In many cities you are allowed to park in front of your own driveway, thus blocking it. But if it isn’t your residence it’s a parking violation to be parked there. If you were parking in front of your own driveway (something that is not a violation, but appears to be if someone is uninformed) and a person walks up to you with a video camera and asks who you are, why you’re parking there etc, do you think you have any obligation at all to answer that person’s questions?
Oh, and FWIW many restaurants in my area that try to attract motorcyclists have no problem with bikers parking on the private walk area next to the private parking lot. On some Friday nights you can see a line of bikes parked on walks like that. The police officer wasn’t only almost certainly breaking no law, he was doing something any private citizen could probably do as well and face no consequences unless the business owner called to have their vehicle removed.
This stuff always bugs me.
I have family that are police officers and they really do feel above the law. Because they are family I don’t press the issue…but one time…probably after I received a ticket for “running*” a stop sign my family member police officer did the same. I pressed him on this and he said it was ok…he was a cop.
SO, I am confused. When I “ran” the stop sign, I got this big lecture about how dangerous I was. So what is it? Is it ok or is it dangerous?
*Pretty sure I came to a complete stop…but maybe I was going forward at .00001 mph…
What a ridiculous question. All that matters is that the kid thought a law was being broken. It’s up to the police to, ya know, investigate the situation and determine the facts. Are you suggesting that unless a citizen knows, for a fact, that a law is being broken they should not be concerned with any situation and therefore should not call the police? That seems to be what you are saying.
I think officers should have discretion to enforce laws, but then I never said they shouldn’t. I said they should be consistent. If laws are not enforced with consistency, why do we have the laws in the first place? If an officer cannot explain his reason for exercising his discretion, then I’d likely have a problem with that officer’s judgement. And an officer who is unable to obey the law consistently is a person who, IMO, should not be an officer in the first place.
Do you think that officers should not have to obey the law?
Generally it is not a parking violation to park on a private walk on private property used by a business. It can be a violation of the business owner’s parking policies, in which case they have the right to have you towed if you do not move your vehicle.
But it’s not a city parking violation and police would not just swing by and ticket you for it. So the police here was not acting “above the law” he was acting in a way not covered by the parking code at all for either police or citizens.
Actually it’s irrelevant that the kid thought a law was being broken. Should we be able to force police to investigate stuff every time someone “thinks” the law is broken? If so police would spend 100% of their shift “investigating” when elderly women complain people are parking in “their” spot in front of their house. (When the spot in question is public street parking for anyone, not the home owner who happens to live nearest the spot.) No, not only should cops ignore baseless citizen criminal complaints when it is supremely obvious no crime has been committed, they have an obligation to do so in order to effectively perform the job they are actually paid to do, which isn’t educate children on how private parking lots aren’t governed by municipal parking codes.
You can either give them discretion or make them consistently apply the law, you can’t have both.
And I think officers should obey the law, but many laws specifically exempt officers for good reason. For example police officers are allowed to carry their weapons places many private citizens cannot. Police officers are allowed to run red lights and drive over the speed limit when necessary. Since the officer in question appears to have broken no law, the question of whether or not police should obey the law is irrelevant.
I should probably roll my eyes and walk away at this point. But I’ll try one time.
The moral requirement here is, to put it very briefly, to be more mature than a 12 year old when you’re the guy with the gun and a badge.
To elaborate just a little bit, the moral requirement is to model concern for what’s important, so as to help a little boy grow in respect for proper authority, rather than encouraging the little boy to equate authority with bullheaded petulance.
There was nothing professional in what I saw. See my suggested alternative in the previous post. It is objectively better in every way. Replying in this way should be second nature to anyone who claims to uphold law and order.
Petulant. The guy was petulant, petty, childish, modeled a lack of concern for lawfulness, unnecessarily escalated a negative situation etc etc. If you don’t think he embarassed himself, you frankly should be embarassed yourself. If you thought he acted properly, you are thinking childishly.
Would have been perfectly appropriate for the officer to bring this up. But he didn’t. Instead he resorted to petulance and a childish “tag you’re it no takebacks” mode of reply.
I too suspect the kid will experience an attitude adjustment at some point. The officer could have handled it better and could have handled it worse.
Um, and how was the police officer being immature? You seem to equate anything other than answering any question a twelve year old has with being immature. The police officer declined to identify himself or explain what he was doing. I guess we have a fundamentally different world view, but I don’t tend to think people have to explain what they’re doing at work to random passerby when it does not affect them whatsoever.
Police aren’t bank tellers or librarians, they are not paid to be your friend.
The officer could have explained himself, but he was not required to, and I don’t even really know that it was any better. Unless you can’t read human emotion, this kid didn’t come up to the police officer with a tone of inquisitiveness, he came up with an accusatory tone. The kid didn’t start the interaction in a friendly way, which means at the age of 12 you have someone who has chosen to turn on a video camera and start a problem with a police officer. I think the officer would have been wasting his time “going above and beyond” to explain police procedure to this kid.
Have you never had interactions with a kid being a smart ass? When I have, they don’t exactly tend to be brought around to your way of thinking through reasoned debate. Plus, we have no idea what the cop had on his plate, he may have had a lot of work that still needed to be done that day and didn’t have time to waste time on what probably would have devolved into an endless accusation session.
You guys just seem to be working under this impression that just because you randomly approach a cop and accuse them of a misdeed and happen to be 12 you’re entitled to anything other than professional response. The police officer responded in a short, professional manner. You seem to have thought he should have acted like a concierge, which would have been “above and beyond” but I don’t think that’s necessary or even always the best option for a police officer.
Um, how was he petulant or childish? He declined to answer two questions then asked a few of his own and left. He never got angry, never yelled, never lost his cool. Again, have you never dealt with children? Hell, have you never been to school? Asking a child a question in response to a dumb question of theirs was a common conversational technique my teachers used to try and undermine an unruly kid trying to be a smart ass.
I’m thinking in terms of “planting a seed,” not solving this kid’s problems in one fell swoop.
Asking the smartass kid a question in response to a smartass question is not a technique I think almost ever worked unless the adult was very clever. And when it did work, it probably didn’t work for the right reason–the kid wasn’t taught to have proper respect for authority but rather was taught he can’t beat his teacher in a verbal fight.
Better to simply answer the question or briefly explain why it won’t be answered. Otherwise known as dnftt.
The police officer was evasive when he should be direct. He acted as though he had something to hide when in fact he had nothing to hide. No he doesn’t have to sit there answering every question the kid can come up with. But what he did say to the kid gave no confidence that the officer cared about rules. It gave every indication that the officer believed his privilege trumped any inquiry. That’s wrong. (And if the officer didn’t mean to give this impression, then he failed at communicating. But to be honest I don’t believe he failed at communicating. I think he communicated very clearly.)
As to the kid’s tone, it seemed carefully neutral to me–which does not mean he wasn’t being a smartass.
he was being dismissive. The conversation was never going anywhere.
potato/pototo. carefully neutral tone/passive aggressive smartass.
My understanding is cops used to be able to get out of drunk driving because they were cops. I have ‘heard’ this isn’t the case anymore, or at the very least it is harder for cops to get out of a DUI than it was in the past.
That cop got arrested (not for drunk driving, but for speeding), and he should have. There are families on the interstate that cop was speeding at 120mph on. The arrested cop was shocked that a fellow police officer was holding him accountable for endangering the public.
It bothers me when cops break meaningless laws (why can they do it but we can’t), but when cops do things that endanger the public like drunk driving or reckless driving and think they can get away with it it shows they have 0 respect for the public or the concept that they are supposed to work for us.
The cop wasn’t driving drunk. The worst thing he did was park on the sidewalk, and even that may have been permissable. There are plenty of bad cops out there, there’s nothing in the video to indicate this guy was one.
Certainly nothing indicated he was a good one.
Yeah, for me personally I don’t give anyone an ounce of extra respect just because they are a police officer, I do respect the position and their role in society and behave accordingly but you’re a fool if you think the men and women behind the badge are anything but men and women like the rest of us. There will be many who are tempted by the power and privilege you can abuse by being a police officer, and many who will be plain bad at their jobs.
Police certainly used to get a straight pass on a lot of stuff and in many places that has been cleaned up (as it should have), and in some instances police avoid criminal prosecution because of the difficulty of convicting a police officer. But that’s really neither here nor there.
None of that has much to do with a guy parking in a private walk up to a business. Really guys, look at the video a little bit. This is very obviously a private parking lot next to a business or some strip mall, meaning this isn’t a city sidewalk or even a city parking lot. So the city’s parking ordinances do not apply there.
What I’ve noticed here on the SDMB is the anti-police types seem to think police are scum but should also be held to some impossible standard, and also seem to think all police actions of any kind that have been videotaped and given a negative comment must in fact be misconduct. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of allowance for the concept that police are individuals who run the gamut from amoral monsters to lazy incompetents to superstar police, and that sometimes they are just videotaped doing something you may personally dislike but that is 100% legal and 100% proper.
So what?
the tolerance for drunk driving is pretty thin. I’m sure they still have their perks. I still remember a pair of sports cars that would race each other at the same time I was driving home from work (mid-80’s). This went on for a period of time. I had a Mustang I built up and was tempted to give them a run for their money but never did. I tried to stay away from street racing as a kid. But one day I followed from a distance. Their final destination was a police station.