Quote:
Originally Posted by martyh
He reacted to information given and followed accepted protocol .The decision, was his to make ,he made what he thought was the right decision given his local knowledge and got punished for it and because of cases like this many drivers are scared to pursue criminals or drive fast to emergencies and given that emergency drivers have a specific response time they are stuck between a rock and a hard place
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That's not what the IPCC thought (which rather suggests he did not follow accepted protocol; I'm not sure why you even say that, because it's not mentioned anywhere in the article.)
Quote:
After the trial Gary Garland, the North East Commissioner for the Independent Police Complaints Commission, said the tragedy "should have been totally avoidable".
He added: "PC John Dougal is a highly trained police driver, yet he chose to take totally unnecessary and unacceptable risks and travel at high speed on a residential road.
"He had no justification whatsoever to drive at such excessive speed.
"Being a highly trained police driver should never be used as licence to take unnecessary risks on public roads."
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I accept that there may be situations where time is essential and use of lights and sirens not advisable, but this does not appear to be one of those situations. Someone died as a result of a decision he made and he is held responsible. It seems right to me that where someone can put the life of others at risk in his or her job they cannot do so with impunity.