to protect the public or go round generating fines? Based on their actions, the latter.
It was obvious why there was a row of cars parked outside the house and if they cannot work out that a Sunday afternoon gathering in vicarage garden poses no risk, then they are not up to the job.
Edited by Nsar on 21/10/2007 at 22:58
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Nsar how do these people know that your party is going to be all charm and you would move your car pronto?
In my village we have been asking for 2 years for the police to take action on locals that park on the zig zags to use a cash machine ,we have had one fatality and the road is a 20 zone, i am amazed that every night and bear in mind its soon to be dark at 5.00pm that the locals still park and think its ok if they put their hazard lights on.To me this is the same as your solid white line,too many people flaunt rules of the road to the detriment of other peoples safety.
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If they unable to assess the risk from a Sunday afternoon garden party at a vicarage in a quiet suburb they are simply not fit to do the job!
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>If they unable to assess the risk from a Sunday afternoon garden party at a vicarage..
How could they possibly know that it wasn't full of religious fanatics armed to the teeth?
Maybe they called for backup and the rapid-response unit was attending to a smoker in a pub?
tinyurl.com/29fwda
(It's the Mail so please set the 'Victor Meldrew' button in your browser options)
Kevin...
PS. The cop in our local village puts out his little blue "Police - Caution" signs (and a few anti-idiot cones) if he has been warned that there's anything going off at the church or village hall because he knows it's impossible to park anywhere without causing some obstruction.
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In reply to BellBoy - Eh? So they see something that they describe as dangerous and they drive off? What's their primary purpose then to protect the public or go round generating fines?
Had you fallen in a pond then as before they would have watched you drown and then driven/walked off.
Yours In despair................................MD.
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maybe if you had some input from your local villages MD your own CSO"s could have noted the number of your runaway driver?
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With all due respect, Nsar, perhaps you are not the person best placed to plead your case. Many reading your OP will see it as an example of whingeing.
I happen to think you have a point.
However, I'm uneasy about some of the negative stuff in this thread about CSOs.
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CSOs are doing now what cops used to, which is go out on foot patrol, meet the public, keep their 'ear to the ground', submit intelligence reports, deal with lower end offences via FPN, etc, etc
there is 'mission creep' with their powers and their uniforms are looking more and more like cops every day.
Over and above the politics of it i.e. whether properly trained police officers should be doing this, as they always used to...... (obviously not for this forum)....the CSOs do provide a useful service and contribute to lower level enforcement......(although I will say at times the quality of the staff can leave a lot to be desired).
the offence described by Nsar DID need dealing with... and was dealt with properly. It is unrealistic of a junior member of staff with 3 weeks training to enter a garden party to establish who owned a car..particularly as a lot of the time he/she would be met with blank faces, village idiot humour or in some cases (probably not the vicarage) abuse or even violence... in reality the driver should have known better. If Nsar feels hard done by, it is no doubt exacerbated by the fact we've all become used to lower levels of enforcement, which CSO s are beginning to change.
There is a theory (broken window syndrome) that the lower level stuff, if left, can automatically lead to bigger things.....so needs to be addressed.
Now whether or not you think we should be coughing up for real cops to deal, that's another issue.
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I agree with Wetpig and Chris Peugeot.
CSOs are helping to achieve a zero tolerance policy.
Their efforts need to be mirrored in the Courts & Justice system, so that the miscreants are dealt with appropriately, and not let off because the system cannot cope with the load.
Looking at Nsar's original post, it seems the offence was minor in Nsar's view, whereas Westpig believes it merits the full attention that it has received.
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maybe if you had some input from your local villages MD your own CSO"s could have noted the number of your runaway driver? We live in the middle of nowhere. No CSO's only sheep.
Bah! MD
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Surely the CSO's duty was to avoid the possibility of consequential accident or injury to other road users by the inappropriately parked vehicle? The rather limp wristed idea that they might risk confrontation or more ludicrously, injury, from a Sunday afternoon Vicarage tea party beggars belief! It's clear that they decided that the reporting of the traffic violation was more important than the application of common sense 'policing' , i.e. taking the obvious 'risk' of asking the Vicar if he could make an announcement, advising of the problem etc. & asking whomever, to move their vehicle.
Not so much 'zero tolerance' as zero common sense, imho.
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I think I tend to agree with woodbines
I am not at all convinced by the zero tolerance argumnet and I understand it is now discredited in the states from where we caught it.
Policing in this country is more or less by consent. I fail to see how the over zealous application of rules does anything for the attitude of people towards the police.
If you want to do absolute adherence to rules then you need to make sure that the rules are reasonable and that they are all implemented in the same way. And not just target the easy cases. Lots of us in rural areas know that it is almost impossible to get the police out in the event of a 'real' crime and this insistence on fines and court appearances for trivia does not help the reputation and respect of the police one jot.
Oh, and if something is wrong then do something about it. Instead of removing this dangerous obstruction, it was left to cause more danger for the whole afternoon.
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CSOs are NOT police officers, they are advised to avoid confrontation.
If a line of cars are parked badly, then they get ticketed or 'processed' (which is the old way of doing it). You could spend all morning/afternoon looking for people.. and get the right run around.
If it was exceptionally dangerous, then yes.......maybe a call for a police officer to assist etc. Doesn't sound like it was exceptionally dangerous.
Who knows if they had an appointment to keep, were near the end of a shift, were overdue a refreshment break etc, etc......numerous reasons why looking for the driver wasn't an option used.
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It was obvious why there was a row of cars parked outside the house......
Sorry to backtrack a bit, Nsar, but were you parked in a similar manner to these other cars - and were they similarly charged?
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The CSO statement definitely refers to cars being parked illegally, but I don't know if they have been charged. Can't imagine I was singled out.
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Looks awfully like a revenue raising excercise to me too. If the vehicle was parked in a dangerous position then efforts should have been made to move it/have it moved and personnel placed in a position to warn other drivers of a hazard in the interim period..
Whether or not the OP was fined in addition to the above measure is outside the argument.
Sensitive policing would have seen the car owners being asked to move the obstructions.
All this rubbish about the dangers involved in entering an obvous vicarage to do the above is a distraction from the discussion.
He was wrongly parked. He may have deserved a fine. His vehicle should have been moved. The Community Officers were wrongly focused on the offence and paid no attention to the dangers other than from a revenue raising point of view.
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"Looks awfully like a revenue raising exercise to me too"
Doubt it - the only offences hypothicated for "revenue raising" are the Scamera offences. This is a very old-fashioned way of processing an offence - unbelievably expensive and burdensome to pursue, the fines will go to one place - the Treasury and will never reflect the true cost of dealing with it.
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Perhaps it was felt that several vehicles parked en bloc posed more of a danger than a single vehicle - forcing other vehicles to cross the central solid white line for a significantly longer period of time?
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Seems like the magistrates saw some merit in my pleadings, they reduced the prosecution costs from £35 to £15 and my guilty plea got me a fine of £60.
Hopefully whoever supervises these two clowns will get to hear about it and the public may get slightly better service from them in future. A slim hope but you never know.
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I am glad you kept your liberty and the fine was not too severe. Any points?
Obviously you are still smarting. Having just read the whole thread, I'm not sure what you, and others who share your opinion about these 'clowns' expect to happen when CSO's find cars illegally parked, and whether that should be different when there is a vicarage garden party going on?
As Westpig said, they are there to do these small enforcement tasks that would be even more expensive if performed by PCs, and I think most of us would be more concerned if they didn't get on with it.
What's the point in having any of these rules if they are never to be enforced? Be thankful you have not been charged the real cost of prosecution.
As someone who is always avoiding parking within less than 10m of road junctions, and wonders if anybody ever gets done for it, I find the incident quite cheering.
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>>I'm not sure what you, and others who share your opinion about these 'clowns' expect to happen when CSO's find cars illegally parked, and whether that should be different when there is a vicarage garden party going on?<<
The issue is that according to the law, my parking there posed a danger to other road users but the CSOs took no steps to prevent this danger from continuing, they say they sat for 15 minutes observing the scene and then drove away.
There was an obvious remedy to this danger - getting the car moved. There was an obvious place to find the owner of the car so that this could happen there and then. There was obviously no risk to them in seeking the owner of the car.
Obviously they are clowns.
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And equally obviously it was illegal to park there in the first place. All points made in the last 40 posts no need to dwell on it ! :-)
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could we settle on:
some people think the PCSOs are clowns for dealing with lower level offences that for years have been ignored, are on the statute books and ought to have been enforced over the years but haven't
and some people think that a driver parking in such circumstances is a clown and should take the punishment on the chin as they broke the law that parliament had enacted (debated by elected representatives of the British people) and enforced by people paid for by public money.
:-)
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Most diplomatic and of course right !
Edited by Pugugly {P} on 17/11/2007 at 14:51
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For those here who have trouble understanding the English language, let me make it clear that I don't believe that I deserved to be let off - the clue can be found in the first post - the bit that says "I am pleading guilty". A further clue can be found in my reply to Aprilia.
My complaint throughout has been at the behaviour of these public servants. Fortunately it seems that the Magistrates, at least in part, agreed with me.
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In his original thread, I took Nsar to mean that he had stopped briefly to deliver a load of stuff to a party.
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=54444&...e
"Apprarently I parked my car on a stretch of road where there was a white line. In my haste to drop off a whole bootload of stuff for a friend's party, I was more pre-occupied with being close to their gate and didn't go back to check. Nobody would have been the slightest bit inconvenienced by my choice of parking spot, but I broke a law, so I'll have to pay. "
Whereas in this current thread I get the impression that Nsar was actually attending the party, and that sometime in the course of the party the CSOs observed for 15 minutes that Nsar's and other guests' cars were illegally parked. They followed the correct legal procedure despite it not being what Nsar would have preferred them to do and thus resulting in Nsar name-calling them clowns or whatever else.
Good result in the end. That is British justice, and that is what the courts are for. Nsar's pleadings were heard and he was fined.
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Nsar,
In perfectly good English further up this thread, i explained succinctly why a PCSO would not enter a gathering to look for you...and...that the offence might well not be excessively dangerous (needing soemone to urgently find you), but could nevertheless still fit the definition for the offence.
By concentrating on one element of these 'proceedings' you are doing the classic 'it's not really my problem/fault' that some people do when they don't want to look at themselves and admit they were wrong.
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>>let me make it clear that I don't believe that I deserved to be let off<<
Which bit of that statement don't you understand?
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>>let me make it clear that I don't believe that I deserved to be let off<<>> Which bit of that statement don't you understand?
no need to be rude.......... i'm perfectly able to understand English.
You are concentrating one one small aspect of the processes gone through to prosecute you for an offence. The original post, from memory stated you thought it was 'insane' that 2 police officers had the time to attend and serve your NIP....then when that was explained... you moved on to why you weren't dug out of the vicar's tea party to move your car 'if it was so dangerous'.........that's been explained as well.
I don't see any other elements left other than you've got the ache that you were done for it and see the magistrates 'leniency' as them agreeing with you....albeit your penalty sounds pretty standard.
you did wrong, got caught and copped a penalty.......anything else is a form of smokescreen for who knows what, although i've stated my opinion as to what i think that might be.
have a nice day.....:-)
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Westpig, there is a considerable difference between venturing an opinion and establishing a fact.
You have done the former, but no more and remain completely mistaken on my feelings about the whole thing.
A nice day to you too.
Over and out from me on this subject.
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So I guess nobody'll complain if I lock it then.
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