Number of police on road safety duties has halved in a decade – senior officer

By Jonathan McCambridge (PA)

The number of police officers and staff dealing with road safety in Northern Ireland has been cut in half in a decade, a senior officer has said.

Chief Superintendent Sam Donaldson said the force has a “problem” in terms of how it resources issues such as speeding motorists and the detection of drink or drug driving.

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has regularly raised concerns about the PSNI budget and the need for more officers to be recruited.

Mr Donaldson said: “The truth is we don’t have enough resources.

“I would like to have more officers and more staff to deploy to road safety duties.

“About 10 years ago there were nearly 300 involved, that’s police and staff, we are down to around half of that now.

“With half the resources, that means half the deployments, half the detections, half the road safety.

“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind we have got a problem here in terms of the amount of resources the organisation has.

“We have also got a problem in terms of the resources being allocated to road safety.”

Mr Donaldson said there are many different demands on the PSNI budget, including public disorder.

He added: “What inevitably happens as well is, if road policing officers are being redeployed for the disorder in Ballymena, Portadown, places like that, then that again is even less officers being deployed from a road safety perspective.

“There is absolutely an issue there.

“Our vision is, the Chief Constable’s vision, is we get properly funded and we recruit and we get more people into the police service.

“Our vision is absolutely to start to reinvest again from a road safety perspective and have more police officers, have more staff and have more technology because we need money to invest in technology such as our laser devices and our other detection equipment.

“All that has to happen.”

The speeding camera vans which can be sited at roads across Northern Ireland are operated by the Northern Ireland Road Safety Partnership, which includes the PSNI, but which is funded by the fixed penalty notices issued to motorists, rather than from the police budget.

However, PSNI officers are also deployed on road safety duties and Mr Donaldson said this is where there is a “capacity issue”.

He said: “The reality is we have less and less police officers now.

“Therefore we have less and less of an opportunity to deploy people on the ground using the laser, what some people call the hairdryer, for speed detection.

“Sadly, because of the capacity in PSNI, we have less opportunity to do that.

“But the vans, they have been going for about 20 years now, last year they made more detections than ever before.”