[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] A Good Troll [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Constable Banana Clearly things are different in America. We are only set up to watch for traffic violations (no insurance, no MOT, DUI etc.) if nothing better is to be done. Otherwise, we crack down on traffic violations if we happen to come across one while patrolling. Just for clarity, in British.[/quote] As an example, a few weeks ago the local cops decided to set up a traffic sting near the exit to my neighborhood - inside the neighborhood not on the main street. The speed limit is 25mph throughout even though near the exit for about a half mile there are no homes on the street for beautification purposes. They had about ten officers hiding on an off-street - whenever they would radar someone going over, they'd send a cop off to chase them down. When I went by, they had four cars pulled over. They did this for over five hours - I left at 7:30 and they were still there at 12:30 when I came home for lunch. Dedicating 10 officers to running speed traps in one area just seemed like abuse to me. They told my neighbor who got pulled the HOA had complained about high rates of speed - when we contacted the HOA they said that they had made no such request for officers to run radar.[/quote] Police are often given grants or requested to police a certain area. Most definitely if an emergency were to pop up, they'd leave. The police here were given a grant to stand at 4-way stops to check that people had their seatbelts on. Funny thing is, even with all those cops standing there being as obvious as can be, people still got ticketed for not wearing seatbelts. My neighborhood also had hoodlums that would race or speed down the road. We have little kids playing in their yards and these d-bags are speeding by. We call complained about it and the cops went door to door explaining how the dirtbikes they were riding weren't street legal and speeding would not be tolerated. They also did rounds through the neighborhood to catch any speeders. Since doing so, the d-bags take their crazy stunts elsewhere. Job successful.