Do police need to wear high vis clothing when attending traffic incidents?
 

Background:
It really irks me that some police will trot out into the middle of a street wearing all dark blue with the assumption that they are perfectly visible and the vehicle they want to stop will see them and stop. I often need to wear high vis PPE at my job when there is near 0 risk of interaction with moving equipment and said equipment is moving at less than 10 km/h; but police will run into a highway with a disregard for laws designed to protect their own personal safety.

In BC, 51 traffic control persons were hit by moving vehicles between 2008 and 2012.
They are decked out in lime green everything gear in the middle of construction zones with cones and signs and blinking lights everywhere.

Understandably the 6000 flagpersons in BC are always directing traffic and are at more risk because of the number of hours spent on the street versus and the appx 8000 police in BC who are not always conducting traffic enforcement. This certainly lowers the injury rate among police but I am still surprised we don't more frequently hear of police being hit by moving vehicles.

So the simple question:
Are police exempt from laws related to wearing high visibility clothing?

Federal law (covering RCMP):
Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations (SOR/86-304) 12.13(a)
Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations

Provincial law (covering municipal police):
Workers Compensation act Part 8 - 8.24 (2) and/or Part 8 - 8.24 (3)
Occupational Health and Safety Regulation

Example pictures from in and around the lower mainland:
1:
http://i.imgur.com/L8gCO1P.jpg
2:
http://i.imgur.com/IoOeGpf.jpg
3:
http://i.imgur.com/CwZp8Hs.jpg
4:
http://i.imgur.com/ZFgg3tI.jpg
5:
http://i.imgur.com/hQdiswl.jpg
6:
http://i.imgur.com/BHghxu4.jpg

correct me if i am wrong but those pictures make it seems that you are stalking local police officers??!?:seriously:


but i agree with you on hi vis vest.

if it doesn't apply to the RCMP due the option of using barricades, then the pictures with the RCMP (the guys with the yellow stripe down the leg), should be removed.

Pic 2, 3, and 5 are doing seatbelt/cell phone enforcement.
There was no police vehicle on the road to create a barricade.
(well there kinda is in 2 but he wasn't using it as one)

Pic 4 had his vehicle directly behind and not offset at all like the Lambo pic from the other thread; not much of a barricade there. Also, pic was taken on the side of Highway 1, a Primary Highway. Probably not the best use of discretion on the member's part.

I have never seen any officer, in any jurisdiction wear a high visibility vest to conduct traffic stops. I know they do when at the scene of an accident, and also when they are conducting traffic ops'. the guys who usually don't wear the vest are behind a pole on the side walk, not on the street. Those guys are also usually the one that spots the offence, and relays information to the officer that is further down, who ultimately pulls the vehicle over.

Secondly, each detachment may have their own policy regarding high visibility vests, that trumps the Provincial Regulations. It would be interesting to see if that is the case.

2 3 5 are all not on the road.

i have seen countless times officers who are doing speed checks (marine WB just before Elliot in the alley where they hide) who dont wear the vest and when they clock someone, they run out into the street. Mind you, its not like you don't see them or anything but they dont have a green vest. BUT i have also seen them in the same spot with a green vest. Not sure what the law is in regards to wearing them or not.

^ true, but when they need to stop the offender to direct them to pull to the side they will need to step into the roadway.

there is not "law" only regulation/policy.

I don't think its unreasonable to expect someone who is planning on stepping out into the roadway to stop a vehicle, to wear a safety vest.

I wear one all fucking day long on every job site I go to. Even when I am inside the high rise structures where there is no equipment or machinery operating.

I am 99% certain that if I phoned WorkSafe they would condemn the actions of these officers, and most likely come down like the hand of god on some local detachments if they saw this behavior.

Nope...a provincial organization has no authority over a Federal Govt organization.

The Basis of workers compensation federally is Merediths 5 principles.

Here in BC it is a duty tasked to WorkSafe BC (Formally known as WCB), in BC there an an additional two principles developed my Pineo, which together with Merediths principles form the Basis of our compensation system.

Needless to say, fine you are right Worksafe does not necessarily have jurisdiction over RCMP officers, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't care.

Either way though the exact same rules apply under the Government Employees compensation act.

So at the end of the day there is someone who gives a fuck about what these officers are doing. You can play your little game and dance around my words, but if the right person were to see one of these officers stepping into traffic not wearing their reflective stripes, there would be hell to pay.

NONE of this applies to police like west Vancouver and others who display this type of behaviour. Worksafe would most definitely punish those PD's.

And Worksafe has previously gotten involved with local detachments, see here:

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Wor...797/story.html


EDIT: I did also just notice that I did initially also say "Local Detachments", to me that does mean non-RCMP PO's.

Worksafe can get involved with West Van and "local" detachments because they are detachments that have sworn Provincial Police officers.

I know that, that is exactly why I said that.

:suspicious:

Meme405 - How old are you?

23.

Not making a personal attack here but just seems like a lot of your posts are emotional based.

Not offended.

Maybe I am just an emotional person.



I'm a pretty polar person, I'm never really in the middle on a subject, I know what my opinion is and I stand behind it. Therefore people posting stupid shit probably gets me posting more than others.

Yea, which is confusing because you quoted Zulu who was talking about the the Federal employees.. ie RCMP

Who cares who I quoted, I said this:

Then directly after you come along and say the exact same thing...

Either way it doesn't matter, the basis of the federal compensation program, has the exact same basis as worksafe. So both RCMP and municipal detachments would still find themselves in trouble over this. Does it really matter what government organization would come after them over it?

no, but if you are going to use examples, at least be as accurate as possible and don't generalize.

Please tell me where the generalization was in my original post:


If you substitute "local detachment" for "municipal police", my statement is 100% correct.

Your a lost cause, you just try and nitpick, and play down the real issue.

I get it you want to defend your fellow officers, but maybe next time you should think about their safety, instead of the need to hand out more tickets by being sneaky and hiding behind poles and stepping out into traffic while not wearing proper PPE.

There is no traffic ticket in the world worth getting hit by a car.

Lets get back on the real issue here and you can continue to tell me how okay it is for these officers to not wear the protective gear they are all issued.

EDIT: I can go back and nit pick as well:

You use the slash in between regulation and policy as if the terms are comparable however they are not. A regulation is much more similar to a law than it is to a policy. In fact a regulation is usually subject to the exact same penalties and disciplinary actions.

im not 100% sure here, but im pretty sure they're personal safety is higher than your concern for their safety.
so a cop is sneaky...would you rather them hide behind a light post with a high visible vest that you can see from 500 yards away??? or perhaps put up a construction sign saying "caution, cop ahead, slow down" gee...thats not a dead give away. if people weren't douches who would learn how to A) not speed. B) wear their seat belts. or C) get off their fucking phones or D) be aware of their current surroundings, they wouldn't have to step out into traffic nearly as much.

also, 90% of the cops I'ive seen who hide behind poles, have another cop a block ahead of them letting them know which car is speeding etc, so they can step out well in advance in a safe manner.

just my 2cents. i find what they do perfectly safe.

The undercover cops: Sneaky police officers hide in bushes to catch unsuspecting drivers with speed guns | Mail Online

Older article, UK based, but the core principle is much the same here.

What is an officers mandate? To stop people from breaking the law. It is NOT to hand out tickets in any manner possible. Although I guess you could say that handing out tickets is how they teach people long term lessons, but I don't think thats right, they use these tactics to trap people and generate more revenue.

For example an officer is waiting in plain view at a 4 way stop, he won't write many tickets, but I AM damn certain everyone is going to come to a full stop, and obey the law.

Same situation but the cop parks his car in a parking lot out of the way, and hides in the bushes. He is going to write a lot of tickets, but guess what, its only going to be after he sees someone run the stop sign. In an unfortunate situation what happens if there is an accident because of a stop sign runner while the officer is in the bush 20 feet away just trying to write a ticket? In this situation the officer didn't do anything useful to prevent the accident. He just generated revenue for the province. Revenue that is then used to pay for more cops to sit in bushes elsewhere generating revenue.

But I digress, hide behind all the signs you want, just wear the fucking yellow jacket, that way nobody can say they didn't see you when they darted out into traffic to stop a speeding car (One that is potentially texting, or drunk and not paying attention). You will notice that even in the UK where this was a problem, the officers immediately turned around and said "look we were wearing bright green jackets", the officers here can't even say that.

On saturday of this past week there was 2 officers at the south end of the lions gate, they were clocking speeders coming just over the crest of the bridge.

I was only going about 65 (its a 60), so I didn't really do anything drastic except for let off the accelerator, the guy beside me was passing me so he must have been doing 70-80. The cop walked through my lane, into the vans lane to try and stop him.

The distance from the crest of the bridge to wear they were standing is approx 300-350m. At 60km/h it only takes 20 seconds to travel this distance, now imagine, by the time the cop actually catches the car, clocks his speed, moves to stop the car, walks accross my lane into his and signals him to stop, this minivan which was not moving at 60km/h probably more about 75, panicked and slammed on his breaks, and actually swerved into my lane.

Luckily I had seen everything and I have slowed down enough that I wasn't beside the minivan any longer. Had I not done so, the minivan would have either sideswiped me and caused an accident or run right through the officer.

I was in shock and disbelief that someone would be dumb enough to walk into the centerlane of a road, to stop a car. If something were to go wrong he couldn't jump to the side of the road, because he would be jumping into another lane of traffic. This cop probably played way too much frogger as a kid.

And no he wasn't wearing his High Vis.

So let's put an officer at every intersection then.

If he's hiding in a bush, jumps out to write a ticket, meanwhile someone else has an accident in the intersection....c'mon...he can't do two things at once. He's writing a ticket..you want him/her to have a group of flag crews with them to direct retarded drivers how to drive around a parked car - most likely in a parking lane. If he's in the bush while an accident occurs, then I feel sorry for the way you think...accidents happen in split seconds. I doubt he'd have the speed to see something -> run out to warn -> save the day... Accident will happen regardless whether a police officer is there or not..

Should j walkers wear visi-vests? God forbid you can't see them either. But a portion of your taxes don't go to their salary, so you most likely don't care.

Handing out tickets is a way to make people learn. If that person is dumb enough to get a 2nd ticket for the same offence then their dumbasses.