[Flyboy]

Originally Posted by Derek S

I'll bullet point it for you. You are obviously incapable of understanding it any other way. I'm not going into the full training and policies for pursuits for a variety of reasons.

I have a good capacity to understand a logical perspective, unfortunately this does not follow any logic I am aware of.

He was a highly trained driver in a marked Police car.

And so should easily have been able to follow procedure

The Police car was fitted with an ANPR system which alerted him to a potential stolen vehicle driving past him the other way

I thought the reasons for the flag were uncertain, do you have more information?

In a very short space of time he had to decide whether to follow the vehicle, turn a car round and catch up with the vehicle

It takes less than one second to flick a switch. He could have chosen to do that at anytime from receiving the alert from the ANPR. In fact there are many things he could have done to avoid the tragedy, but he chose not to.

During this time he didn't have time to do everything he would like to have done so had to prioritise keeping the car in view until he could radio in that he was in a pursuit situation

The IPCC disagree, with you as does ACPO, the courts and other police officers. Do you support opinions of this body? Do you support the opinions of ACPO? Do you support opinions of other police officers who agree with the courts?

I would have thought that his priority was to keep the public safe.

You may be some kind of hand-wringing apologist aghast at the thought the Police take any form of risk in apprehending criminals but I live in the real world. Risks need to be taken. If you automatically barred the Police from pursuits every criminal in the land would take to screaming about in stolen cars knowing they cant be touched.

Apologist? Who am I apologising for?

What I and many others on this thread are asking for is for the police to be accountable for their "mistakes." We are also asking them to behave in a manner in accordance to their traing and the guidelines they are issued with.

Of course at this point the first time one of them takes out a pedestrian the cops will get a hard time for failing to stop them.

Failing to stop who? If you mean the alleged car thief, I doubt very much the public would give two hoots about him, compared to the death of a child. What is just as worrying as that you seem to think that the public regard stopping a car thief more important than keeping a child from being mowed down at ninety-four miles per hour.

And I'll leave the thread at this point before I injure myself by hitting my head off the wall.

Just for clarification my viewpoint is.

I think the Police driver was justified for the way he was driving
I do not think he should have been convicted.
He has been convicted and as such he should be treated as any other criminal and not have his fate decided by media stories.

Again, this is the most disturbing aspect of this thread to date. That fact that you consider the death of a child to be of a lower importance than the price of a car and that you truly believe that the majority of police officers in the country agree with you.