Friday, December 16, 2011

Trying To Make A Driving Complaint With The Toronto Police

Logo of The City of Toronto
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Let me be clear. I have the highest respect and admiration for front-line Toronto police and Canadian police in general who daily put their lives on the line to protect us.

OK. Here's my minor brush with "the law".

I'm trying to make a driving complaint to the Toronto police. Trucks and/or cars have been mounting the curb and driving along a sidewalk and grass at Byng/Kenneth Avenue in North York.

I caught a guy in a black pick-up doing it Tuesday.

Today I logged on to the Toronto Police website and accessed the Driving Complaint screen. Got about 20 minutes into this when, near the end of the whole thing, it asked for perp vehicle identification information. It was a full-size black truck. I got the license plate number. You would think that would be enough, right? Wrong. The site demands that I enter the Make. Frustrated, I finally enter GMC as a guess. Then it demands that I enter the Model. Without Make and Model, it will not allow you to enter a complaint.

Apparently it's a new system. Had many complaints registered yet, boys? Did you do any testing on the system before you went live?

I phoned the number associated with the screen to seek website assistance. All the person I got could do was tell me she knew nothing about the website, didn't know who I could talk to about the website, and suggested I go into the police station and report the driving complaint directly.

I told her I had tried by phone and they weren't interested. What I didn't tell her was this: t got passed along the police chain twice. The third person I spoke to told me to call 311 and report it to the City of Toronto. Which I did. The next day I got a call from the city of Toronto saying they'd had a swing by and determined it was not their problem, they were passing it off to the transportation dept.

Meanwhile there's some guy in a black truck out there wilfully destroying city property. And somewhere inside the Toronto Police Dept. there's some guy reporting on the successful implementation of a new online citizen reporting system.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Once you get past year, make and model, it will ask for the VIN. I mean, if you don't have the VIN, what use is your so-called 'information'?

Run along now and let the professionals deal with stuff that you shouldn't bother your pretty little head about. This whole thing was a 'public relations exercise', it was intended to shut the public up, it was NOT intended to increase public participation.

Ray K. said...

Tell them never mind, you'll just go out and install a concrete post yourself. Someone will be there the same day.

BallBounces said...

Actually, getting a big rock did occur to me.

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"