How long must one wait at a red light that appears to be frozen on red?
Case in point. Tonight, around 7:30 pm we came up to a red light and stopped. Major road, three lanes each way. T-intersection. Oncoming traffic contines to have full green and traffic steadily moving. Side road has full red. So do we.
After at least three minutes of no light changes at all, drivers in the other lanes just decided to go through the intersection. Others in those lanes followed, without stopping once they became first car in line.
Eventually, the light went green for the side road traffic and cycled back to us. Then I moved.
BTW, this took place in Washington State.
Afterthought. Change times to say 2:00am and practically no traffic on the road. Now assume to be at a stuck red light. Is your opinion the same as my above real-life event tonight? Why or why not?
There is no law to cover this, so you have to depend on your own common sense. Unfortunately, the cop who pulls up to the side street just as you drive through under the red light might not see it the same way. Use common sense, and make sure one of my brothers or sisters aren’t watching!
Question: If you have a “ride-along” in your car, is he/she allowed to grab the shotgun and assist you if needed? If he/she is allowed to assist and makes a kill, what are the legal consequences? Do you have to deal with any tribal police out your way? How well do you get along if you do deal with them?
I’m sure Badge will have a reply soon, but I’m going to jump in on this one. Why, you ask? Because the Detective Sargeant Impressario of this thread is my big brother, and I have ridden along with him on patrol several times.
When I’ve ridden along, he has shown me how to get the shotgun if needed, and also where the spare key for the car is. His instructions to me, if something were to ‘go down’ and he was incapacitated, were to take the car and leave as fast as I can. He wanted me to leave him behind and only use the shotgun if I, personally, was cornered. I was not to attempt to back him up in any way.
Of course, since he is my brother and my hero, I always thought that I’d do my best to run over the bad guys during my retreat. I expect I’d be more effective using the cruiser as a weapon than I would be with the shotgun. Needless to say, the situation has never come up.
No, riders are absolutely not allowed to assist me in any way. Before the ride they are instructed on how to use the radio, and are told that if I’m in trouble the only thing they are to do is to call for help.
We have two reservations in our county, on about 30 miles away from me and the other about 60 miles away. We have little interaction.
Tony Montana, I refer to “deal with them” with “them” being Native American cops. I am a Native American and live on a reservation, and some of my buddy rez cops say they experience prejudice on the job from other “white” jurisdictions. I was just wondering if it was the assholes around here, or if most rez cops have that problem.
OK, Badge, I’ve got another one (well, several related). How do you make an arrest that’s not right at the scene of the crime? That is, you’re investigating, you find enough evidence to arrest me, so you have to go and bring me in. Do you do that as immediately as possible, or wait until a time when you’re pretty sure you know where I am? Do you just walk into my workplace and arrest me there, or would you ask me to come outside first, etc.? I know this is obviously going to vary a lot, but I’ve seen a lot of those on L&O and wondered how realistic that is.
Also, second question, how much packing up do you do in the area when you arrest someone? For example, if you arrest the only person manning a store or someone with perishables in their car do you typically do anything to clear out and close down the store or preserve the stuff in the car?
Around here, an employee getting arrested, they will attempt to contact the store owner but will not go out of their way to safe guard it.
the arrested’s personnel property will be totally disregarded.
Only children will be cared for… Sometimes. Depends on the age. 10 and up will be on their own for up to 24 hours if there is an expectation of an adult coming by.
The prep’s property is not safeguarded and is most likely fair game, good tools and such, etc. Do not expect to find them upon your return, from bail or just an honest mistake of identity causing your release.
The laws say this is not to happen and I don’t think anyone would admit it anyway. Not a fair question IMO.
Badge would follow the rules but from anecdotal evidence form the arrestee’s of the world, well, who would believe them anyway? Of course I’m not in WA either…
Your car will be left unattended and unlocked until the wrecker gets around to coming after it.
Just the way it goes down. In my experience anyway.
Of course those things are wrong. What’s your point?
YMMV
Laws and justice have nothing in common.
Why?
Because no one is allowed to use common sense anymore. It is all done by laws now. YMMV
Who, me bitter? Nahhhhhh
Now a real question, not a rant… LOL
What do you do when you are training a new guy and you run a license and it comes up with the notation that he was arrested for child molestation and you know for a fact that it was a total case of mistaken identity and all apologies made . He then asks you why that arrest notation is still in the file? He knows that people are proven innocent in trials and there are mistakes but he wants to know how he is supposed to act when he does not know that it was a total mistake? Is there something on the arrest record that lets police know that the guy they are checking was totally innocent of that arrest charge?
Why do I ask? Because (I know a poor guy :: yeah right: who has had his State Senator working on it and the police will not remove the arrest notation. He does get tired of being slammed up against walls for minor traffic violations. The police don’t not believe him when he says he was not guilty, that is was a mistake. There seems to always be a hunt on for child molesters and he gets to go be in a lot of line ups. So, what do you tell you new troop when he asks that question?
I live in a medium-sized town, pretty quiet, and almost all the cops are really pumped-up young guys with shaved heads, tigth uniforms, mirror shades. I’m middle aged, never been arrested, only brush with cops since teen years was a speeding ticket 5 years ago. Still, these guys kinda give me the willies. Maybe a dumb question, but don’t you think it’s be preferrable if the police force looked more like the citizenry at large?
This Seattleite wishes to thank you for a very informative thread.
Three questions:
How much of your work day is spent doing paperwork or performing other administrative tasks?
I’m pretty law-abiding, so I don’t get to interact with the police much. However, if something were to happen to throw potential suspicion on me, I’d like to project a defensively cooperative attitude. In other words, I’d want to say something along the lines of, “Well, I’m not doing anything wrong, and I want to cooperate and assist in any way, but I take my rights pretty seriously, so (choose one: I want an attorney present, you can’t search my car without a warrant, etc.).” How do you think that would fly?
I’ve always been curious about a ride-along. I understand it’s possible (in many jurisdictions at least) for an ordinary citizen to apply to observe the police on patrol. How do you feel about this? Do you have any recommendations for how I should behave if I were to pursue it?
In most circumstances when asking someone to recall a minor detail or something that cannot be remembered instantly, they tend to look in the upper corner of whatever hand they are proficient in writing with. This makes it easier to recall recent events or minor details. When they look into the other corner it means they are fabricating an event or imagining something.
A neat trick some people can do is fabricate something, then speak to themselves beforehand. They could fool someone into believeing they were remembering their alibi rather than a memory of creating an alibi.
As you realize, it varies a lot depending on the crime, how much time I have, available manpower, etc. I have arrested people at work and at school. It is often preferable to arrest people away from their homes, where they are more likely to have weapons and assistance available, and psychologically people are more likely to fight when they are in their own home.
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I always do my best to assure that a person’s property is going to be safe. If arresting someone from work I would never just leave the store open - I would always wait for the boss/another employee, or at least find a way to lock the business. If arresting someone out of a car, I will secure it where it is. I have taken groceries with the person so they won’t spoil before someone can retrieve the car.
I can’t really answer that, because in Washington this couldn’t happen. The only way a driver’s check will show any crime is if the person is a registered sex offender, which can only happen if they are convicted.
Arrests remain on your criminal history record even if you are later acquited or even if no charges were ever filed, but those are only available by running a different inquiry. Criminal history requests take time and are never run during patrol contacts. In addition, all criminal history requests are logged and we have to give a valid reason why we are checking the record (in other words, idle curiousity is not allowed).
I think that appearance is largely an offshoot of that “us vs. them” mentality. These officers are proud of what they do, and want to appear strong and professional. In many ways, this can engender confidence and respect, which helps the officer do his job.
Personally, I never wanted to work at it that hard!
As the detective sergeant, far too much of my day is doing paperwork. There are many days when I can’t get out of the office to do investigations because I’m chained to my desk. I’ve never minded the paperwork, but this is why most of our officers wouldn’t take my job! Also, by doing all the follow-up, I free the patrol officers to spend more time actually patrolling.
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Admittedly, it will upset some officers and they are more likely to make an effort to find some way to screw with you. It’s sad, but true. However, it’s the right thing for you to do. As I’ve said, I am amazed at how many people don’t invoke their rights, and I would never be angry with someone for doing so.
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I love it when citizens ride along, but I’m probably in the minority for this. I think that everyone should know how their local cops operate. I run a 12-week Citizen’s Police Academy every year (as do many agencies) to teach people how we operate, and ride-alongs are part of that.
As far as how to behave, I would recommend asking lots of questions about anything you want to know. Hopefully the department would assign you to an officer who is good with people and would be happy to answer your questions. After all, what’s the point if you don’t learn anythign?
On the subject of stickers:
I’ve got this burning desire to put all sorts of stickers on my POS car. Things like flowers, butterflies, Jim Morrisson, etc. But I’m a little hesitant to do so, because I’m concerned about calling too much attention to myself.
What I’d like to know is, if I put a lot of these kind of stickers on my car, would I be more likely to be pulled over? And if so, why? Would an officer see the ‘hippie’ car and suspect there were drugs on board? Or would they maybe assume that the driver has a problem with authority? Or should I just start slapping decals on there with abandon?
Semi-related anectdote: One year at Halloween, I decorated my car with that stretchy spiderweb stuff and tied little spiders to my antenna which was capped with a 4 inch wide foam spider. I didn’t get pulled over once.[sub] (But I did call the police station and get the OK to do it first)[/sub]
