Heather du Plessis-Allan: The police are already stretched thin enough

I'm very much on the side of the cops over whether they should be pinging people for smoking in cars with kids.

You'll have caught up on this by now - we've found out police have not been enforcing the law since it was passed three years ago, they haven’t issued a single fine over it, and it's deliberate.

And the Police Union says the reason is because, frankly, cops are busy. And this is not a cop problem, this is a health problem.

I could not agree more. We know police can only do so much, so let's prioritise it. I would personally prefer they were preventing crimes, catching bad guys and putting them in jail, getting stolen stuff back, putting pressure on gangs and keeping our roads safe with booze buses and drug tests.

I could go on and on with my list of priorities for what I want the police to do, and I would go on for a very long time before my list ever hit - stopping stupid parents smoking in their cars with their kids inside.

How is that a police job?

Frankly, if parents are that dumb that they're hot-boxing a car with tobacco while their kids are inside, they're doing that at home as well.

Having the cops come round and give them a crack about the car thing might make the rest of us judgemental drivers feel better, but it’s not going to save the kids. They’re getting that smoke anyway from somewhere else.

This was always a dumb law, simply because it would take up a huge amount of resource for a cop to chase down a car over a ciggie when they could be using that time to prevent a crime from happening.

I actually think Mark Mitchell's done the wrong thing by stepping in and forcing the cops to start enforcing this. He knows they’re stretched already, he's just made that worse.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, I'm very much on the side of the cops
over whether they should be pinging people for smoking in
cars with kids. I mean, you'll have caught up on
this by now, but it's been around most of the day.
We've found out that police have not been enforcing the law,
even the law, even though the law has been passed
for the last three years, and they haven't issued a
single fine, and it's deliberate. They're deliberately not doing it.
And the police union says that the reason that they're

(00:20):
doing this is because, frankly, cops are busy, and this
is not a cop problem, this is actually a health problem.
And I couldn't agree more with him. I mean, I
think we know police can only do so much, so
let's prioritize it. I would personally prefer that the limited
number of officers that we've got out there are preventing crimes,
are catching bad guys, are putting bad guys before the

(00:41):
courts and hopefully in jail, are getting stolen stuff back
for us, are putting pressure on gangs, are keeping our
roads safe, doing things like and we've discussed this this week,
doing things like booze buses and drug tests. I mean,
I could go on and on with my priorities for
what I want the police to do, and I would
go on a very long time before my list ever
hit stopping stupid parents smoking in cars with the kids inside,

(01:05):
Because how is that a police job? How is that
more important than chasing the bad guys and putting pressure
on gangs. Frankly, the way that I see it is,
if parents are that dumb that they're hot boxing a
car with tobacco while their kids are inside, then they're
not just doing that in the car, They're doing that
at home as well, And so having the cops come
around and give them a crack for doing it in

(01:27):
the car might might make the rest of us feel
good about it as we're sitting there being judgmental, and
it would it would make me find feel fantastic to
see somebody that don get pained for it. But it's
not going to save the kids because it's still going
to be going on at home. So it's an utterly
pointless exercise. It was always a dumb law, wasn't it,
Because it was always going to takeup a huge amount
of resource when you think about it. Cops driving down
the road on his way to I don't know, do

(01:49):
some actual cop work. Pass goes a car full of
kids and the mum is smoking, and now what has
he got to do. He's got to chase the car
down and then deal with it and hear the excuses
and issue the fine. And that's how long is that
going to take? What a waste of time, time that
could have been spent preventing a crime from happening. And actually,
while we're on the subject, I think Mark Mitchell I
hardly ever think he does something wrong, but I actually

(02:10):
think he's done the wrong thing in here stepping in
and forcing the cops to start enforcing this. He knows
that the cops are already stretched. Here is a cop himself.
He has just made that worse. For more from Heather
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