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Law-breakers' data comes back to UK
Page 10
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• by Karen Mlles Details of 20 UK hauliers caught breaking the law in Holland are about to be sent electronically to police forces across the UK in the first transmission of its kind.
The 20 operators were caught by Dutch police during the first cross-Europe police check on commercial vehicles, which was conducted in September. The details are about to be entered on a new Metropolitan Police-run computer which will send details of the infringements to all 52 UK police forces.
Although the UK forces cannot prosecute these operators because the offences were committed on foreign soil, the details will help highlight hauliers that should be observed more closely.
The details will also be passed on to the Traffic Commissioners. "They may feel that these circumstances will have a bearing on the operators' good repute," says a police source.
So far, information has only arrived from the Dutch but Metropolitan officers running the new computer are hoping to receive further infringement data on UK hauliers gathered by police in other European Union member states which took part in the check.
Infringement information fed into the Police Intelligence Commercial Enquiry system ("PIKE") is stored under driver and company name and vehicle registration number. Since the launch of PIKE in the summer, UK police forces have entered details of law-breaking for about 3,000 operators.
Around 11,000 EU vehicles were stopped in eight countries during September's check, the first pan-European Operation Mermaid. Police forces in the UK, Eire, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Denmark arid Finland participated. Police in Germany Sweden, Norway Greece and Turkey have shown interest in participating in the next operation.