Following a busy Easter weekend on the roads, New Zealand Police Commissioner Peter Marshall is quietly conceding that police have reached their nationwide quota of speeding tickets for the entire year of 2013.
The quota, reportedly set at around 700,000, acts as both a target and a cap with regards to how many speeding tickets police should seek to issue in a given year. Now that the cap has been reached, Marshall says police will cease to actively prosecute speeding offences for the remainder of the year.
“Well yeah, look, if they’re endangering lives and hitting little kiddies and stuff, then we’d stop them” he said. “But if they’re just cruising along at 160km/h then I don’t think there’s much we’d be doing about that now, realistically.”
Marshall acknowledged that the lack of policing may embolden some to break the law.
“Well obviously we don’t want to advertise the fact that there is now virtually no penalty for driving at dangerously high speeds” he said. “But there isn’t.”
Some are questioning how police could have reached such a high quota in so short a period of time, and Labour Party police spokesman Kris Faafoi is calling for an investigation into whether or not police have deliberated manufactured their numbers for their own personal gain. Police are denying this, as well as one report that they deliberately issued 10,000 speeding tickets to the same man.
“No that’s just nonsense” said Marshall. “I mean, if there was someone who was issued with ten thousand speeding tickets – and I’m not saying there was – but if there were, then it would be because they were simultaneously committing ten thousand different speeding infringements.”
Asked if that were possible, Marshall replied “Yes.”
The police commissioner reiterated that, despite the filling of the year’s speeding quota, police would still be continuing to prosecute other crimes, such as arson or homicide, but that New Zealanders should remain vigilant because they’re “getting pretty close” to those quotas as well.