Police Persecution Of Motorists?

I am just a little confused. 

Recently, after reporting this driver, I was informed by an officer of the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) it was wrong to post videos of motorists and display the vehicle registration numbers on YouTube and I was accused of being anti-motorist for doing so. Now, as regular readers will know, I certainly do not run an anti-motorist campaign and have been at pains to make this clear through my recent posts. Yet here we have a GMP web page*, none the less, actually using a cyclists video of a motorist in an alleged road rage incident, appealing for information. 

Just a screenshot of the page for posterity

After viewing the video though it becomes obvious why the police have done this. The motorist likely has some legitimate issue with the cyclist and feels justified in using his vehicle to force the dangerous individual to stop and have words with him. Perhaps the motorist is just trying to educate the cyclist and show him the error of his ways. It is certainly very interesting the earlier riding behaviour of the cyclist is edited out as this would no doubt show the whole event in a different context. Surely, the police are just being even handed and wish to get the motorists point of view. It is very lucky for the cyclist he did not capture an image of the number plate as that would be wrong somehow and would then have placed the police in a real quandary - dare they show a number plate on YouTube even if they are just trying to be fair?

So having been able to reconcile the fact the GMP can make use of cyclist's videos when it is deemed anti-motorist for individuals to post similar videos, you can imagine my surprise when I found the Metropolitan Police (it's a force down south) actually encourages individuals to grass up report motorists. They have a web page - RoadsafeLondon - which invites individuals to give details of perceived slight road based infringements and, what is more, makes use of video evidence of the alleged poor driving. 

Now how anti-motorist is that? You can see why I am confused can't you?

*Thanks to The Cycling Lawyer for that link