Joao Camara said that a speed detector in St Peter’s Village last month caught 17,000 vehicles travelling at over 26mph through the 20mph area with a few caught travelling above 60mph.
He added that he and his officers had taken a softer approach against minor speeders during the coronavirus pandemic to prevent creating a large backlog of parish hall inquiries which – due to lockdown restrictions – they had been prevented from carrying out.
However, the Centenier said forces across the Island had now noticed a ‘marked increase’ in speeds and they had begun cracking down on the issue.
‘The reason we took a softer approach was that St Peter’s honorary police, the States police and the other parishes did not want to create a massive backlog of parish hall inquiries that needed to be dealt with,’ he said. ‘We had about three to four weeks of just stopping people and letting them know about their speed.
‘But now, not just St Peter but the other parishes and the States police, have noticed a marked increase in drivers’ speeds and we have now decided to start cracking down.’
Mr Camara added that his force had already begun carrying out extra checks with officers catching seven motorists on Wednesday night.
Two will now need to attend parish-hall inquiries and the five others were given words of advice.
‘We [St Peter] had a virtual meeting last night and I have now told the officers to go out as often as possible and we will be clamping down on this,’ he said.
‘We have been treating people with a velvet glove during the initial stages of lockdown but we will now be dealing with them with an iron fist.
‘There are no parish-hall inquiries at the moment and we are waiting for advice from the Attorney General about when those can restart. We now have a backlog so we will be quite busy when they do.’
And Mr Camara added that data from St Peter’s Village showed that most of the offending vehicles were caught speeding during rush-hour times – despite many Islanders now working from home.
‘What we have found is that when there were more cars on the road, if you had one person doing the 20mph limit then it would force those behind them to adhere to the limit too,’ he said. ‘But with fewer cars on the road a lot of vehicles have not had that restriction there.
‘When we broke down the figures we found that most of the speeding in the village was taking place between 7.30am and 9.30am and between 4.30pm and 7.30pm so it seems to be at rush-hour times, which is interesting given that the lockdown is in place.’
