Police ‘should be kept separate’

Press, 18 February 1989, Page 2

Police ‘should be kept separate’

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington There are good reasons for keeping police and traffic officers as separate but co-operating bodies, according to the Minister of Transport, Mr Jeffries. He was commenting on the decision by the threeday caucus of the National Party in Auckland to combine the police and traffic officers. Claims that combining the'two led to improved efficiency would be hard to substantiate and were largely illusory, Mr Jeffries said. Traffic officers and police were specialists trained in specific areas of community activities. Combining them would lower efficiency rather than improve it, he said. The police and the traffic enforcement branch of the Ministry of Transport already combined naturally in areas such as drink-driving campaigns. But road safety planning and traffic enforcement required co-ordina-tion in one place and that was the transport sector of the Government, he said. Responsiblity for administering road safety, reading design and planning could not be borne properly if the law enforcement aspects of road safety became a police function.