Federation reaction to Telegraph story ‘Don’t trust the police with Ł60 fines, warn JPs’
Alan Jones, Police Federation national committee lead on roads policing, says:
“The comment made by Chris Hunt Cooke from the Magistrates’ Association in a press release and published in today’s Telegraph is offensive and ill-informed. To suggest that ‘faced with the choice of the heavy burden of taking the matter to court and the simplicity of issuing a fixed penalty, it is certain many police officers will opt for a fixed penalty, however bad the driving may be’ suggests that police officers will not deal appropriately with serious offences committed on the road. Nothing could be further from the truth. We're not against fixed penalty notices but do not see them as the sole solution to tackling all crime. They must be just one tool at our disposal, allowing police officers to use their discretion to determine whether the offence warrants an instant fine or sending to court. Regrettably though, over the last decade we have seen a government obsessed with creating more and more out of court disposals, increasing pressure on frontline officers to opt for this solution which not only fails the public but results in a ‘dumbing down’ of the criminal justice system."
