After sending a complaint to the Commissioners office, and to the complaints department, I got a response from a Chief Inspector. And it was pathetic, imho - I don't think its appropriate for me to post the text here, but you'll get an idea about it from my response (below)...
Dear xxxxxxx,I'm not clear why you think this isn't sufficient evidence to be worth having words with the gentleman. The perspective from which the image is taken is right in front of the driving position - while it is possible that it could be another person leaning right in front of the driver, it isn't likely - and I should think you'd also be wanting a word with the driver for allowing that to happen. And while, yes, it is possible that the picture was taken with a camera and later transferred to another device to then put up online, surely thats something you'd also be wanting to talk to the driver about? If you saw a driver using a camera while at the wheel of the car, you'd certainly be having a word.Bluntly, there is no combination of factors leading to this photograph being taken from the driving position of a car that does not give you good cause for talking to the driver - and it seems impossible to argue that talking to the driver is disproportionate.It is also not hard to track down who sent this - the link (which I provided) to the tweet takes you to his twitter feed, from which you can see he's got a link to his facebook address therein. Looking at the contents thereof it won't be hard to find his email contact, name and, from that, location. I'm a little disappointed that you think thats too much work - its almost none. Indeed, have you not considered simply emailing him to ask? I'm not for a moment suggesting you should be storming round with flashing blue lights, but there is clearly something wrong going on here, and if you ignore such a blatantly wrong thing it'll keep happening - don't you want to stop this before an accident occurs as a result of this behaviour?I must also say that it really does need to be simpler to make online contact with the police. If you've got a twitter presence, and I send information such as this to you via. twitter, why can't you deal with it simply and effectively without having to make a call, make another call because I've been cut off, send an email, send another email, and chase it via. the another call because the email address may not be checked for days? This isn't just a simple training issue, its a problem with Cambridgeshire Constabulary being incommunicative - from my end it looks like you're doing everything you possibly can to avoid even taking the report, even to the extent of coming up with implausible excuses for the picture perhaps being taken by someone else and not checking the link I sent which will, very quickly, find you the contact information you need.Is Cambridgeshire Constabulary a police force of the 20th or 21st century?Yours,(my name)
12 days on I got another reply. You'll have an idea what that said from my response below...
Dear xx,Thanks for your response and for looking in to this.I'm a little baffled that you've brought up your role in looking at road traffic incidents where life changing injuries occur in response to being asked to look into this. On the face of things this looks illegal. We see regular 'crackdowns' on road infractions which are not immediately causing such injuries, and I've yet to hear a police officer in the media complain that their time would be better spent dealing with other things.I understand that such a thing won't be an immediate top priority, but would you rather that this kind of thing isn't reported at all? Surely if mobile phone use (or fiddling with a camera or, at best, letting someone else lean over you to take a picture while you're driving!) is a serious enough offence for the police to occasionally target, you must also want people to report such things?The response first via. twitter, then via. phoning 101, then from the Inspector and now from you seems grudging, to say the least! I'd rather hope that our police force would be all in favour of this - can you please explain to me where I've got that wrong? Bluntly, Police response to this appears evasive, slow, and grudging.Cheers,......
Okay, I get it, limited Police time and resources and all that. But you can't tell me that you can have a crackdown on cyclists having lights while simultaneously ignoring things like this - thats not proportionate policing. You also can't be telling me that you'll only look at something if you're badgered in to it. What kind of policing is that?
Bottom line? This isn't going to get Cambridgeshire Constabulary good publicity like a 'crackdown' on mobile phone use does, so I don't think they're interested. If they were interested I'd have been able to report this with one tweet or, at most, one call.
Nonsensical policing from a force that, demonstrably, are failing cyclists. Sorry, but there it is - the Police have made this needlessly difficult from the outset. Can it really be that they're making it so hard to report something to reduce the incidence of reports?
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