Canada deploying cardboard cops to nab speeders

Raven 06-10-2008

Police in westernmost Canada are deploying life-size cardboard replicas of traffic cops pointing a radar gun at oncoming traffic to try to reduce speeding and road fatalities, authorities said.

And these mock-ups are so realistic that while being tested on a Vancouver street this week, “a tow-truck driver pulled up and started talking to it,” Staff Sergeant Ralph Pauw told a press conference on Thursday.

Eight of the cut-outs will initially be deployed on city streets, Pauw said. And in case some drivers aren’t fooled by the facsimiles, “there may or may not be a (real) police officer behind one of these cut-outs,” he added.

hugo281

well that's nothing new, I've seen some here in Houston around the Sugar Land and Richmond areas and half of the time I've seen the real cops up on the side of the roads just waiting or catch a speeder that ignores the cut-outs, I wouldn't be surprised if there's more of them out through the whole state

carmelnell

Really? Thats crazy! i havent seen anything yet down here in louisiana but IM SURE they'll get to us lol!

Nina

Call me thinking out sie the box but knowing the majority o people's feelings towards cops, wouldn't this just give peole a target

hugo281

yeah pretty much lol, watch I betcha some idiot is going to be drunk and have a gun then he'll see the cardboard cut out and go "Darn Cops!!!" POW-POW!! firing rounds into the cut out lol so far I haven't heard anything here in TX but up in Canada someone already did that and the news said he ended up in jail for shooting rounds all over the place trying to hit the fake cop cut-out lol, and I don't know if they have them over in Louisiana yet Carmel, but yeah they might start to sooner or later depending on how well they work in every other city

Hsoolien

Canada is a huge fan of passive policing, basically we use every resource outside of actual cops to do police work. Some of it's excessive (photo-radar, there have been so many accounts of bribery and misuse with this technology, as well the average speed outside photo-radar zones has actually gone up, yet they still use it), some useful (red light cameras have severely reduced crashes in intersections where the bases are installed (and in Edmonton you have a 1/3 chance they won' even have a camera, so they are super effective).

I always see more of a police presence in the US then I ever do in Canada.