Quote:
| Originally Posted by onthetrain I'm not having that one. I am responsible for probationer training in Dorset and can assure you that (almost) all officers are authorised to drive police vehicles before they go on patrol. Their driving authorisations are done in week 17 of their training!
There are only two exceptions.
2 officers who don't drive period, ie no driving licence. The Government have decreed that you don't need to be able to drive to be a police officer so we have to take non drivers!!
In this instance your source is talking crap  |
I could not drive period when i joined the force aged 18.5 Yrs which was a while ago
well 18 ish years ago ish...........
In all honesty it did me more good than i could have imagined as i walked a footbeat for 3 years and learnt to ply my trade i learned loads by trial and error and those lessons have served me well throughout my service all of which has been frontline uniformed. I then passed my driving test both civilian(took lessons on my days off) and then a while later the police driving course.
I remember wanting that police authorisation to drive soooooo badly and when i got it i just wanted my old beat back which i hasten to add i walked every shift rain or shine and on my own with a wooden stick and some handcuffs, ey when i were a lad etc etc etc..........
Looking back the footbeat days were probably the happiest of my service to date.Mind you do bobbies walk anymore?judging by the calls i hear from colleagues asking for lifts for distances of less than a mile and in some cases a few hundred yards i guess not. So i have to agree and say that there is no need to hold a driving licence to join the Police. Sure it helps but in all honesty most people hold a licence anyway so it will only be the odd one like me who needed a job in the first instance namely the Police in order to pay for my driving lessons.
Anyway Driver training are always looking for work so why not have them teach the non drivers from scratch.