“Cops will try to get victims at the scene to minimize their injuries, or will simply attribute to them the false statement that they are not injured, as a way of avoiding having to do the work of making a report,” said Vaccaro, who is a Streetsblog advertiser. “But cops are already doing those things anyway. I had a 7-year-old run over by a pickup truck (operated by an off-duty copy) and the cop responding to write the ‘accident report’ described the kid as having ‘minor injuries.’ In fact, the kid will live the rest of her life with one leg shorter than another and a host of other problems.”
But Vaccaro believes such abuse will be rare.
“At the end of the day, the vast majority of motor vehicular-related police calls are for property damage only,” he said. “Unless we can get police out of the motor vehicle/public safety business entirely, we need to focus them on motor vehicle calls that present a clear and compelling claim to being incidents of traffic violence. That is the only way we can educate the cops, over time, to take motor vehicle calls seriously.
Read more here.