It amuses me that you of all people posted this. Would you like to know why it was no surprise to me when you signed up as a moderator?
Completely ambivalent towards them, however for some reason whenever I’m around one I am constantly thinking about going after their gun. And then I wonder if they can tell. 
I have never been arrested and haven’t had a speeding ticket in over 20 years.
The Board ate my first reply. The greatly shortened version is that I have interacted with law enforcement in a wide variety of circumstances, mostly professional (meaning I did crisis response and ERT work). They’re people. For the most part, they were professional, usually friendly, and did their jobs.
Would you like to know about confirmation bias? I can think of at least two other cops on this board who are not moderators and over a dozen moderators who aren’t cops.
There is nothing in this world so fleeting as a good cop (American, anyway). They will be found out and either purged or corrupted. There are the absolute psychopaths, those who protect them with their silence, and the principled few who the precinct hasn’t gotten rid of yet. Remember that the real-life Serpico was shot in the face . . . by another cop. And it hasn’t gotten any better since.
The system is so violent, corrupt, abusive, and void of any accountability that I don’t see how anyone can be considered moral by continuing to be involved in it. You’ve got bills, need job security, don’t have other marketable skills . . . sure, those are good practical reasons to keep the job. But, don’t pretend that the moral high-ground can be maintained. I regard many varieties of criminal with more respect than cops. Drug dealers, prostitutes, gamblers, ect. are looked down upon by some, but they generally are happy to do their thing and let me do mine. Not so much the cops in the U.S. and the 1000 odd citizens they kill every year.
I regularly blast* Fuck Tha Police*,* 911 Is A Joke* and Killing In The Name Of… so I assume they can get my attitude by association…
I don’t like police. They always seem to have a script and need to follow it. There seems to be a bunch of protocols and things have to go exactly that way. They come off as kind of robotic or inhuman to me and that’s the good ones.
I taught my kids that Andy Griffith was total fiction. The police are absolutely not your friends, they can and will lie to you (despite the fact that it is illegal for you to lie to them), and they can be violent and will suffer no consequences for it. Avoid them if at all possible. Never call them for help, as virtually no situation is so bad that it can’t be worsened by summoning unpredictable men with sticks and guns. If you are accosted, identify yourself, answer no questions, consent to nothing for which permission is asked. Speaking with police is a good way to make yourself a target and if you are already a target, there is nothing you can say that can help you and virtually anything you say can harm you, sometimes in completely unpredictable ways.
TL;DR version:
*Identify yourself by name
*Answer no other questions
*If detained ask for your parents (at 18 this part changes to ask for your lawyer)
Given that some six to eight hours each night, I have a (now retired) police officer within arms’ reach, I feel reasonably good about them.
As a thirty-something white woman in the UK, all the personal interactions I’ve had with police have been fine, even pleasant. The policeman who dealt with my Grandpa’s car accident couldn’t have been nicer, to the point of coming to visit him in hospital while off duty and arranging for him to get a 5 year driving ban rather than a permanent one, on the grounds that he was never going to be able to pass the test, but it would really upset him to be aware that he’d never drive again.
The times I had to call the police when I worked in security again were all fine; they got there in an appropriate time (in minutes in one case), dealt with things without escalating them and were generally professional.
However… I’ve heard enough stories from friends who aren’t as generally invisible to police as me. I’ve also heard stuff from a friend who used to be on the force, from the :dubious: advice never to get a pink car 'cos on quiet nights ‘car snooker’ is a popular game (find an excuse to pull over cars in the right order and that’s the one they always get stuck on), to stories of much bigger problems and terrible attitudes being tolerated and covered up. He’s a lovely guy, and that’s why he joined- because he wanted to do something beneficial- but that’s also why he left.
I’m an honest citizen so I don’t feel uncomfortable around them but I have been treated unfairly enough in the past to have a general dislike.
Potential/imminent rape, abduction or murder is a situation you’d rather **not **have cops come to to your aid in?
I’m not trying to answer for this guy, but I could answer this same question for myself:
If I was still in Texas, I would strongly consider whether or not to call the police. One of the cities in Texas I would have, but one of them I would be on the fence and the other I most definitely would not call the police. If I was in the “upper crust” in East Texas where I lived I would have totally felt fine to call the police. But as an average schlub, hell no. They are just as likely to get the damn address wrong and go kill your neighbor, come in and shoot your dog because its barking, than help.
Oregon: I feel like that I wouldn’t have had to call them at all, they would just magically show up. Hell, in Oregon, if someone steals your weed you can call them and they come out and do their best to solve the issue. They might even know how to get your weed to grow better.
See, I don’t have that attitude. I mean, I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen policemen helping drivers with car trouble. Or that I’ve seen them gently checking on homeless people in downtown Dallas. Or coming to community events with their cars for kids to check out and ask questions.
I don’t think there’s much danger or reason to mistrust the police outside of some sort of actual law enforcement action, where you’re the one being enforced. I mean, I would absolutely NOT grant consent to search my vehicle under any circumstances, for example, just because they’re cops and ostensibly should be trusted. Nor would I do anything suspicious or jumpy when they’re walking up if they’d pulled me over.
And if someone had broken into my house or car, I’d call the police- what else are you going to do? Vigilante justice?
That is spectacular!
Most police I’ve encountered have been fairly decent (with one possible exception where I was given two tickets for the same offense.*) The fact that I’m white and clean cut may have something to do with it. Overall I think that most police are probably decent people and that the bad apples get most of the press. The problem is that even the good ones will bend over backwards to prevent the bad ones from being accountable for their bad behavior.
*I had recently bought a car, and had the dealership transfer my registration from my old license plate. They were late in doing so, so there was a time when the temporary plates had expired but hadn’t been transferred to my old plates. So to cover all bases I left my old plates in the back window but left the temp plates on the car. Eventually this got take care of but I hadn’t got around to attaching the permanent plates to my car. I got pulled over and given two separate tickets each for $50.00. One for not having proper plates on my car, and a second for having my proper plates displayed in the wrong place.
I’ve never had a serious issue with police. The worst problem I’ve had was at a sobriety checkpoint a couple of years ago when the person looking over my license and registration started asking me innocuous questions then talking over my answers - I assume in an attempt to make me flustered or angry enough to give them pretext to do more extensive screening. After a while I just stopped answering and looked at her. She waved me on.
That was probably the closest I’ve come to invoking the whole “the cops are not your friends, answer no questions” trope.
FWIW, I am a white man, and was 47 years old at the time.
See, IMO that makes them just as bad.
Try this analogy on for size:
“Just so that I understand: It’s not okay to hate all of a particular group just because there are some bad members of that group, unless we’re talking about Nazis. Is that it? If it’s Nazis, then it’s okay to hate ALL of them just because there are so many examples of shitty ones.
There are over 3/4 of a million Nazis in this country. It shouldn’t be hard to find some shitty ones and some abusive assholes among them. It’s grossly ignorant to use those examples to make generalized statements about the entire white supremacist population.”
Yes, when you voluntarily join an evil institution, and then continue to support and protect that institution’s most evil and corrupt members from justice, you are a piece of shit. Whether you personally shot a dog, grenaded a baby or murdered a black person is irrelevant. What’s relevant is that you support and protect those who do, putting shared membership in an evil institution over basic morality. All cops are bastards.
Hm, I did not know this. In general in the US we are more or less told that we are pretty much the only ‘civilized’ [non-brown?] country in the world that can freely have guns [barring felonies and such of course] because of our 2nd amendment rights.
I am somewhat twitchy about cops - not out in traffic or the world, but sitting at home online. Previously I was heavily involved in online MMORPGs, working as customer service, testing and playing, and I had been absolutely terrified of being SWATted because of the whole attitude of guys towards female gamers. Being handicapped, I can’t respond to someone knocking on my door in a timely manner, and I really don’t want a SWAT style no knock entry complete with guns, gas and being thrown around, I break easily. I also have refused to get the service dog my doc has been encouraging me to add because the first thing they do is shoot the [extremely expensive highly trained] dog. I have stepped back from being as heavily involved in gaming as I was previously, but still am not over happy at the possibility of being SWATted.
On the other hand, the farm in COnnecticut wher we are has a 45 minute police and emergency response time, though the fire department did get here in 15 minutes when the place went up in flames back in 2015. Having been an armed response guard, I do not have any issue with the idea of using my sidearm for self defense when I answer the door and am alone, and if I need to go outside to investigate suspicious noises, I do put on my body armor and strap on a sidearm. On the plus side, the only suspicious sound I have investigated in the past year was an inquisitive deer that I scared the mess out of when I popped around the corner of the barn and tripped the motion detector controlled spotlight into the field =) I may be slow on crutches, but I am a good shot and have my phone holstered and ready to dial 911.