Huh, the LEOs I know would be thrilled if someone waved a handful of chocolate chip cookies in their faces. The police dept. is in the building I work in and whenever anyone has extra food from a meeting or whatever taking it to the police is a surefire way of making it vanish.
Or any other thread, for that matter.
Granted. Still, I can easily imagine that waving something about the size of a parking placard out the window, especially if it’s at night, might be a great way to get shot. Of course, Ambivalid would likely threaten to sue the cop, the department, and the municipality for any injuries he sustained in that asinine stunt.
He’s gotta make a living somehow. That “malpractice” money goes quick when you’re spending it all on gov’t weed and adult diapers.
Woo *hoo!!! *Yippee!!
Lookit me! Lookit me! I got it right!
Winner winner chicken dinner!!! Imma gonna go get me some cookies!!
Hell, I may even stop and hassle whatever poor schmuck is parking in the handicapped spot outside the store. Just so ***some ***poor crippled bastard can have *something **righteous ***to whine about on a message board.
I’d bet good money on it. Our police have been threatened with lawsuits for stupider stuff than that.
:smack:
Guffaw, chortle, and knowing, rueful grin. The complaints that get registered with my husband’s department, and most agencies, are so asinine as to be laughable. Seriously, things like “the deputy activated his lights and sirens and did a u-turn in front of my house. No one of was harmed, but what if there had been a child behind him?” to “I’m a city councilman in [nearby city…] How dare he give me a ticket for obstructing traffic by doing ten under in the left lane of a busy highway at rush hour?!” to “I just tapped the window of his clearly marked K9 car and felt threatened when that mean dog barked at me and made the baby cry.” (Seriously. All of these have been lodged in the past couple of months.)
In the great scheme of things, Jamie has every right to lodge a complaint against the officer in question if it satisfies his sense of righteous outrage, but he shouldn’t be surprised if TPTB treat his complaint with the indifference it richly deserves.
As kidchameleon noted above, Ambivalid is not on what one could call speaking terms with the definition of opinion. And even if he were, there’s no doubt whatsoever that he would fall squarely into the camp, nay, he’d be the proud leader of the camp that equates Everyone has a right to an opinion to Everyone’s opinion is to be treated with the utmost respect and deference. In short, he’s a moron now and there’s no hope that he won’t be a moron in the future.
Which is not what he reports the cop did. Which is what I, at least, maintain is what the cop should have done.
I see nothing wrong with cops checking cars parked in blue spots that seem like they don’t belong there, but the check consists of making sure there’s a placard and it’s being used by the person to whom it is issued. Aside from Ambivalid’s posting history – which, fine – what am I overlooking here?
The officer did two things that may have seemed out-of-ordinary: first, he gauged Ambivalid’s credentials without running his ID, for unknown reasons*, and second, he did a quick “gut check” on whether there was anything else going on besides potential parking violation. Part of that officer’s formal training actually includes watching reactions to decide whether there’s something going on besides the obvious “guy upset because he’s being questioned.” Apparently, Jamie didn’t ping any big suspicion meters, but we don’t know whether the cop was working surveillance on recent armed robberies or what. For obvious reasons, officers don’t voice all of their suspicions.
*Happened to me just recently: I was driving too fast, and got pulled over. The state trooper wasn’t able to run my license number, because his computer was down or slow, but my story and demeanor matched, so he gave me a warning, the darling. Our interaction satisfied his mission - slowing me down to posted speed - but there was no need to waste his time or mine waiting for dispatch to run my info. My straightforward reaction of “oh, gosh, yessir I was driving faster than legal” and “Thanks officer, I’ll slow down” worked as well at fulfilling his mission of keeping the highways safe.
Okay, bear with me here. Imagine that you are in fact a sneaky person using the handicapped parking spot with your grandma’s permit. If you were sitting there in the car and you saw a police officer wandering up around your car in order to view it from all angles, what would you do? Would you just sit there and wait for him to come over and ask you about your permit, or would you get the hell out of dodge while you still could?
Nobody but a complete moron would sit around and wait for their parking ticket under those circumstances. That’s why he ‘lit you up’ - otherwise, if you had been a faker, you would have just left. You are the one who wants the fakers to get their comeuppance (and on this matter I agree with you), so the police should be checking to see if the people using the handicapped parking are legit. In order to do that and actually catch and fine the wrongdoers, they have to light people up. If the cop did it your way he would never get to hand out any fines, people would just learn to take off quickly while he was doing his ‘appropriate survey’. Do you really not get that? Or is it that you just object to anybody not psychically knowing that you are disabled?
Yes, I showed my weakness here by caving in and coming back after I said I wouldn’t and responding to shit here. I regret it. It’s utterly pointless and negative. I’m glad I could be a source of some amusement for you guys here with that pool and all, but I am closing this thread for myself once and for all. Go ahead and put some bets on it, but it’s sticking this time.
I just want to say, though, there are a couple of you chronic post-bashers of mine whom I must admit I don’t hate. You go about it without so much hostility or outright total “wtf”
and often with some humor. Joey P. and Bob Ducca, I don’t know why, but you guys are growin’ on me. :eek:
Anyway, I will depart with this…
You say you are a hippie? Or ex-hippie? Because you clearly burned one too many fucking brains cells you fucking dipshit moron. At no point did I say or suggest that police are ever required to be honest with a person they are dealing with on the street/in a parking lot/in the world, where ever. Jeezus.
What I was saying, was that IF the cop was lying about why he lit me up (which he can do, but he still should have a valid reason for doing it, even if he isn’t honest with me when I ask him) then his true motivation for lighting me up was wrong. That motivation being simply his notion that I didn’t fit his conception of what disabled people look like. That doesn’t seem like a valid reason.
Except it fucking is.
:dubious:
In fucking deed…
So, in your mind, what exactly is a valid reason? You want the cops to crack down on abuse of handicapped spots, right? How else are they to do that other than talk to the people that they suspect are abusing the system? You yourself admit that you don’t fit the typical profile of those who usually use the spots. You yourself have spotted others who don’t fit the profile (girl at gym, girl at CVS) and grilled them since they didn’t seem suitably disabled to you. Why is it okay when you do it but not okay when the cop does it?
Post bashing? Hostility? And please don’t group me with Bob Ducca, his posts are little more then one lined insults that are obnoxious wastes of electrons. My posts are well thought out arguments designed to make you think about what you’ve said and what you plan to say next. That’s what we do here. We don’t let people just say what ever they want. We call people out on their shit. We make sure what someone says in one thread comes back to haunt them in another because we hold people accountable. We don’t let people say something and then later claim that they actually meant something else. We confront them when facts get added or changed up mid argument to suit your side of the debate. We try to help a fellow Doper out when we seem them falling into the same pattern over and over.
I hope you understand that. We really are a good group of people, but I think you’re going to find that the longer you keep this up the more often people are going to toss you shovels instead of flotation devices. Frankly, I think I’m done. I tried at first to see your POV, I really did. I argued both sides of your threads, I argued with and against you in the same thread. But it’s like you just simply flat out refuse to even acknowledge that there might be an ‘other side’. It’s Jamie’s side or [division by zero error]. Honestly, even if you want to keep fighting, if you want to be the parking lot warrior, if you want to keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to have to understand how everyone else sees you. You’re not going to get anywhere until you can relate to the other side. You’re going to have to understand that not everyone knows every thing about you. Other people can’t read your mind. When someone else approaches you while you’re doing something unorthodox you have to remind yourself “I know I’m____, but he doesn’t know it”. Fill in the blank with “parked legally” or “not going to hurt myself” or “not going to sue the gym” because when you don’t do that, people prepare for the worst and you don’t seem to understand that. They assume you’re parked legally, and you don’t understand why they want to check that out.
They assume you’re going to hurt yourself and you don’t understand why they would rather you didn’t do that.
They assume you’re going to sue them so they hire lawyers to defend themselves.
Your problem is, you get angry when people don’t magically know this information about you. You get mad that people don’t just know that you’re parked legally. You get mad that people don’t just know you’re not going to hurt yourself. You get mad that people don’t just know that your not going to sue them…well, people aren’t mind readers. They, like you, can only speculate and prepare for the worst outcome by doing things like lighting you up or asking you not to do that or hiring lawyers…
And I’m done cause Tosh.0 is on and that seems more interesting then this. I’m not even going to reread it to see if my ramble makes any sense.
What? Of course it is. If you don’t look handicapped and are parked in a handicapped spot that’s an entirely valid reason to check it out.
Well, of course it isn’t, according to Ambivalid, evidently. All that matters is Ambivalid’s notion that someone fits his, not the cop’s, conception of what a disabled people look like.
ISTR posting something not so long ago about Michigan’s requirements for getting a disabled parking placard. Also, ISTR Ambivalid recently posting his interrogation of a person who did not fit his conception of what a disabled person looks like. So what if the woman can work out? She very well may be able to lift weights but not able to walk for the duration that would disqualify her from having a placard. The thing is, it’s not Ambivalid’s business to interrogate anyone about it, nor is it his business to interfere with their vehicle’s passage. The decent thing, the correct thing, the legal thing to do is to notify the appropriate people about the issue. And who might the appropriate people be? Oh, yes! They would be the very people Ambivalid’s bitching about in this thread: the cops!.
As I said earlier, Ambivalid is a hypocrite, a moron, and generally a piece of crap for a human being. I left out liar, but I tend to see that as part of the definition of hypocrite.
I thought we had something special. My world is falling apart.
That’s because it’s donuts you’re supposed to wave at them. Everyone knows that.
(BTW, Monty, post #350 was a thing of beauty)