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The shortage is more acute in London because many motorcycle cops were put on VIP protection because of terrorism.
Is there some evidence of that , just curious. Afaik most motorcycle police were just traffic officers who had also passed the bike course, protection requires a firearms ticket which is a different kettle of fish so not easy to just reallocate people. only bikes I see doing escorts around town are Special Escort Group who have always been distinct from traffic. In fact priti Patel is outside and she’s in a two car convoy with no bikes.
underuser53929
@nick_h.
Traffic police numbers have been cut heavily, partly because road deaths aren't a hot issue (politicians and voters want the emphasis on crimefighting) and partly because of the huge share of police budgets allocated to anti-terror since the Borough Market attack.
Since ANPR matured, traffic police have been very effective at finding criminals. So that's a large part of what they do. Many of their stops are prompted by a bleep from the database because a crime report has a vehicle registration in it. They also have to spend hours gathering evidence whenever there's a fatal accident. All of which doesn't leave enough time for stops prompted by bad driving, faulty lights etc. My motorbike number plate fell off a few years ago, and I rode around without one for two weeks, as an experiment. Finally I was stopped in Stockwell, but I had to provoke the officers by overtaking them on an empty road when they were bimbling along below the limit. I acted surprised and was extra super polite and they let me off and apologised.
The shortage is more acute in London because many motorcycle cops were put on VIP protection because of terrorism. It's become absurdly rare to see a police motorbike on traffic duty in London.
So this is a Golden Age if you want to drive drunk or high or run the lights or do 60 between the cameras or fit a loud exhaust to get the attention of ten year olds