"Good Cop" Stories?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I used to work as a police dispatcher, and in my opinion, most cops are good guys/gals. There are a few dipsticks out there (who tend to be the ones making the news), but most of the time, cops put up with a very difficult, stressful, and dangerous job.

I have a few stories of my own, but these were dealing with cops in the district I used to work in. Still, I only worked there for a couple months, and these were years later.

Once, I forgot to pay for gas at the gas station. I completely didn’t realize it until I got a call at work. The officer was nothing but polite and nice about it. He asked me if I had gotten gas this morning at a particular gas station. I said I had, and thought about it, and said “Oh my God! I forgot to pay, didn’t I! I’m so sorry!” I got really nervous and concerned, but the cop just kind of laughed, and said it was OK as long as I paid them back. I asked them if I should leave work right now or if it could wait for lunch. He said, “Oh, lunch is fine, or after work. Just sometime today.” He asked me if I was a former dispatcher and then chatted me up a little bit. :slight_smile:

The second time, I left my apartment for work one morning to find that someone had parked me in. Now keep in mind this was a pretty normal apartment parking lot. There’s parking down the left or right, or you drive down the middle and there’s space for two cars. Some idiot had parked a truck and trailer in front of all of the cars on one side. (!!!) After honking a few times and waiting a few minutes to see if he “just ran in”, I called the apartment complex folks. They came over and we noticed that their temporary license plate was clearly forged. We called the cops, and it quickly turned into a huge clusterfuck.

The cops came by and looked at the vehicle, and apparently it was owned by some wanted guy. More and more cops started showing up, along with a tow truck, but they didn’t want to move the car or whatever. I just stood around watching, got asked a few questions. Finally, a cop showed up I recognized and I waved. He smiled at me but was busy. He started interrogating this woman who another cop had brought to the scene, asking “Why did you lie to us?” and she’s bawling “I’M SORRY!” It turns out she lived nearby and her son was wanted, and was visiting her. (Apparently the smartest thing to do as a wanted criminal is to park a bunch of people in so they can’t leave. Dumbass.) They had gone to her apartment earlier that day and she had lied to him, and now they were confiscating the truck or whatever, and she’s just weeping. Finally I approached the cop and said “Look, I know you’re involved in a big mess here, but I’d really like to get to work if I can. Can the tow truck just move the truck a wee bit so I can get out?” He said, “Of course.” He put the questioning on hold, had the tow truck hook up and move the truck and trailer out of my way. I thanked him emphatically and bade him good luck. What a mess.

Granted these were kind of special cases. However, I used to ride along and I would routinely see cops rooting for people to avoid tickets – “Slow down, man, you can see me, I don’t want to pull you over”, or trying to help women in abusive relationships, or gleefully returning stolen goods to their rightful owner.

22

Come on , don’t be so hard on yourself :stuck_out_tongue:

23

One time my Mom returned to the house she was sharing with roommates and found a strange car in the driveway. None of the roommates were home that weekend – she knew they were traveling. The house was isolated in the woods, and here was this strange car.

She called her sons (my brother and I). We came over and looked around the house for possible intruders. Then she picked up the phone again and the line was live…she said “Hello?” and the person on the other end hung up.

Yes, it was a movie-like “maybe that was someone already inside the house!” moment.

We called the police at that point.

Two gargantuan officers arrived very quickly. When I say gargantuan, I mean these dudes were basketball-player sized, broad of shoulder, brawny, and young enough to run like the wind, to boot. They hulked over to us, listened to our tale, then hitched up their gunbelts a notch (not drawing weapons, however), and advanced menacingly into the house.

Nothing came of it. It turned out a roommate had traveled with a friend, and at the last minute, they’d decided to take his own car and leave the friend’s.

No entirely satisfactory explanation was ever given for the apparent phone hangup, but the phone company said that such events happen sometimes with old equipment that might be leaking voltage, or perhaps it was just “crossed lines.”

The two cops were nice enough to us about the false alarm. But I was also happy that they were able to assume a not-nearly-so-nice presence when clearing the house of “bad guys”. If I ever need help confronting a real bad guy, I want massive, brawny, cold-eyed sons of bitches just like those two fine gentlemen on my side. :slight_smile:

Sailboat

24

I didn’t mean to insinuate that good citizen behaviour leads to experiencing only professionalism from the police. What I was trying to say is that I don’t lead a lifestyle that brings me into contact with police very often, so my experience is less. I’ve had less contact with police, and so fewer chances to experience bad behaviour from them.

We have tenants who have regular contact with the police, usually as a result of behaviour like alcohol/drug abuse, partying (disturbing others, which leads to police calls), domestic abuse, basic obnoxious behaviour, minor skirmishes with the law, money problems, and being around other people who behave badly or in illegal ways. I am sure those tenants, for example, would tell different stories about how they are treated by police officers. I am sure those tenants also have encounters with police officers far more often than I do, so they are more likely, statistically, to run into a ‘bad’ cop.

I believe that it would be, and is, wrong for the police to treat me, a white, middle-class, employed, ‘respectable looking’, law-abiding citizen differently from, say, a non-white person, who both looks and acts differently. Whether you look like a middle-aged office worker or an outrageous pierced-tattooed-purplehaired-alternative type or someone from another ethnic background, the police are obligated to treat us all with basic decency and respect.

And the police deserve from us basic decency, respect, and so much more. It’s a job few can do well, and it’s a job that asks them to put their lives at risk every day.

25

I hit a deer. The usual circumstances for such an incident apply - it was foggy, I had slowed down when I saw the deer, then I saw the second deer… and plowed into the third one. :smack: While I was only about three blocks from home, I was panicked and muddled, so I coaxed my barely-functional car to the nearest gas station, half a mile further up the road, then pulled in and burst into tears. I called my dad from a payphone - I was a tad incoherent, and just blurted out “I think I killed him! Oh my god, I left the scene!” then hung up. Since I’d only left the house ten minutes before, Dad knew I couldn’t have gotten far, so he called the cops and together they managed to track me down - passing said dead deer on the way, so when they did get to me, they had a clue what I was on about.

The two officers were as nice as they could possibly be to this then-19-year-old girl. One, the younger of the two, kept patting me gently on the shoulder telling me everything was OK, it could have happened to anyone, don’t worry, at least you weren’t hurt, and so on, while his older partner managed to get some details out of me. When we finally had everything somewhat settled, the younger cop asked me, “Do you want the deer? I have some good recipes for venison…” The older cop bopped him on the side of the head with his clipboard and said, “You moron. Can’t you see she’s freaked out?” For whatever bizarre reason, that made me laugh and I stopped being freaked out. Despite the younger one’s faux pas, they were both very nice, very gentle guys and I still appreciate all they did to make a bad situation easier.

26

A year or so back, as I was leaving work, I could tell my car was having trouble - it felt draggy. I was on a bit of road where I literally couldn’t pull over due to major entrance ramps so I had to drive something like a mile on what appeared to be a flat tire. It was a treat watching what appeared to be smoke coming up from the back ofr the car! Found a safe place to pull over, checked - yep, tire not just flat but shredded due to being driven on for that distance.

I called AAA but they were going to take an hour or more. Time to get to work. I’d never changed a tire myself (a skill I will make sure my kids learn before they learn to drive!) but I got out the manual, and slowly got everything set up - had to figure out how to release the winch holding the spare, set the jack in the right spot, etc. when a kind policeman pulled up behind me and finished the job in about a tenth of the time it would have taken me. I should have gotten his name/precinct and taken cookies over there but I was distracted (oh, and AAA showed up as the officer was finishing up, naturally).

The cop who arrested a friend of mine years ago for bouncing one too many checks was also very nice. Let him drive himself to the police station, chatted pleasantly with us when we arrive to bail him out… complimented on my wedding dress :eek: :slight_smile: (we had gotten married at the justice of the peace there a few weeks earlier, and she was arriving just as we were finishing,and she recognized me. Yes, we were known at the Chapel Hill police department ;))

27

A couple of years ago, I made a rather stupid decision. I had bought these tickets to a concert that I really really wanted to see, but a couple of months had passed since then, my money was short, and I hadn’t been able to renew my car’s registration. But dammit, I wanted to see that concert, so I decided to go anyway and just drive really really carefully. I made it down to Ann Arbor safely (although my muffler decided to fall free of its moorings as I pulled into the parking garage, but I always carry wire and bungee cords with me for just such occurences), enjoyed the concert, and then was to follow a friend of mine to her place in Lansing to stay the night. Tragically, she drives much faster than I do, and she led me astray from the printed directions. I managed to get to Lansing, but from there, I was hopelessly lost. I have never been happier to see those flashing blue and reds in my life. When he walked up to my car, I rolled down the window, burst into tears, and said “I know the tags are expired, and I’ll pay the ticket, but just tell me how to get to my friend’s house!” Not only did he not laugh at me, he gave me very clear and easy to follow directions, and I made it to my destination. And I haven’t missed a renewal date since.

Also, living up in Northern Michigan, I’ve had a few cops call tow trucks for me and help me out in bad weather. Once, the state cops came and called the tow truck to get me out of the ditch. As we were waiting, the county sheriff came by to check on us. Then the city police came by to check on us. I couldn’t believe it.