Motorists slugged by the government's increasingly rapacious speeding fine frenzy won't be pleased with the latest antic of the Queensland Police. Ever keen to find new places to slug motorists, police have taken to parking illegally on footpaths on busy roads, as this photo taken on Monday shows.
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Here the speed camera is clearly seen through the back of the vehicle, which was parked on the footpath of busy Lutwyche Road at Windsor.
Parking on footpaths is against the law because it is dangerous - except of course, if you are the Queensland Police Service.
One might be tempted to think that this was just some sort of mistake by an over-enthusiastic constable, but that is not the case. The guidelines for the siting of speed cameras make it clear that the locations have to be approved by a Speed Management Committee, composed of police, the Department of Transport and Main Roads, and others.
It turns out there are more than 3500 locations that have been approved by the committee, but a check of the list of approved sites shows they are so vaguely described as to give the police carte blanche.
In the case of this one, the speed camera could be anywhere on "Lutwyche Road, Windsor". However, there is nowhere on the outbound side of Lutwyche Road that the camera could have been located unless it was parked against the law on the footpath.
Speed camera locations like this are not evidence of mistakes by police on the beat, but instead, of a wilful disregard for the rules by senior echelons of the police.
When asked about this sort of behaviour, a Brisbane City Council spokesman told me that "While Brisbane City Council officers can lawfully issue an infringement notice to a vehicle parked as shown in the photograph, council would be lawfully required to withdraw the notice as the Queensland Police would advise the vehicle was on active duty."
You see, the police routinely claim an exemption under Section 307 of the Transport Operations Regulation. However the exemption only applies if the driver of the police vehicle "is taking reasonable care" and "it is reasonable that the provision should not apply".
That sounds just the ticket for police to ignore the law.
However, well known Brisbane lawyer, Steve Kerin, was not so sure the police are entitled to ignore the law in these circumstances. As he told me: "Any motorist booked by this particular speed camera should give very serious consideration to what their rights are."
He is right.
If it was always the intention of the police to disregard the law, it is difficult to see how the police can argue it is reasonable that the law should not apply.
Moreover, when police disregard the law, it brings themselves and the law into disrepute.
In 2014, speed camera fines in Queensland totalled $167 million, only a fraction of which was invested in making our roads safer. That itself is enough to make most people cynical, however even the Queensland Audit Office took the police to task last year for how they behave.
A report to Parliament in October 2015 stated: "…the QPS mostly deploy mobile cameras in moderately high volume, high infringement areas, even when crash history does not support it."
For their own good, and everyone else's, the police should pay more attention to observing the law when they are seeking to enforce it.
