Cops shifted from booze buses
WA Police deny dropping the ball on road safety by allowing booze bus teams to be used to backfill in other frontline areas when staff shortages arise.
_The West Australian can reveal that booze bus officers were sent to Sandstone last month to assist with the ground search for missing prospectors Raymond and Jennie Kehlet who vanished in mysterious circumstances.
One of the State's four booze buses was also deployed to Northcliffe for a week during February bushfires where officers manned roadblocks and conducted point duties at intersections.
Labor MP Margaret Quirk, who heads a parliamentary committee examining the effectiveness of road safety initiatives, said she believed it was further evidence that officers were spending less and less time on the road doing their core job of traffic enforcement.
"This makes a lie of the anytime, anywhere message," she said.
"It is quite clear traffic personnel are having to fill gaps in numbers elsewhere.
"The RBT program is proved to save lives and police have an obligation to enforce driving laws and not just when they can muster up the numbers."
But State Traffic Commander Craig Donaldson rejected the criticism, claiming the use of booze bus personnel for other duties was only done on special occasions and under strict guidelines.
He said the Northcliffe fire was a major emergency which required resources from around the State. "If you are saying we are diluting (our traffic resources) to put efforts into areas other than road safety, then I would say you are completely wrong because we continually maintain and balance our resources to continue our spread," Cdr Donaldson said.
New figures provided by police to Ms Quirk's committee last month also showed a big drop in the number of on-the-spot fines being issued by traffic officers - falling from 210,875 in 2012 to 159,379 last year.
In the first three months of this year, 27,476 fines were issued, which equates to about 110,000 fines when averaged over 12 months - or nearly half the 2012 figure.
On-the-spot fines include infringements for not wearing seatbelts, talking on mobile phones and speeding and do not include fines issued to drivers caught by roadside speed cameras.
Police figures also showed that traffic officers were called to attend nearly 5000 jobs last year that were not directly related to traffic.
