POLICE drivers must be properly protected in law so they can respond to emergencies quickly, Essex Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Policing Minister Nick Hurd has said he is satisfied with the current laws around police driving \u2013 despite advice from a number of prominent barristers who say legislation is insufficient.\u00a0His comments were made public in a letter written to Holly Lynch MP.<\/p>\n
And Essex Police Federation Secretary Phil Suarez, himself a former police driver, says all emergency drivers must have the proper legal protection so they can carry out their duty.<\/p>\n
Phil said: \u201cI think a lot of our advice on this really comes from the people that are protecting our officers, barristers and others in the legal profession.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite clearly their stance on it is that actually there aren\u2019t these protections in place, because the test that has to be applied is what a normal member of the public finds acceptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe very matter of police driving in an emergency situation means that you\u2019re going to be driving in such a way that a member of the public wouldn\u2019t expect that to be normal. So I think there needs to be a lot of clarity around the protection that exists for police officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd again, as I\u2019ve said several times, it doesn\u2019t just refer to police, fire officers, ambulances, they\u2019re all going to be in the same boat.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately I think when there\u2019s an accident involving the police it tends to capture the media attention a little bit more, so I think that\u2019s often where the focus is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phil said that police drivers are highly trained to drive at speed, and the overwhelming majority of times accidents do not happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always say to people, and as I had many years myself driving blue lights, you\u2019ve got to drive to arrive, you\u2019ve got to keep yourself safe,\u201d Phil said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think to a certain extent, as long as you\u2019re trying to apply due diligence and you\u2019re not being stupid an actual accident happening are quite few and far between, but it is those one-off things that happen where people get seriously hurt and there\u2019s an investigation, those are the cases where officers need protection.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here to serve and members of the public expect us to get to them as quick as we possibly can when there\u2019s an emergency, as they would do the fire service or the ambulance service. Surely it must be the right and proper thing to reinforce the regulations that would cover that, and let\u2019s give our people protection.\u201d<\/p>\n
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POLICE drivers must be properly protected in law so they can respond to emergencies quickly, Essex Police Federation has said. Policing Minister Nick Hurd has said he is satisfied with\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3481,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3719,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3718\/revisions\/3719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}