Grinning Hazel Blears hails traffic police triumph

A new initiative which supporters say will eradicate crime completely has been announced by Hazel "The Smirk" Blears, Minister for Criminal Activity. "I can't understand why no-one thought of it before," she told a packed press conference in the tea garden of the Homeley Office yesterday. The idea however is somewhat controversial and highlights a growing divergence in the UK's faltering police service.

As traffic police continue to catch offenders in record numbers, conventional urban crime continues to rise at an alarming rate. "By giving criminals free cars we know that sooner rather than later, they'll be caught by traffic police and successfully punished." Blears, wearing an authentic looking police uniform to celebrate the occasion, continued to give details of trial studies carried out in North Yorkshire.

In the month of February 2005 aggravated assault rose by 12 per cent, rape by 3 per cent, burglary by 27 per cent, murder by 1.4 per cent, anti-social behaviour offences rose by 2689 per cent and muggings by 85 per cent. A total of 28,764 offences resulted in three successful prosecutions. In the same month North Yorkshire traffic police successfully caught and fined 238,743 speeding motorists, 19,679 drivers without a seat belt, 26,598 vehicles without a tax disc, and recorded a staggering 14,765,329 parking offences. The total income from fines was £362.8m, or 0.085 per cent of GDP.

When the trial started a month later in March, Operation Giveaway caused a 98.7 per cent rise in clear-up rates. The figures were:

• 8567 burglars were caught doing 33mph in a 30 mph zone.
• 1289 muggers were arrested for parking just outside designated parking bays on Ripon Road in Leeds.
• 12 murderers were stopped and arrested for not wearing a seatbelt
• 659 "happy slappers" were caught filming themselves without a valid tax disc in their Citroen Saxos.
• 3581 suspects wanted for assault with menaces were stopped and arrested for doing 159mph on a stretch of the A1(M).

The Minister for Criminal Activity denied rumours that a two-tier police system was being deliberately created, but did say that "the figures suggest a more robust and imaginative approach to policing is necessary. I'm sure drivers and motorists everywhere will join me in congratulating the police on being so effective. The traffic police system is both effective and lucrative, not from a Treasury point of view, but in terms of social benefit, and that more resources will now be directed to those sections of policing that produce the most tangible success rates." Ministerial shorthand for a two-tier police system.

The Rockall Times spent an hour with PC Bill Warner and PC Mickey "Duffer" Arkwright, of North Yorkshire police's traffic division to see what they were doing right. I was met at Shackley Services on the M1 by a Lamborghini Murcielago painted like a panda car. "When criminals are proceeding in an orderly direction looking over their shoulders and checking their mirrors the last thing they expect to see is a Murcielago painted like this. It gets them every time," said PC Warner eating a truncheon meat sandwich. And sure enough, within seven seconds of joining the motorway they caught their first offender.

Fifty-seven-year-old Margery Thompson, a cleaner from Doncaster, was stopped in her Toyota Corolla for not wearing a seat belt. "Another ne'er-do-well apprehended," said Warner after issuing a clearly shaken Thompson with a £250 fine. "She'll have to go on to the Sex Offenders Register for 12 months as well. People have to understand that they're breaking the law." In just thirty minutes, along a three mile stretch of motorway, PCs Warner and Arkwright stopped and arrested a startling 88 offenders ranging from 19-year-old Becky Tubbs, a history student at Leeds University (doing 50.2mph in a 50mph stretch of roadworks -fined £750), and 96-year-old Alf Trout, who still has a shrapnel wound from his D-Day landing on Sword Beach, stopped and fined £1300 for overtaking in the middle lane without indicating.

I asked PCs Warner and Arkwright (known to their colleagues as Judge and Jefferies) whether they ever use their discretion and let people off with a warning. "No, never," said Arkwright, who only the previous week successfully prosecuted his mother for parking in a space reserved for women with prams. "Traffic offences are the first rungs of a criminal career that can eventually lead to terrorism and organised crime. A lot of people we stop admit to having illegally recorded television programmes. So we know these are real criminals we're stopping."

The country's 278,000 traffic police have not had it all plain sailing this week though. News that PC Mark Milton had been cleared of driving at 159mph on the M54 because he was practicing at driving a Vauxhall was greeted with derision by road safety campaigners. However, police authorities have welcomed the verdict and announced new plans to build on the legal precedent set. Merseyside Police say that their officers will now be able to practice baton wielding, an operational issue that was previously a grey area. Somerset and Avon Police say they will now be able to practice their "assertive suspect interrogation" technique. And Greater Manchester Police say that they'll be looking at operational deficiencies, such as letting burglars go free and muggers escape. "These will be a thing of the past now that they can practice catching people regardless of whether they have committed an offence or not," said a delighted spokesman for GMP, PC Carl Goebbels.

An optimistic Hazel Blears, waving a Union Jack, said that it was a win win situation for law abiding citizens of Britain. "In the short term, as traffic police divisions mop up in all areas of crime, conventional forces will be ready for the demands of the future by being able to practice without fear of prosecution, investigation or accusations of heavy handedness or racism." She later went on to announce that conversations taped by arrested members of the public will no longer be admissible evidence in court if that person has dark skin.

*As a footnote to this article, news has reached The Rockall Times that Gert van Gjleeft, the Dutch inventor of the Gatso camera, has died at the age of 78. At his funeral near Hilversum an estimated 385,000 wellwishers turned up to dance on his grave.

Previously

• War over the War on Crime™ and the causes of crime rages unabated
• Champagne corks pop as crime figures plummet
• Northants police celebrate eradication of all serious crime