BRAKING ON TRAFFIC IDEA

Good plan. Wrong people to hire to carry it out. Coun. Shane Keating’s proposal that the city assign 10 peace officers to nab speeders on residential streets is a good one. Everyone has seen motorists barrelling through the residential 50 km/ h zone at 80 or so, heedless of the potential for a child to step out into the street, or for other mayhem to occur as a result of speeding.

But the police commission, which has been asked by city council to study Keating’s idea and report back in the fall, should have very serious concerns about the personnel who would do the work. Keating’s notice of motion suggests that one source of peace officers could be the auxiliary cadet program. The Calgary Police Service trains the cadets — young people between 18 and 24 — to do minor policing work so they can get a better idea of whether they want to be police officers.

This is not the kind of work these cadets should be doing. It would be folly to assume that traffic policing in residential areas is a minor job, and therefore safe for these relatively untrained young people to carry out. Stopping a car for a speeding infraction always contains an element of risk. Most drivers are respectful and civil to police officers, but there is always the chance that a motorist may have a weapon, may have drugs in his car and get violent, or might be wanted on a criminal warrant. Things could get very ugly very quickly for a young and relatively untrained peace officer.

Much of Keating’s proposal is sound. He wants to see the 10 officers’ salaries paid through the fines they collect, thus not burdening the taxpayers with the extra wages. He wants to “break down the silos of departments ... to make residential areas safer.” He also wants to change traffic policing to be a “face- toface kind of education process,” that gets away from photo radar and cameras.

Good ideas, all of them, but the face- to- face education process has an inherent element of danger which should lend some sober second thought to that aspect.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi says the idea would require new resources because peace officers and bylaw officers “are pretty much run off their feet already.” Residential traffic policing would have to involve people whose jobs are dedicated exclusively to that work.

Keating’s motion noted that in the four years between 2008 and 2012, there were 4,000 collisions in residential areas, with 180 people injured and one killed. It is time to get tough on speeders, but a crackdown must be done by professionals trained to handle any potentially dangerous eventuality.