Confessions of a ‘bastard cop’, his words.

Politics & Elections
21

There is no doubt in my mind that this cop is legit.

I have family members on my dad’s side that are cops. I haven’t seen any of them in many years. But I do remember over holidays when the whole extended family was together, they way the joked around with each other. Racist as fuck.

Especially my uncle. I remember riding with him and his wife in the car once. He looks over at his wife (from out of nowhere. There was nothing we were previously talking about that would have promted this): “You know what’s great about having big hands? When I’m in my patrol car, I can just reach around and choke the guy out with one hand” (Wife quickly had an appalled look on her face).

And then I remember one time he was reminiscing about the one time a black couple from a government house project, asked him to marry them. For whatever reasons, these people thought LEOs had the authority to marry people. So he asks the couple to place their hand over his badge, and had them recite some ridiculous nonsense, and then told them they were officially married.

Yeah, dude is definitely a cop. So way could a person know all those nuances written in the essay, if he wasn’t.

22

That is an important read. Thank you.

23

What nuances? It’s as ham-fisted as they come. And he totally screwed the pooch on Article 27700 (a) (1). I guess he figured that nobody would bother trying to verify it.

He also mischaracterized 369i as “remaining too close to railroad property”, when it is in fact about being on railroad property without permission.

24

I found it very enlightening, less for what it says about the problems and more for the way it talks about the potential solutions. I have no problem believing that the current system is broken, but wasn’t sure how it could be fixed, or how abolishing the police could work. This article gave me a good sense of how the system might be changed for the better.

25

Would you back this up with some links please? (no hurry, I’m off to bed)

26

I really don’t. Can’t you call out Loach or some of the others on these boards who are/have been on the job?

But if I must, it does not look like something that was written by someone who was ever an actual police officer. Especially for a decade at that. It doesn’t even look like something someone with under two years on who bombed out of their probationary/FTO time would write. I’m calling bullshit on this one.

I’m also calling bullshit on several members of these boards and another [opencarry.org] who chastised me over my criticisms of [now former] Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. He was the last Sheriff I served under during my 25 year career there. I retired honorably with full pension before starting a second career with another agency. I have consistently pointed out the corrupt manner that office was run. That corruption eventually lead to an inmate being murdered via dehydration by the decisions made by a Major that was only on the job because of the crooked operation that took place under Clarke.

I pointed out a gazillion things that were going on only to be told I was a “disgruntled former employee”.
When I point out the things the general population is wrong about regarding law enforcement I am told I am wrong, when I point out the things that is wrong in law enforcement I was told I am wrong.

Almost all of you have no clue how ignorant you are about law enforcement, what needs to change, what is actually working, and how screwed up things will get if the changes you want actually happen.

27

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

(My bolding)
All about trespassing. Nothing about being “too near”.

And tow trucks:

28

Ok. Part of what was written in the article coincided with one of my personal beliefs on criminal justice reform, which may bias me towards believing it to be genuine. That belief being that we need to significantly reduce punishment for non-violent crimes while significantly increasing punishment for violent crimes.

29

Reads like an avid fan of Brooklyn Nine-Nine wrote this after snorting whatever was in daddy’s medicine cabinet. I’ll believe some of these stories, like the recycling one about arresting homeless people essentially for money, but only if I can see some arrest records that pertain to it.

For BS like, (paraphrased) I outed my fellow officers at the Academy, but was screwed by my instructor and my outings of fellow officers were read aloud and I was accosted over and over at the Academy so that’s how I know there’s no whistleblowers on the inside is just way too generic and sounds like it came from a really bad TV series.

30

And for stuff like this, hell, I learned all of this watching CHiPs, well before Law & Order or the local news:

Really? So the cop lied to me about that jaywalking ticket and putting in a good word for me? Those clever guys…

Five Doper dollars says this guy’s just a Cagney & Lacey fan.

31

Maybe, but really… isn’t everyone a fan?

32

I think it’s fake. It’s too on the nose, it matches all the talking points I’ve been hearing from police-brutality activists. And there’s the fact that he claims to have received training from “Killology expert” David Grossman, who has received a lot of negative attention lately and whose name has been blasted all over Reddit in the past few weeks. It’s not like Grossman lectures every police department in the country, so it seems awfully coincidental that the author just happened to have been trained by the one most infamous police trainer of all, the only one most people have heard of.

33

There don’t have to be a lot of bad cops to create bad experiences. All it takes is one.

The police hassles of my youth happened in a time and place of ridiculous paranoia over drugs and the counter culture. The paranoia was accompanied by equally obtuse methods of identifying law breakers. Invariably, my friends who did smoke grass were able to avoid police scrutiny by simply staying clean-cut.

I’m fairly confident that the cops who were disappointed to find nothing on me were sincerely trying to combat the drug menace, and were genuinely surprised that their razor-sharp instincts were wrong. (Keep in mind, this was in the hometown of Don Knotts).

These weren’t bad cops, they were dumb cops. Bad cops would have planted something on me.

34

I certainly hold out the possibility that this could be a well-written fake. I can’t say that it’s not.

I’ve never been a big fan of anonymous essays, regardless of what they say.

35

Playing devil’s advocate - it’s possible that that was his way of mocking the use of the trespassing statute.

Even so, you raise some valid concerns.

36

What an incredibly low bar you’ve set for them.

37

Here’s some more about Col. Dave Grossman from a Some More News video. The host, Cody Johnson, shows video of Grossman talking exactly about the wolves and sheepdogs.

This was posted in November 2019.

38

And Grossman was also brought up in the much-ballyhooed Last Week Tonight episode this past week.

That part starts around the 11:30 mark

39

At one time, I had a job that involved giving training classes in a program that had a substantial number of cops. (not police-related classes, just to be clear). I became friendly with some of the students who came back for additional help and . Some of those were police officers who gave me gifts of police benevolent association cards.

Those cards were freaking magic. I had a long commute and a lead foot. Before getting these cards I would always stress over traffic tickets so being ‘immune’ was big deal for me.

When I showed one of the cards, I never got a ticket. My driving did not change and I still got pulled over, but all I got were gentle warnings when the card was discreetly peeking out next to my license. I had not been treated particularly badly before (b/c race, class, privilege…), but now I was treated very nicely indeed.

The cards worked not just for officers on the city force, but with in the suburbs and the next state. There seems to be culture among cops that they won’t bother the families or friends of other cops, at least not for minor infractions. (I’d been warned not to expect the cards to help if I committed a serious crime.)

I have no other relatives or friends who are police, so the pba card thing was a real eye-opener for me. And while I am selfish enough to use the cards when I have them, I truly believe that these sort of privilege should not exist at all.

“Equal under the law” means that no one, not cops themselves nor their families nor their friends should be exempted from the law. Cops have been given a lot of power and a lot of discretion to enforce laws which almost never apply to them.

And I realize that getting a traffic ticket is petty compared to losing your life or liberty, but there is a slippery slope and I think that our society has already rolled down it quite a ways. Police can get away with killing and maiming people without any legitimate provocation, and rarely do they get any serious punishment for this. No wonder they have a sense of entitlement.

Which is to say that IMO, police reform is long overdue.

40

Embracable Ewe You say “cards” plural. Did you have to give one up every time you got pulled over?

I’m just currious, I’ve never heard of these before.