Local, suburban but bordering on urban. We have about 55,000 residents or so. By my location you see I live in the west but don’t work there, I have a 40 mile commute.
Thats all you’re getting 
Good, sounds like you are not in Middletown.
Collectively that is the only local department that seems to encourage their members to be jerks. No longer a problem for me, but they have always had the reputation of being hard asses and giving teens a hard time.
They have many speed traps and are probably the least polite department.
The police in every town I have lived in have been polite and friendly.
Jim
The drummer in my band is a police academy graduate, and he tried to join two departments. He had all the necessary college, and graduated top of the academy.
He didn’t like the racial pull over every other Mexican tactics that they used with the first department. He is half Native American and could be mistaken for hispanic. It didn’t feel right.
The second department was worse. They drove around doing nothing and then hung out arond the high school trying to get “laid.” His training officer went off to smoke pot behind some apartment complex. My friend asked him, what are you doing? You are going to get fired! His reply was, “What did you think we did with all the stuff we take away from these punkasses?” He threw his badge at the C.o.P and said that he didn’t know how they slept at night.
I have had 7 speeding tickets, but was only speeding once. They were all from State Troopers, and these people have the tickets filled out before they get out of the car. One time they gave me a ticket for “going 79” at a yellow light in bumper to bumper traffic. Another time I was driving home behind my neighbor who is a 80 year old lady. It was at night and it was raining. We aren’t going fast at all (it is a 65, we are going 50 tops.) This Trooper pulls me over for “going 89.” What the hell ever.
All of these tickets were thrown out of court (except for the one that I actually was going 3 over, on accident.) The judge said that the Troopers were getting out of control, but he couldn’t take away some $60 fee that wen’t with the ticket, I said fine, I just don’t want to have to pay $250.
Then there was the time I was arrested. This cop pulls me over, I talk to them for quite some time. It is 5:00 AM, I was taking someone home. They ask me to get out of the car, I say, “Sure thing.” Well they decide to put me through this sobriety sherade (I hadn’t drank anything in weeks.) He wants to know what I have been drinking. I say, the most politest way possible, “Well, Diet Dr. Pepper.” He says, well I am going to put you under arrest for DWI. I said, “Can I blow in the tube or something?” He told me he didn’t have one, and I would have to be booked and then taken to the hospital for blood to be drawn. After all that, I get up to the hospital. I convince the cop to take the cuffs off of me, I walk up to the dude in triage. I said, “Hi.” The cop runs up there and starts screaming at the guy to “Get Glen, we have a BAC test to do.” This nurse guy Glen does NOT use Batadine or Iodine, she staining stuff, he gets alcohol on my arm, pooled up, and then sticks me through that AND THEN finds the vein.
I was supposed to be released 8 hours later, I was not. I was transferred to “county” where I was to be released immediately. I was not. I remained in jail for 3 days, and while I was in “county” I watched someone die from a slit throat and the police just standing there, letting it happen while people where screaming “help!”. I guess they don’t want to help black people either.
More stuff happened, but I won’t bore you.
It was thrown out of court, but I don’t care about that. I never deserved to go through all of that. And they are STILL doing that shit out there.
Do I support the cops? I have been known to secretly buy their dinner when I see them eating at the restarant I am. But when I see those lights come on, I get sick to my stomach. We have police and terrorists in the same uniform, and neither have much accountability for their actions.
Toodles,
TD
Oh, and the department had their breathalyzer taken away from them for “missappropriating it.”
My lawyer told me that they had been getting drunk on the clock and blowing in it while they were driving around harrassing poor dumb boys like me.
I can’t support my local cops when I hear stories like these. Frankly, unless one of these posters is James Frey–I have no reason to doubt their stories. I have my own.
I once watched some guy get harassed by the cops in my sleepy, middle of the noc street. I happened to be awake and they pulled this guy over, pulled him out of his car (keep in mind that there was no fast action car chase or similiar going on) and started yelling at him and giving him abuse. I yelled out my window (at 14, I did not have not the greatest judgement) and lo, and behold, the yelling stopped, and they left the guy alone. We had no street lights on that street, so I couldn’t see anyone–just shapes. I could see the cop car, lit like a Christmas tree, though. What was that, except a macho contest of some idiotic kind?
There are too many of these stories–there is something wrong with either the way the cops and the public mesh, or at the very least, the image of the cops as a whole.
We had a trooper pull us over in Utah-because our license plate holder covered up the IL part. It’s an environmental plate, so it doesn’t look like regular plates.
Since he had seen us in the roadside cafe earlier, couldn’t he have just asked us where we were from? Instead he pulls us over and makes us wait while he “checks it out.” :rolleyes: No ticket, just nothing. gah.
Seems to me like it’s their job to support me. They, of course, are tools of the state, so they’re attitude does not necessarily coincide with mine. But often it does.
I pay taxes, I answer their questions politely and honestly, and if I see a crime being committed (with a victim involved), I’ll report it. Seems like that’s all the support that’s called for.
I was in line at National (Opps! Ronald Reagan National) Airport in line for a flight somewhere. Some fool (retired) FBI agent flashes his badge to try for an upgrade. THings like that really put me off my feed.