Delegates attending the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) annual conference in Kilkenny have voted in support of a motion to re-examine policy on enforcing traffic laws.
The motion called for an assessment of road traffic enforcement which was not based on detections alone. The conference heard that Garda policy of issuing tickets for all offences in order to keep detection statistics high was causing conflict between gardaí and the public.
Last night, the conference heard an appeal by Sergeant Richard Lyons, head of the traffic unit in Dublin Castle, for a new strategy for catching speeding motorists.
"When it comes to the enforcement of road traffic regulations, our entire strategy appears to be based not just on detection only - but on detections achieved while we hide behind bus stops or hedges," he said.
Sgt Lyons said detections were being used to measure the performance of Gardai, with specific targets for speeding and drink-driving included in the Garda Commissioner's Policing Plan. He warned that this needed to be changed urgently if the force was to remain a credible, community-based service.
"A young guard under pressure for returns giving an 80-year-old lady in Kevin Street a ticket rather than caution her because she forgot her seatbelt does not represent the organisation I joined," he said.
Sgt Lyons said that, if detections were used as a measuring stick, 2003 was a bad year for enforcement with 157,000 detections, compared to 272,000 in 2001 and 246,000 in 2002.
"But I must point out that 2003 was the first full year of the penalty points system and the year in which we had a record low of 335 fatalities on the road. It cannot be that the low detection rate meant we did a bad job."
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