Among certain types, sure. But it’s equally the “out” thing among other types. I’m not really sure what your point is other than because some people have always disliked government agents (and apparently you weren’t aware?) that it should somehow be different now?
(laughing) Which is easy for any of you to figure out based on little clues I’ve provided. I provide my location, and a little research would give you a mere handful of possibilities. My real name is in my email and my phone number is not unlisted. Do a little work and you’d have my address in five minutes. Not that my town has any relevance to the discussion, pk, so I don’t know why you care so damned much.
Unfortunately, ashman165, our little town’s most entertaining police escapades happened before the internet went public, so I cannot link you to them. And yeah, I’m overprotective of children and can jump to negative conclusions with insufficient evidence, like a mother bear. (shrugging)
So, they happened what? 30 years ago? Someone can hold a grudge.
Because you’re full of shit, that’s why. You make incriminating accusations about your local police force, use that as an excuse to not take any action about something you claim is concerning you, and then refuse to give the name of the department (because this would allow us find out that your claims are bullshit).
I don’t care who you are, nor am I going back and try to figure out some goddamned riddle.
Unless you are a liar and a coward, post the name of the police department.
Why? It could be any one of many suburban Chicago PDs that have had major ethics problems the past couple decades. In our favor, I don’t recall any direct and proven-in-court Mob ties, which puts us ahead of some.
ETA: Anyway, it’s more fun to make you do the BAREST MINIMUM of work to “out” me. :rolleyes:
Sorry, but there must be some middleground between my “some cops are creepy or crooked” and your “all cops are saints.” Wait a sec: I already provided it with my use of the word, “some.” :rolleyes:
An example that is anecdotal because the reporter sitting next to me did not publish it: There was a special town meeting regarding a mentally-unbalanced individual who would speed his car through a school zone. He was known to be odd and was frequently featured in our paper’s “Police Blotter,” along with his family. I was hanging out with the press and the cops in the back of the room (both groups are nearly as much fun as Marines, with the bonus of local scuttlebutt) and one of the cops told me that, though his hands were tied by The Law (I recognized him as one of the cops who’d been hired back because he was relatively ethical), if we, as concerned parents, solved the problem ourselves (hint-hint), nobody would look too closely at it.
I assume you were a good cop. I assume many, if not most, cops are good. But live in the shadow of Chicago. I’m used to general levels of corruption that would be frontpage news most other places. And my hobby is researching murders and such. I expect the worst from my fellow man. 
ETA: Speaking of “Police Blotter,” we had one sad sack who was a regular for little stuff like drunk and disorderly. One day a couple off-duty Chicago cops working as process servers tried to serve him by mistake (they got the apartment number wrong) and they beat him to death. I was pissed then, too.
By this “reasoning” of yours, I suppose it’s fair to say that because some black people deal in drugs, if I see a particular black person on a corner, it’s okay to just assume he’s dealing drugs.
Or, because some gay people are promiscuous, it’s okay to attribute that attribute to the entire community (or at least any specific gay people I happen to see).
The issue isn’t that you said some cops are (and I’ll accept you did say that without bothering to scroll up), but that you took the argument that some cops are shitty and automatically attributed that to this particular police officer. He might be a douche, or one of the city’s finest. But your default stance (narrow-minded and bigoted as it is) is simply that because you don’t know what he was doing, he falls into the douche category. That’s uncalled for.
There is much middle ground. Indeed, most police officers try their best to be good police officers. A very, very, very, very small number of them intentionally act otherwise. But you, like many others, take that very, very, very, very small number and extrapolate it out to the broader body. It’s claptrap plain and simple.
Again, I hope your work in whatever field of “science” it is that you allegedly do is done with greater intellectual honesty. Or is it fair for me to say that since some science types are bad at what they do, so too must you be? It’s your rubric after all, so I guess applying against you is as equally logical as how you automatically assume this cop is bad.
I recently spent some time in jail for performing an act of civil disobedience which was not even illegal – “break and enter” on public property. As a matter of fact, all the charges were dropped when the State realized that we were planning on using a Constitutional defence. But the reason I bring this up is to relate a conversation I had with the arrresting officer.
The arresting officer – let’s call him Gibson – is a pretty intelligent man. He and I have had political discussions in the past (I am the local organizer for the copwatch program, so I confront most of the downtown cops on a regular basis), and I know that he has a degree in history, so he has some perspective the other cops do not. Gibson is a high-ranking officer and the reason he was there is because we had a snitch inside our organization; the cops had a surveillance team ready and watching when I brought out my boltcutters in the dead of night.
The first thing Gibson did was prevent the other cops from beating me. I know they wanted to, and one of them tried pulling the loose handcuff trick where they leave one cuff open, hoping you’ll try to make a break for it. Having more than a double-digit IQ, I just held my hands out and calmly explained one of the cuffs was loose. Gibson, seeing what was happening, took me away from the other cops and drove me himself to the police station in the truck.
On the way to the cop shop, he and I chatted through the peephole. We talked about Russian revolutionary history, which historical anarchists I most respected, and then a bit about Ukraine and my role model, Nestor Makhno. Finally, after a pause, I asked him why he became a cop.
“I wanted to help people,” he said.
“Do you really believe you’re helping people?”
He shook his head. “I know you probably won’t believe me,” he said, “but I’ve seen things you haven’t. There are genuinely evil people out there, and I want to stop them.”
“And yet,” I said, “it’s me being driven to jail in the back of your truck, not them.”
He was quiet for a bit after that, because I know that he understands why I do what I do, and that I’m not one of his evil people. Finally he said, very quietly, “Yeah, but we look a lot harder for them than we do for you.”
See, this is why police are class enemies. Even when you run across the occasional, rare cop with a brain, one who has some sympathy for social activism and the education to understand why civil disobedience is necessary, she or he will still, in the end, support the status quo. Yeah, he saved me from a beating at the hands of his fellow cops (and then saved me from another one at the cop shop by making firm eye contact with the processing cops and telling them pointedly that I had been extremely cooperative so treat him well), but in the end he still drove me to jail while the “evil people” roamed free. No matter how many good intentions he has, he is still a tool of the State. He has been given a gun for the explicit purpose of enforcing the status quo, no matter how evil that status quo may be. And ultimately, he is no better than the meatheads who wanted to give me a bootheel massage for the “crime” of daring to organize a copwatch to keep them honest.
I think you’re confusing the role of the police with the role of the prosecution. The police work off of “is there probable cause to believe a crime is being, or has been committed?” whereas the prosecution is more economical in asking “is it worth the effort to prosecute this?”
Well, so long as you “know” they wanted to then it follows that they must have really wanted to. Interestingly enough, if they had really wanted to just beat you, one wonders why you weren’t beaten. I know that when I really want to do something, I do it. I guess the people in your area are more evolved to such an extent that despite what they wanted to do (as proved by your knowing it), they were able to act otherwise. But I’m glad that you have these wonderful psychic powers. Of course, I’m dubious as to why this ability to read minds failed to pickup the spy in your midst.
There’s nothing like a good story to offset any set of facts I guess.
It’s immaterial what some police officer might feel. I once had to arrest a woman who spoke no English. I recall feeling very bad for both having to arrest her and for not being able to explain to her what was happening. Unfortunately, we had no access to a Vietnamese translator. Sadly, had her ability to speak English been better, there’d have been no reason to arrest her, most likely. At trial, I was a very sympathetic witness for her plight, but no amount of my regret over the situation could alter the facts: she acted outside what is mandated by law and was thus convicted.
The job of the police is to protect the good of the society. The good of which is determined by the laws enacted. Don’t like the laws? Elect better people. Every police officer will have some law(s) he won’t agree with, but on the whole, they serve a necessary function. The system isn’t perfect as there’s always a system of competing desires: the desire of the state to restrain conduct, and the desire of the people to be unrestrained.
But at the end of the day, the people, on the whole, accept your system.
Again, nothing like a good story to wash away such petty concerns as thought. But since you “know” it to be true, it follows that it must be true. I think you give yourself too much credit, and ascribe to yourself more importance than you actually have. Quite frankly, most pains in the ass aren’t worth beating as it requires far too much effort and way too much paperwork. It’s better to just marginalize them even more than they already are. It’s worth noting that if your issue were of true concern to the society-at-large, the issue wouldn’t require you sneaking around in the middle of the night with bolt cutters. It would seem that most people, to my mind, just don’t give a shit about your issue, which is the definition of it being largely unimportant.
No less so than your supposed constitutional defense would be a tool of the state. Since you want to use the law in a way that best suits your own needs, you’re equally a part of the system.
No, he’s been given a gun to protect life, namely his. That he works in a profession in which asshats want to harm him as an agent of the state is sufficient to justify giving him the ability to protect himself.
Curiously, you weren’t given this massage of which you so lovingly speak. It would seem that he is better than those who would want to beat you down (despite their not having actually done so; I guess actions are irrelevant in your mind, except the goodness of your own?).
No, because it’s not based on who he is, but what he’s doing. If a group of young black males have a house with people coming in for five minutes and then leaving, and glassine bags lying all over the sidewalk, then I’d say they were dealing drugs.
I have trouble believing this, because it is not a very, very, very small number of people who behave immorally or illegally. Police officers are not superheroes.
The behavior that officer was exhibiting was creepy. It’s possible he had an explanation for it: that he was incompetently trying to catch a predator (without telling the girls they were the bait), or on the hunt for the Teenage Bikini Mob that’s been terrorizing the town, or just escorting them along to make sure they were safe, because there’s not a goddam thing else in town for him to do. They’re all possible, but there’s no particular reason to believe any of them is the explanation.
I guess to make your bad example fit, the officer in question would have to have his pants unzipped while following the girls. It would help also were he drooling and shouting lascivious comments.
It’s curious that I was speaking about any particular (yet singular) presence of a black man on a street corner (barring any other factors). You have conflated that into a group of young ones who have frequent visitors of very short duration, who also leave behind tale-tell evidence of drug use. How that’s relevant to a police officer who was following 2 girls (barring any other information) is confusing.
Please make your analogies pertinent.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. But the general population of police officers isn’t an apt sample of the general population any more than the drivers of Mustangs are apt sample of the population of drivers. If you’re going to draw an analogy, at least make it appropriate.
The people who gravitate towards law enforcement generally do so because of a desire to help others. That doesn’t make them superheroes; it gives them a job doing something about which they’re already passionate. Some officers join more for power and what not than a desire to protect the weak. These are a very, very, very small minority.
So, what’s the reason to believe that what he was doing is necessarily creepy? There’s no good reason to assume that the girls didn’t ask him to follow them because of something. There’s no reason to think that he wasn’t waiting on further information from his dispatcher. Hell, there’s no reason to think that he was even more than mildly aware of them.
Cop was following girls. Cop is a pedophile because he didn’t offer up to random bystander his reasoning. QED.
Um… no. Just following 12-year-old girls and looking at them is pervy, pants open or closed.
I didn’t conflate anything. I offered it as an alternative analogy. See, one black male on a streetcorner is just a man on a streetcorner. Assuming he is a drug dealer is only rational if he behaves like a drug dealer. It is the behavior, not the person, that arouses suspicion. Maybe, in my analogy, there’s a perfectly good reason why there are people coming in and out all the time. Would that be your assumption, if someone posted a thread describing that situation, titled “Drug Dealers On My Street?” No, it wouldn’t.
Again, I don’t believe you. People who gravitate towards law enforcement do so for similar reasons as the people who gravitate towards engineering, sales or hotel management.
Right. So if you saw any other car following 12-year-old girls like that, you’d think the same?
Cop is or isn’t a pedophile, but is acting like one. Perhaps there are other reasons, but that wouldn’t be the way to bet.
Question–would we be assuming he was a pedophile if he was doing the same to 12 year old boys? Or are we just more likely to see girls as sexual? (It’s an honest question–I’m not trying to impugn anyone’s motives.)
That’s a nonsensical analogy! IT’S THE BEHAVIOR, NOT THE PERSON, YOU MORON! I’d’ve also thought the behavior was creepy if he hadn’t been a cop or if he had been a plainclothesman in an unmarked car.
“A very, very, very, very small number?” Please do not allow your own oversensitivity toward people who do not, or in my case, SOMETIMES don’t trust the police blind you to the fact that the number of bad cops is MUCH larger than that. :rolleyes:
And this was a GOOD cop, the one the chief trusted with a camera crew from Fox.
I don’t think I would, but as I said before I’m a father of daughters and am sensitized to being protective of them. And having been a 12-yr-old boy, I know they are often up to something.
So you were planning to use your boltcutters in the dead of night to perform an act that wasn’t illegal?
Was this a midnight meeting of the Boltcutter Enthusiast Society, or something?
It’s curious that you’re one the making wild ass assumptions and I’m the moron. Of course my example deals with both parts of your predicate: a type of class, and the actions of some members of that class.
There are about a million police officers (excluding the federal types) in the United States. So, let’s say that 1% of them are intentionally bad. That’s a rather small number in comparison to the total number of them out there. So, we’re talking about 10,000 bad ones to serve a country of about 300 some odd million people.
I have no sensitivity - let alone over - towards people who don’t trust some cops. My issue was with your intellectually deficient argument.
Curiously enough, you could have started the thread with “possibly creepy guy who happens to also be a police officer”, but you didn’t. You went straight from he’s a cop and therefore bad thus his conduct is creepy. I suppose for you that this is sufficient evidence to support your claim. For the vast majority of the world, it isn’t. But go with what you think you know.
I would love a spinoff called “Good COPS / Bad COPS,” with half the show in the familiar “heroes of the community” format and the other half depicting cops beating handcuffed suspects, spewing racist diatribes, snorting confiscated coke, extorting blowjobs from prostitutes, etc.
Wait, you’re a guy? What were you doing chatting up 'tweens in bathing suits?
I kid, but it’s just another conclusion that could be jumped to. But as I mentioned earlier, I have been blatantly hit on by cops, recently and when I was all of 13. It’s not out of the question.
But chances are these girls have encountered worse and will deal with plenty worse in the next few years (for some reason street harassers love little girls who are just hitting puberty – I think they can sense when you won’t yell or fight back).
If you’re really that curious, the city erected a wrought iron fence under a pedestrian underpass for the explicit purpose of keeping poor people from gathering there. It’s class prejudice, plain and simple. They get complaints from middle class suburbanites because they don’t like seeing poor people. At night, the area was used as shelter from the elements by homeless people. The area is public property, and according to the law, politicians have a legal responsibility to represent all members of the public and not just select groups. Politicians can actually be charged with an offense if they deliberately attack a section of the public in order to please another section of the public: “malfeasance of office.”
We have filed a $1 million dollar lawsuit against the city to force them to take down the fence, but it takes literally years for it to snake it’s way to trial. In the mean time, we believe that this fence – which is on public property – is itself illegal. Our intention was to cut open the city’s lock, replace it with one of our own, and then distribute copies of the key to the public, the city, and the police. That way everyone would have access to this public space. I was charged with “mischief under $5000” (which is actually a hybrid offence, meaning it’s fairly serious and carries up to 2 years in prison) and “possession of break and enter tools” which is an indictable offence and carries up to 10 years in prison. Interestingly, I was not charged with break and enter. We were prepared to use constitutional grounds to prove the fence itself is illegal (which would help our lawsuit), and that I therefore had colour of right to cut the lock.
When they realized we were planning a constitutional defence, they dropped all the charges like hot potatoes.