When you get several levels of Government together to manage a program often what happens is that one level will manage the program in it's best interests not necessarily the interests of the public. This phenomenon gets especially interesting when the public is supposedly the recipient of the program. We need an example.
In Victoria recently my son was stopped by a Victoria Police Department Sgt (Officer #55). Now a Police Sgt is a fairly experienced individual and one rank up from the working rank of Constable. There was no problem with traffic safety rules. The vehicle was being operated at the correct speed and no moving violations were involved. Officer #55 gave my Son a $109 ticket for not displaying his N logo as required by the Province of BC Graduated Licensing Plan. The only problem is that the logo was clearly being displayed in the back window of the vehicle as required by law and Officer #55 admitted that he saw it. When I heard this story the went off immediately.
picture of rear of vehicle "N" clearly shown Jan 24/08
In any crime there are three main factors to consider; Opportunity, Method and Motive. Lets consider Motive first.
The date was January 24th 2008. This is the last 8 days of the month. Each month Victoria Police have a quota to meet for traffic violation tickets. They have a reputation for issuing tickets in the last few days of the month in an effort to meet that quota. We have a motive.
Lets consider Opportunity. New Drivers in BC must display a green N magnetic sign on the rear of their vehicles. This immediately alerts Police to the fact the vehicle is being operated by a new usually young driver. A young driver is easily intimidated by older police officers and is very worried about keeping free of tickets to maintain their license. There is considerable grey area in the application of the failure to display N ticket and this represents an opportunity for the police to issue tickets as they please. We have an opportunity.
That leaves Method. The method was simple enough. Watch out for young drivers with an N stop them and give them a ticket for not properly displaying the N. You get to count a ticket against your qouta and you earn $109 in a flash. The young driver is too traumatized to complain.
Now my son has a full time job and works hard but like a lot of young people he doesn't make a lot of money. In order for him to save that $109 for the ticket I suspect he would need to use his savings from about a month at work. That's not going to happen. I would rather pay for the ticket myself but in this case he is going to dispute it. You see there is more to the story.
This is not the first time he has been ticketed with a $109 ticket for failing to display an "N". Approximately two years ago he was stopped by police and they noted his N was missing. The background there is that his mother had just gone to the Motor Vehicle licensing office in Victoria and had obtained a new N because somebody had stolen the old one. The new N was not on the car for 24 hours before somebody stole that one too and that is when my Son was stopped and charged. He disputed the ticket and waited nearly two years to go to traffic court, where he was simply ordered to pay the ticket. So the Bullshit alarm has gone off before on this topic. The ticket given him was grossly unfair because he was in fact the victim of a crime committed by the person who stole the N off his vehicle. Rather than have my son pay for this ticket I will pay it. I don't want him pumping gas for a month in the cold to pay for that ticket.
So what do you do when you live in a shoe?
Today (January 25th/08)I sent faxes to the President of ICBC, the Minister of Transportation and Highways , the Mayor of Victoria and I sent an email comment to the City of Victoria Police Department. I have advised them about details of the problem and requested some detailed information regarding the administration of the program and the behavior of the Victoria Police Department. We shall see what happens.
There are serious problems with the Victoria Police Department these days. Their Chief is suspended, they are being charged with causing brain damage to a graduating university student, with abusing a 15year old girl at the city jail and they are noted for not investigating reported crimes, with not being able to keep a growing number of drug dealers off the streets with being unable to do anything about growing street crimes in the city of Victoria. There are huge problems at the Victoria Police Department. It has gotten so bad they had a policy of not even investigating robberies under $100. So if a thug goes into a business in Victoria reaches into the cash register and walks off with $80 they are free to go! Often the Victoria Police won't send a car even when violence or robbery is involved something that many local business people have learned the hard way. The Bullshit alarm is ringing so often the local media are getting wind of it and articles are appearing on a regular basis alerting the public to some but not all of the problems.
I presently reside in Victoria BC and North Bay Ontario and I feel comfortable in commenting on the Police Forces in both cities. In North Bay the Police are well respected and do a fine job. The Provincial Police or OPP have an excellent reputation for policing the areas outside of North Bay. There is mutual respect between the Officers and the Public. In Victoria the Police are too often openly rude, surely and adversarial . They bully young people and treat poor people as second class citizens. They have a horrible reputation with the public and many young people in Victoria openly loath them. There is something wrong in Victoria. There is a failure of leadership. This must be especially hard on the officers trying to do a good job.
Can we do anything about it? No not if everyone just sits back and watches. But yes if people get involved and support the officers that are doing a good job and retrain or remove the bad apples. When a Police Sgt feels he can give somebody a ticket for doing something they are not doing just to prop up his stats something is wrong. When they abuse a 15 year old girl in Jail or bash in the head of a graduating student something is not right. It looks like the situation in Victoria is similar to an ice berg. Most of the problems are out of sight.
Here are some links for you if you wish to get involved and be part of the solution:
- Mayor of Victoria Mr. Alan Lowe
- Police Department City of Victoria
- Ministry of Transportation and Highways
- Insurance Corporation of BC
- BC Police Complaint Commissioner
As far as graduated licensing goes the idea is sound and the objectives are noble and worth supporting. If it saves the life of even one teenager its worth the effort. But what is happening now is that the Victoria Police Department are setting up a generational problem with the people they are tasked to serve and protect. Canadians are funny people. We don't tend to get mad a lot. But we do get even.
Update Feb 18,2008
I was contacted by a member of the Victoria Police Department and we discussed the situation. He was very polite and helpful and I was impressed. It is his contention that there are no quotas set up in the department and I believe him. My point was that simply by looking at the numbers of tickets in the last part of the month we could confirm how tickets are issued and I had requested this information earlier so we will need to wait. There is an expectation that the traffic officers will uphold the traffic laws and that makes sense to me. I also raised the issue of the VPD not responding to calls where under $100 was involved and the Officer provided a reasonable explanation why based on the volume of calls they get -clearly there is a need to manage the available resources and this makes sense and it sounds to me that the VPD are short police officers. We discussed the degrees of discretion used by officers when handing out tickets and again this is understandable. It seems that the traffic court is the only way to resolve this particular issue so we will proceed with that approach and collect information to prepare for that. Its too bad as this is going to cost a lot of time and money on both sides to resolve but that's what is going to happen. So is Officer #55 a rascal or a hard working Victoria Police Sgt trying to enforce the traffic rules? Don't know but this ticket is in our opinion completely unfair. I support the police and hope that we have a hard worker here who was just a bit short on discretion that day. Time will tell. We'll let the judge decide.
Update Feb 27/2008
I was contacted by a person from ICBC today regarding my request for information. They advised that they were working on it but it was taking more time than they thought to obtain the information and were still waiting for some of it but expected it to be ready in a couple of weeks. Very polite and helpful. I am looking forward to receiving the information as it should provide some indication of the nature and extent of what appeared to me to be a problem in the area of failure to display the graduated N symbol.
Update April 4th, 2008 Well the "couple of weeks" has now been twice that time and still no info from ICBC. Its now been over two months since I made the request for information which certainly should have been easily available by those managing this government program. In the extremely unlikely event that they do not have access to this information then the only conclusion one could make is that the program is not being managed or I have made an error in judging them so harshly. Or perhaps some of the information coming out is proving my point and somebody has decided its best not to release it. But I retain an open mind on this and will continue to wait patiently for the information requested.
Update December 17/2008 Still waiting its now over 10 months since the request for information went in. Still not a peep from them. I still wonder why. What we are seeing here is our democratic system in action. Clearly the authorities have found out something that makes them look bad and rather than dealing with it appear to be hiding it. But it's all out in the public to anyone who reads this. So the technique which works with everyone else is not working here. Or...it could be a perfectly reasonable other reason -whatever that might be. Interesting isn't it? We will just continue to document this story.
Update April 6,2009 And now the court date is coming up on April 21st 2009. This is very interesting. Hopefully the court will allow him to present his evidence proving that the ticket was issued incorrectly. We shall see what happens and report back.
April 21st 2009. My son attended traffic court presented his case and won. The process took approximately 15 months to resolve. No ticket.
This case raised several questions. And researching traffic offenses I discovered some alarming facts about our police and the entire traffic ticket process. Now generally speaking I have always supported the police and I am grateful to them for the work they do. I am not one of those people who hate cops. And I don't demand perfection because it is a very difficult job and nobody is perfect. I do expect professionalism, honesty and fairness.
I am saddened to report to you that not all Canadian police are professional, honest and fair. There are serious problems with policing in Canada. I am convinced that the great majority of Police Officers are good people but I now realize that a certain percentage - possibly 10 percent are not.
In Ontario, traffic speeding fines are often collected by local municipalities. As a result of that a dependency on these fines has developed and a systematic approach to their collection for revenue purposes has developed. The system is totally unfair and has little if anything to do with safe driving. In certain areas of the province local police are mining the roads for revenue often from out of town drivers just passing through. They set up shop at the bottom of hills near sudden changes in speed signs and then collect millions of dollars doing it. Not only do they collect money but they also apply demerit points to drivers records which in turn results in huge increases for insurance premiums. Apparently insurance companies often will supply police with speed measurement devices at no charge so they can catch speeders and result in higher premiums. The only words for this are unfair, dishonest and unprofessional. An entire industry has sprung up to fight the traffic tickets -not because of the high penalties charged but because of the disastrous effects the demerit points will have on insurance premiums. In fact the fees for this service are often twice or more than that of the original traffic fine. These officers hide under the guise of traffic safety and they and the local and provincial government all hold their noses and collect the money. As a result a great burden is being placed on perfectly good drivers, no impact is being made on road safety and huge amounts of resentment and hatred is being generated against the police. I have often found that when you follow the money everything starts to make sense. So in Canada if you find the police are giving you a hard time and you are an honest law abiding type the reason is likely that they are attempting to use you to collect revenue. If you are a non law abiding type they are bothering you because you deserve it!
The average Canadian is polite to the point of timidness and is loath to complain about traffic tickets. So because nobody complains about them the police are collecting tens of millions of dollars every year and municipalities are now dependent on this income in order to operate.
I still support the police. But I also understand how the system works. They aren't perfect and neither is the system. The chances of improvement in the area of unfair traffic tickets is very unlikely in my mind. Yet another example of Canadian bullshit at it's best.
In an effort to help Canadian drivers my son and I wrote and published The Canadian Winter Driver's Handbook In 141 pages we tell how we drove across Canada in winter in a 23year old van in just under 79 hours. We include a large number of facts and ideas about winter driving that could save your life. There is no other book like it and it would be excellent for anyone contemplating driving on our winter roads.
Be careful on the roads and drive safely! Life is too precious to waste and each year we loose over 2000 drivers on our highways.
