Recently, the head of the vice squad in a nearby city had to issue new orders to his officers. It seems some of them were having intercourse with prostitutes and then arresting them.
My husband told me of a friend of his–a city cop. The cop would cruise down city streets over the speed limit. Civilians tended to fall in behind him and speed, too. He would then use the opportunity of them speeding to give them a ticket.
Both examples of cops breaking the law in order to catch others breaking the law. Does this (or myriad other examples) do more good than harm, or more harm than good?
It doesn’t matter whether the good resulting from these methods outweighs their harm. Police officers don’t have the option of breaking the law. In a few special circumstances, of course, some laws don’t apply to the police: for example, police aren’t bound by speed limits while chasing drivers.
Well, the cops having intercourse obviously got caught; as to the speeding cop that would be a little harder to prove. I really don’t know why he had to trick drivers into speeding, since there are plenty around (even yours truly on occasion).
Well, I’m quite sure drug laws have exceptions built into them for law enforcement officers working in law enforcement capacities to bust criminals so they are off the hook on that one.
But I don’t think that extends to having intercourse with prostitutes, since that is not neccesary to “bust” them.
Close. We don’t ever have to obey speed limits, so long as we are in a marked or unmarked unit (as in civilian cars don’t count.) In fact, the only things I bother looking out for OTJ are stop signs & red lights. The rule is “drive safe”, but speed limits, no U-turns, etc… just don’t apply. At least not here in MD.
As far as prostitution goes, well, I wouldn’t take it off for a hooker if I were off the job, let alone working, so I know I’ll never have to worry about that one.
Most of the times in sting operations the “drugs” aren’t real. The charges are usually something along the lines of “soliciting” to buy narcotics.
** for example, police aren’t bound by speed limits while chasing drivers**
That all depends on the state laws. What is really important is the individual departments written policies. By law (at least here in the Majikal Land O’Cheeze) each department has to have a written set of policies which deal with things like Use of Force, Pursuits, etc… Back in the early 80’s when I was a full time cop for a small department our written policies forbade going over the speedlimit by 15 miles an hour in ANY circumstance. (very interesting seeing we also didn’t write tickets unless the violator was clocked at 15 or higher over) For a very brief time in 1992 I worked for a department part-time that banned any high speed chase. The department I work part-time for now doesn’t ban chases or set a speed limit for pursuits or driving to calls. These are just examples of how each departments policies can be very different from one another.
The idea of driving fast just to get a driver to speed so I can write him up is bullsh*t. I’m only on the job part-time now but I could easily sit with a radar gun and let people go 20 over and still write 5 tickets a day. No reason to get tricky!
California Highway Patrol officers catch speeders by getting a couple hundred meters behind a suspected car and “pacing” it – that is, driving so that they keep a constant distance from the car in front of them and then reading their speed off the speedometer.
Of course, if the car ahead of them is speeding, that means they themselves have to be speeding in order to pace it. And they do this without their emergency vehicle lights turned on, routinely, several times a day. They routinely break the speed laws in order to enforce them.
I’m surprised some watchdog groups don’t go around citing highway patrol officers for speeding.
