Law enforcement should not be a money-making venture • I WAS interested to note in your front page story (CCTV switch-off sparks crime fears, July 10) that there will be a cost to Westminster parking in “lost earnings from parking cheats”.

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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 17 July 2009

Law enforcement should not be a money-making venture

• I WAS interested to note in your front page story (CCTV switch-off sparks crime fears, July 10) that there will be a cost to Westminster parking in “lost earnings from parking cheats”.
Since when did law enforcement become a money-making exercise? Do judges regard the fines they impose in court as state ‘earnings’? Are they on a percentage?
Westminster parking deem to have erroneously bamboozled everyone (including themselves apparently) into accepting that this area of law enforcement is now about earning money.
This is a dangerous principle to adopt whose recklessness if applied to other areas of law would be obvious and met with outrage.
Law-breaking must not be seen to pay, either for the perpetrators or the enforcers.
Westminster parking is reconfiguring all its cameras in order to comply with Department for Transport regulations.
These also state that CCTV should only be used to enforce parking regulations where it is impractical or dangerous to use parking attendants.
So even when they have fixed the pixilation, tickets issued by these cameras will still be invalid, given that there is nowhere in the borough of Westminster where it is “impractical or dangerous” to use attendants.
MARTIN KENNEDY
Brewer Street, W1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld.
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Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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