Must not warn other motorists to slow down in Britain -- and other oppression of decent citizens by British police

A similar prosecution was recently thrown out in the USA and a similar charge against me some years ago in Australia was dropped after it was concluded that no offence had been committed -- JR

There are certainly some forces who could do with a primer in customer service. In Grimsby, for instance, a 64-year-old motorist has been convicted of ­obstruction because he flashed his lights at drivers ­coming in the opposite direction to warn them of a speed trap ahead.

Semi-retired Michael Thompson was accused of perverting the course of justice after being stopped on the A46. Although Mr ­Thompson argued that he was doing his ‘civic duty’, the Crown Prosecution Service took up the case ‘in the public interest’. The court fined him £175, ordered him to pay £250 costs and slapped on a £15 victim surcharge.

Presiding magistrate Jean ­Ellerton said: ‘We found that your flashing of your headlights was an obstruction, we found that you knew this action would cause ­vehicles to slow down and cause other motorists to avoid the speed trap and avoid prosecution.’

And your point is, pet? For years, the Old Bill has insisted that the purpose of speed traps is to encourage safe driving and enforce the speed limit — not to secure convictions and raise money. Mr Thompson’s prosecution blows that argument out of the water.

By warning other drivers of the speed trap, he was encouraging them to slow down and drive safely. So what’s the problem? In what way was he obstructing the police, other than preventing them nicking people? Silly question. That’s exactly why he was prosecuted.

Mr Thompson says that the policeman who stopped him was a ‘Rambo character’ who acted like ‘Judge Dredd’. Sounds about right.

Unfortunately, there are coppers who measure their success by the number of arrests they make, no matter how trivial the alleged offence, not by the number of lives they save or the number of crimes they prevent.

They delight in showing us who’s boss and deliberately antagonising law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. What’s worse is when they are supported by senior officers, the allegedly-independent CPS and, especially, the magistrates who are supposed to uphold justice. This case should never have reached court. And when it did, it should have been thrown out.

A few months ago, I brought you the story of photographer Dave Hogan’s run-in with a stroppy WPC and a probationer in North ­London. He was given a ticket and a ­patronising lecture for using a mobile phone while driving — even though he could prove he was stationary at a red traffic light and hadn’t made or received a call at the time alleged on the summons.

Dave gave in and paid up when he realised it would cost him a ­minimum of £2,000 and a shedload of aggravation to fight the £60 fixed penalty in court. But his faith in the police took a nosedive.

For the past two-and-half months, another motorist has been in a ­running battle with police chiefs after being given a ticket for ­‘driving without a seatbelt’. Austin Musgrave-Brown, 67, ­unfastened his safety belt while he was sitting in stationary ­traffic in Lowestoft, with his handbrake on and his engine switched off, as he waited in a queue for the town’s drawbridge on the A12 to lower.

‘When the bridge came down, I put my seatbelt back on before starting the engine and ­continuing,’ he said. Half a mile later he was pulled over a given a fixed penalty notice. ‘At no time was I ever driving ­without a seatbelt, not one inch,’ said Mr Musgrave-Brown, who has now made an official complaint.

But the officer who stopped him said he might have suffered from whiplash if his car had been shunted from the rear while he was parked and was therefore ­committing an offence.

‘The police have been so over the top with this. Surely the officer could have shown some common sense without treating me as a petty crook. ‘It would have been easy for me to accept everything and not do ­anything about it, but I was appalled at the way I was treated,’ said Mr Musgrave-Brown.

Well done, Suffolk Police. It’s some achievement to make an enemy of a respectable, retired Hoseasons Holidays executive with a clean driving licence.

I know that by tonight, I’ll have received a flood of emails ­containing similar complaints, not just from aggrieved motorists. Proper ­coppers (especially in the CID) are dismayed at the actions of these zealots, who only serve to damage relations between police and the public and make their job ten times more difficult.

The Government keeps telling us the war on motorists is over. But no one seems to have told the Old Bill.

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