But also, I was surprised and disappointed that the police didn't seem to have any oversight procedures or risk management in place. I would have expected that driving at those sorts of speeds on a non-emergency situation would have required some sort of explicit approval, or at least the filing of some sort of "flight plan" before doing it. That would be absolutely normal in pretty much every other walk of life and at the very least it would confirm that the high speed driving was on police business. Perhaps they have these procedures but completely failed to explain them. Perhaps there's a good reason why the police don't, or didn't, do this, and if so then perhaps Bernie174 would be able to enlighten us. But either way it was a poor PR failure.
Your last point is well made. The Police PR machine exists simply to say sorry these days, and in the past was there to tell people to pee off and mind your own business.
The error has been that the Police need to be less of the taking the blame for every ill since the French invasion of 1066, and more to explanation, it's not going to happen for a long time though.
Anyway, to answer your first point, you need to understand 2 things. Firstly the status of Constable. It's an independent officer appointed under the Crown, it is not the same as an employee or member of the forces, in that for example, a Police officer cannot be ordered to arrest without a warrant. It's an independent decision, like the majority of decisions they make. It isn't like working in Industry.
The second thing you need to know is that Road traffic law allows a vehicle (doesn't have to be a police owned vehicle) being driven by a police officer (I use Police Officer, but it applies to the other emergency services and some other services as well) to exceed a speed limit, if obeying it would hinder that purpose. But again, the onus is on the driver of the vehicle to show that purpose.
There is case law that extends that to training, and familiarisation.. Thats why PC Milton could not be charged with speeding.
When driving, I could not, for example be ordered to drive faster, slower or to take a particular course through traffic, I also didn't need anyone else's say so to drive fast, either on a call, to catch up with another car, or for famil/training I could and did 'self authorise', and it was my responsibility when if it went wrong. Afterall, it would be me in the box, either witness or wooden!
I would base that a decision on famil on what I needed to achieve, so if I knew that I could do 90 down Clapham Common South Side (which I did often!), then I'd need to know how a car I'd not driven before would behave at that speed. We didn't always drive the same vehicles, and sometimes drove more than 1 in a shift, the most I did was 6. All cars are different, even the same make and model vary. So an Avenger for example, might take longer to stop than an SD1 Rover. If I hit a pot hole in Panda1, it would lurch differently from Panda2, even though both were Allegros. So common sense says you need to know how each vehicle reacts if you need to drive at speed. The last thing you want to do is find that out when on a call when you are navigating, planning ahead as to how to deal with what you are going to as well as driving.
So, we did famil, if possible on nights (like PC Milton did), when there's not much traffic about, (Like PC Milton), on roads we policed (like PC Milton). The responsibility for doing it was mine, the training requirement was mine to decide, the consequences, if any were mine to bare. The 'risk' assessment was mine to make given the road conditions in front of me, not for someone else in a control room miles away, or a Section Sergent in the Station. Other walks of life are neither here nor there, Police Officers in the past were treated as adults, I work in Industry now, and frankly even very senior managers have no where near the discretion and responsibility I had. The 2 things are not comparable.
As a result of the PC Milton case, authorisation has now got to be given, a frankly stupid step as far as I am concerned, and one that doesn't do safety any good. Sergeants and above now are extremely risk adverse, and who are they to decide what training I need? The danger is that where it's needed training and famil, it isn't going to happen, and that means peoples lives really being put in danger as a result. Thats something that happened because of uniformed public opinion, which goes back to your point on PR, and panic from not very bright senior police officers who have never done any operation police duty, so have no idea of the realities, but are terrified of a PC doing something that ruins their chances of the next rank.
