Moved MPSIMS --> Great Debates.
So my question is this: have 12y/o kids ever heard of these metal plaque things called “license plates”?
Yay, a thread where people once again defend a cop for trying to trump up charges because someone is mean to them. I hope they aren’t upset when Loach gets so mad at someone in the Pit that he throws someone in jail.
Oh, wait, Loach isn’t a fucking baby like this cop is. He’s not perfect, as no one is, but he’s not a bad cop.
What no one seems to be addressing in this thread is, so what if the kid was the most obnoxious kid in the world? Would you be okay if, say, Marley came up with spurious reasons to ban people who pissed him off? Why is it okay for a cop to try to trump up charges?
It’d be one thing if the cop just dismissed him. He didn’t. He actively tried to come up with a reason to arrest the kid. He used his power as a cop to deal with a personal grievance. That’s not someone I can trust to serve and protect.
Stop defending crooked cops, people.
All the more reason for the cop to be on good behavior. Just like anyone else in a people-facing job. When you are in a bad mood, that’s when you try harder to be courteous so you don’t wind up taking it out on someone.
And we wouldn’t be filming cops if we could trust them.
Isn’t the goal of a police officer to be a good one? Again, like I mentioned earlier about the military service man who has brought shame down on his head by acting out after a denial to take his sister to the prom, sometimes it’s about the image you convey to the public. I’m sure there’s plenty of jobs to take up if you want to be a condescending asshole. The last one I’d want to do otherwise is as a cop when already a large portion of the population has it out for me and still lots of others think I try to get away with shit or don’t do right. Obviously, for several in this thread, YMMV.
I also agree with the above. It never ceases to amaze me that people can’t behave correctly, even when things are calm, and they know they will be filmed. That makes no sense. If I couldn’t typically curb my inner asshole, Lord knows I could at least do it long enough not to have video taped evidence. But then, maybe this guy has a future on reality TV. Those idiots can’t do it either.
No, he didn’t come up with a reason to arrest the kid. He got on his motorcycle and departed. Then little Timmy departed, sans badge number.
There is nothing crooked about any of this.
You quoted my post, didn’t even attempt to answer the question it asked, and then ask this question that has almost nothing to do with it. But I’ll answer it anyway.
No, I do not any obligation to answer that person’s questions; but I’m not a public servant in your scenario. I also would not use the presence of the camera as an excuse to be a jerk.
But that’s what 12 year old boys do. Why you seem surprised that adults don’t find it entertaining is hard to understand. LEO’s have to put up with a lot of crap day in and day out. Big surprise that a smart ass little kid isn’t appreciated for his movie making skills.
Yes, but I’m talking about the officer. Call me a crazy dreamer, but I expect a higher level of maturity from a Las Vegas police officer than that of a 12-year-old boy.
You’re not crazy. But again, smart ass kid versus LEO who gets a daily dose of crap. Yes, he could have expended energy on this kid but he blew him off. Not everybody is stuck in Mr Rogers mode 24/7. And in my experience, teenagers who are in smartass mode don’t respond well to it anyway. YMMV.
In my lifetime I’ve only run across a couple bad apples in the law enforcement barrel and they were exponentially worse than the officer in the video.
Police protect police, and no one is gonna take this seriously. I dont agree with it, I think he should be punished for his failure to uphold the law, but nothing will happen.
I only entered this thread in response to bucketybuck’s comment that a video camera automatically tends to poison the well in human interactions. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, I don’t think it excuses the officer’s actions, and the police record people on camera’s all the time.
Yes, not everyone is in Mr. Rogers mode all the time. He may very well get a daily dose of crap, and he may have been having a bad day, but I still believe his behavior fell below the standard that should be expected of a police officer. If his response to the stress of his job is to go on the offensive,[sup]*[/sup] even against a 12-year-old, maybe he’s in the wrong line of work.
- Not the perfect word to describe it, but he does ask for I.D., suggest’s the boy is lying when he gives his name, and asks if he’s loitering.
I have my own personal stories of mistreatment by U.S. law enforcement personnel. I watch Youtubes where non-resisting drivers are tased. I am easily outraged by outrageous behavior.
But let me say the reflexive defense in this thread of the obnoxious kid against the relatively calm cop also outrages me a little. Some of you people have either led extremely tame lives, or have never outgrown your anti-establishment hippie days.
I’m glad to see some Dopers took a more realistic view:
+++++
A cop’s life has stresses and dangers. The silly anti-cop feelings evidenced in this thread do not improve police job satisfaction or performance.
Leaving aside wondering what the hell Loach has to do with anything, what on earth are you talking about? Are we even talking about the same incident? Are we even on the same internet?
The cop never charged the kid with anything, not even once. He asked him a few questions, is that what you call trumping up charges? The cop never even raised his voice, never even bothered getting off his bike as the kid kept questioning, and all of a sudden you are saying he was out trying to frame the poor kid?
There are some serious disconnects in many of your posts.
At the very worst, this cop is the equivalent of someone at the Social Security office or the county courthouse who instead of prostrating themselves in front of someone who is being a little unreasonable decides to be short, brusk, but still 100% within the bounds of their job’s code of conduct. When most people get fucked with by teenagers at their job no one expects them to become a school teacher or a parent and treat with the kid. Now, if the cop had beat the kid with his club, screamed at him, threatened him, arrested him or etc we could say, “his response was far out of norms and very, very bad.”
Instead he was short with the kid and left. You guys are expecting behavior from police that you would not expect from basically any other person receiving a government paycheck.
I was not trying to answer your question. I was trying to show you what the scenario actually was. In a scenario where a police officer has stopped you, he must have some probable cause to do so. If he does not, he has no valid reason to stop you. Further, it’s his job to enforce the law when he sees probable cause that the law has been broken, that is not your job.
So in your scenario, we have a police stopping someone to investigate something for which they had at least probable cause to commit a crime. Since the police officer is interacting you because of the parameters of his job, I’d say no, the fact that his dash cam is running is not an excuse for you to be a douche. Especially since the police officer has no choice as to whether or not the dash cam is running, and since the cop is not running the dash cam in an attempt to embarrass you publicly and in fact the dash cams have mostly become ubiquitous as a way of resolving complaints against police.
In our scenario you have a citizen who happens to be a police officer doing nothing illegal, being accosted by a teenager with a camera who is starting the interaction with the sole intention of catching a person “doing something bad.” Note that the guy was not doing something bad, if he was a private citizen parking his motorcycle there a police officer would have no authority to detain him, ticket him, or stop him from going about his business. Why should this kid have that authority?
If we had a thread from a fast food worker posted in the pit about how some little teenager came in with a camera and tried to make them his bitch and embarrass him at the job what % of the thread do you guys think would be talking about how some kids have absolutely no class, how parents need to teach kids better than that, how parents shouldn’t teach kids that you can shit on someone just because they work in food service etc?
I suspect virtually no one would side with the kid who was basically picking on someone who was doing nothing wrong and just trying to go about their day at work.
Kid = precocious little bastard with too much time on his hands. A Troll in training. $5 says the kid’s teachers find him insufferable in class, as do most of his classmates.
Cop = awkward and humourless, otherwise remarkably restrained in not telling the little to fucker where to stick that camera.
I think this is a good point. Discussions of police work should always include the fact that the officer’s are simply people trying to get through a day of work. Nobody here would appreciate a snotty tween sticking a camera in their face during their workday and asking questions intending to make them look bad. Bring your daughter to work day would become a real problem.
:pointing camera: “Excuse me, I noticed that this is the 3rd trip you made to the water fountain this morning, are you really allowed to take this many breaks?”
Now, it’s also true that the Police have a responsibility to encourage positive communication with the public, and this officer failed in that respect.