Man arrested for stealing own car. And when he’s vindicated in court, finds they’ve sold it.
Bloody hell!
I’m with the writer of the editorial…I hope he gets a new Escalade out of the deal, and sues the Baltimore PD into bankruptcy. Anybody who wants to know why I hate cops, this is a prime example.
…Well, there’s some of that fine American justice in action.
<anecdote I heard from a lawyer>
A guy, this lawyer’s client, took his car in for some body repairs one day. The mechanic said they couldn’t fix it without permission from the police. The police were contacted, and promptly tried to put a handful of points on the man’s license and fine him several hundred dollars.
The guy tries to justify not having called the police: He accidentally backed into a tree on the edge of his driveway. The tree is most definitely on his property. The accident took place entirely on his private property, between one item he owned (car) and another (tree). He was the only person involved in the accident.
Doesn’t matter, said the police. You were supposed to call us so we could file a report. Your insurance won’t cover it without a police report.
I didn’t file an insurance claim, the man said, mostly because I felt like a complete idiot having driven into a tree that’s been there forever.
Apparently, he took them to court over it and the judge let him off the hook, and told the cops that their job is in fact “to protect and serve”, not “to harrass and be assholes”.
</anecdote>
This sort of shit is not, unfortunately, very surprising from Baltimore cops.
The local City Paper (free, left/liberal weekly) has done a bunch of stories over the past year about the Department’s problematic enforcement techniques. One of their big things is an attempt to curb crime by arresting hundreds of people—disproportionately black, even in this majority black city—for petty offenses.
And this is not simply a New York-style zero tolerance program, where people get arrested for minor stuff like littering or turnstile jumping. It’s a program where people often get arrested simply for standing on a public street corner.
Full story here.
In the story linked by the OP, it’s possible that the overbearing tactics of the Baltimore Police also intersected with the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Baltimore Department of Transportation, which oversees the towing and storage of impounded vehicles in the city. The whole setup is a massive cash cow for the city and for private towing contractors, and a nightmare for many residents. There’s a story about it here. Here’s one anecdote:
And here’s a follow-up story in which Jessup goes back to the impound lot to get the car:
Like Nina said, “Oh, Baltimore. Man, it’s hard just to live.”
Unintentional irony, or subtle wit? I vote for the latter.
This has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of a cop doing–and I have a couple of doozies of my own! So basically what these turnip heads are saying is that we don’t actually own our property–what if the guy just got pissed off and took a baseball bat to his own vehicle? Does he have to file a police report of his own bad temper? Who the hell do these dicks think they are, anyway?
I really can’t stand cops, they just piss me off. I’m pretty much a law abiding person who has never been arrested and I wish the fuckers would just disappear off the face of the planet. Every time I’ve had to deal with a cop they’ve been total assholes, with the exception of one Portland motorcycle cop who was pretty cool when he busted me speeding and let me take a safe driver course rather than get points on my license. Mostly they just want to throw their weight around and when anyone points out to them that their preconceived notion of a situation is in fact at total variance with reality they get out their authori-TAY and bluster around threatening to bust you for nothing if you don’t kowtow to them and make their inflated egos even bigger. Is it a prerequisite that any male who wants to be a cop have a very tiny penis and a big complex about it or something?
Female cops tend to be just as bad if not worse–any humanity they might have retained through training disappears as they’re hazed by their fellow cops into toeing the old blue line. We have one female officer here who goes by the soubriquet of “Lady Lightning” due to her insane love affair with her taser–bitch actually allowed herself to be videotaped repeatedly tasing a handcuffed suspect on the ground–to the point where she actually announced she needed to CHANGE THE BATTERY to continue as the first one had completely discharged. :eek:
What a buncha cunts… Sometimes I think I’d rather take my chances with the criminals than be “protected” by these shitheads–in Portland they like to shoot people as a team sport, and if you happen to be a bit deranged you might as well pin a target on your back. Funny thing is, the only time I DON’T feel safe in my city is when the cops are around! They really like shooting people at traffic stops, too…
Even if the car was stolen, why would it not be returned to the “original” owner vs. sold by the state at auction?
Well, because the state owns everything, of course! We’re just allowed to use it provisionally until such time as they come get it because they need the money for something… More tasers or bullets, don’tcha know… :rolleyes:
Even if they didn’t return it to the owner (which I was wondering about to), why would they sell it before the trial of the guy who allegedly stole it? Isn’t it still evidence at that point???
OK, yeah. The incident in the OP is ridiculous. This anecdote, however, I’m not sure I believe. I was in a similar accident last year. I hit a large dog at 70 mph, doing quite a lot of damage to my car. Still, one car, no (human) casualties. I was in the middle of nowhere, so I drove back to the nearest town and called the police. They said, “Can’t help you. You left the scene. No police report for you!” I called my insurance company the next morning. They covered the damage, no questions asked.
Attitudes like thie really bother me. It’s never a good sign to hear anyone say: “I hate [group]. Every [group member] I’ve ever met has been an asshole.” Prejudice is always distasteful-- it doesn’t matter at whom it’s directed.
Think of the logic here-- because of a few limited experiences and from stories you’ve heard in the media, you’re willing to judge an entire group of people as being bad.
Yeah, you may have had a couple of bad experiences. That doesn’t mean that every cop is a bad person. Ever consider that maybe the reason they’re bing “assholes” to you is because of your obvious hostility? Or maybe the cop was having a bad day?
I know a lot of law enforcement officers through my husband’s job. Yeah, there’s the odd asshole here and there (just like in any profession) but the majority of them are people who just want to do their jobs and go home to their families at the end of the evening.
How come these are never the ones who stop me? 
I’m actually on pretty good terms with the local police…all 10 of them. It’s a fact of nature that the bigger the organization, the higher the percentage of assholes. Baltimore PD is pretty large.
Okay, in the first place, where do you get off assuming I’m speaking from a “few limited experiences and stories I’ve heard from the media?” And if I were, how do you figure your limited experiences socializing with cops as a peer’s wife make you any more eligible to judge their behavior at work? Just because I’ve never been arrested doesn’t mean I’ve never been rousted, and I have a lot of friends and family who’ve run afoul of the cops too. Let’s run a few of these by, shall we?
A cop comes to my house on a domestic disturbance call as my former shithead boyfriend freaked out, beat me senseless and trashed my house in front of my kids–my four year old daughter ran next door to get them to call the cops in the first place. As I’m holding an ice pack to my bleeding face and trying to calm my kids down from the trauma, a stupid fucking cop gets his “I smell poop” look on and haughtily informs me that the gothic calligraphed note which reads “You are cordially invited to go fuck yourself” that’s magneted five feet up my fridge is “inappropriate to have around children.” I told him that if, at four and three they were capable of deciphering that font I’d be pretty fucking impressed, and get the hell out of my house you insensitive asshole! Then they refused to arrest the shithead who fucked me up and decided to drop him off at his mom’s house. Any bets on how fast he was back pounding on my door?
The cop who busted a car my friend was in, let the drunken driver continue driving home, but insisted on taking my (NON-DRUNK BACK SEAT PASSENGER) friend to detox five miles away–in spite of the fact that he was less than four blocks from his house–the same address as on his ID card. Did I mention the other four incredibly drunken passengers were allowed to go with the drunk driver? Guess the cop just didn’t like the look of my friend, because he obviously wasn’t worried much about upholding the law or anything.
The asshole cop that decided he didn’t like us stopping on the street at 8:30pm to look in a showroom window at a lovely Shelby Cobra and followed us six blocks to our house, then stopped us and tried to roust us–did I mention we were in full Elizabethan garb having come from a feast–two adults and a twelve year old boy-- and I pointed out to him that we had broken no laws by stopping to look in the window and besides look (and I turned on my brights) there’s my house right there. Rather than admitting he’d screwed up he insisted on lecturing us for fifteen minutes about absolutely nothing and tried to intimate that he was being really nice by not running us in–never did answer on what charge he thought he could get away with arresting us for.
The lazy ass cop who stood there and watched my bike getting jacked as my SO was trying to run the guy down while carrying bags of groceries–my SO yelled at the cop “he stole my bike, get him, he stole my bike!” and flatly refused to get his fat ass moving to, uh, you know–ENFORCE THE LAW. Then had the gall to tell my SO, who unsurprisingly enough failed to catch the asshole stealing my bike, “well, how did I know it wasn’t really HIS bike?” Gee, asshole, the fact that my SO had the KEY to the BIKE LOCK the guy just CUT OFF might have been a clue, y’think?
The jerk cop who rousted a friend of mine and not content with just patting him down proceeded to actually grope his dick, repeatedly telling my friend that there really wasn’t a damned thing my friend could do to stop him. My word against yours, he said, and you know I bet he was right and nothing would have happened to the perv cop–guy still has his job and I doubt this is the only time he’s tried this little shenanigan.
Don’t take my word about Lady Lightning–all documented on COPS.
I could go on for days here, really.
And just for the record I’ve known quite a few cops socially as well. Just because they can be nice to have dinner with doesn’t mean that when they get on the job they don’t turn into buttholes, and I’ll tell you what–they don’t have a lot of respect for any of us scumbags who they’re ostensibly protecting. They mostly think everyone’s a shithead or an asshole and proceed accordingly. What goes around, comes around, and most cops get the kind of attitude they give out.
As for “maybe the cop had a bad day,” FUCK THAT. I have rough days too, I work in customer service, and I am not only NOT ALLOWED to take out my feelings on my customers, I pride myself on being able to remain professional no matter how badly someone else behaves. If I can do it, I absolutely DEMAND that any public servant who has a gun and is allowed to use it had damned well better be able to keep his or her feelings in check and stay calm. 911 dispatchers get yelled and cursed at regularly, but they don’t react by cussing back–unlike the goddamned cops.
We’d all really love it if our cops could be Ossifer Friendly but the fact is that they are not. They are encouraged to develop an “us vs. them” mentality and the good, compassionate people who go into law enforcement are not only vastly outnumbered by the petty authoritarians and bullies but are ruthlessly inculcated by their peers until they toe the line. This is just a fact of life, and no amount of “well, this one guy we have dinner with was VERY nice” will change the fact that if you meet up with said guy while he’s on the job and convinced you’re a miscreant you will have a very different experience and most likely a very different assessment of his “niceness.”
For the record, I don’t much like the attitude of the automatic cop apologists like yourself either–the granting of all benefit of the doubt to one group over another bothers me too. Guess we’re even then.
Well, my husband has been on the job with the cops. He’s gone on raids, stakeouts, warrant serves and arrests. He’s helped search properties with them and has worked closely with them in investigations. Not only do we discuss these matters, but I hear his co-workers talking in an unguarded fashion about their cases all the time.
I’m sorry that happened to you-- they certainly should have arrested him, especially if this happened after many states passed the auto-arrest laws.
That said, you’re not perfectly blameless. An insensitve asshole the cop may have been, but it’s never a good idea to call them that. They’re human-- they take offense just as easily as anyone. It doesn’t excuse the fact that he didn’t arrest the man who assaulted you, but cops aren’t perfect.
Did this happen after the auto-arrest laws were put in place (if you have them in your state, that is)? If so, these cops clearly weren’t doing their duty and should have been reported.
In both of these examples, I have to wonder about belligerence. If you’re hostile to a cop or verbally abusive, they’re possibly going to nail you with anything they can. Yeah, it’s not professional to lose their temper that way, but I’m sure you’ve known of a fellow employee who deliberately stalled on a request or did something within their power to punish someone for being nasty to them. Everybody’s got a story like that.
Devil’s advocate again: Cops are trained to be quick responders, but they’re also trained to try to get as much information about a scene before they haul off and chase somebody. Do you know for CERTAIN he was watching? Maybe he was daydreaming and suddenly your SO runs up and starts shouting. It takes him a few seconds to figure out what’s going on and by then, the guy has probably got a head-start on him. What’s he going to do? Chase the guy down and shoot him to retrieve a bike?
If this did happen, this is horrible, but I’d really have to know all of the information before I could make a judgement. I can see a situation in which a cop would feel it necessary to check a suspect’s genital region if they feel there’s a chance a weapon or drugs were hidden there. I can also see him responding to an outraged suspect by saying he’s allowed to check that area if he thinks there may be a weapon and no, there isn’t anything that you can do about it.
I don’t know you or your friends, and I don’t know all of the circumstances in these stories. In the past few years, I have learned that there’s almost always more to the story than you’re initially told-- on both sides. Often, a story sounds outrageous on the surface, but when you start getting more details, it turns out it wasn’t such a big shocker after all. Sometimes, it’s because it’s been exaggerated from telling to telling, and sometimes it’s because crucial aspects were left out. I’m not saying that’s the case here-- all I’m saying is that I’ve learned not to take these things at face value.
As I said, my husband has worked with them-- quite extensively. He’s worked with both the local cops and the State Patrol. My husband is a man of integrity who takes human and civil rights very seriously. He does not tolerate violations of either. So, these cops must be “extra good” at hiding their evil side if he’s never seen it either socially or professionally. Either that, or they’re just guys trying to do a really tough job. (I vote for the latter.)
I won’t say that cops don’t have an automatically suspicious demeanor-- of course they do. It’s part of the job. Everyone lies when confronted by the cops. They expect it. So your outraged protests of innocence are going to likely be brushed aside, especially if you’re hostile or impolite.
Sure they do. Haven’t you ever heard some of those tape recordings on the news of an indifferent or hostile 9-1-1 operator? I remember one not too long ago in which a young boy called for help and was dismissed by a 9-1-1 operater who sthought it was a prank. IIRC, she got kinda nasty when he kept calling. It was a horrible tragedy.
What I meant by “bad day” was this: All day long, you talk to hostile, argumentative and possibly violent people. In fact, you’re constantly on edge because you never know when one of these people is going to turn out to be a lunatic and try to hurt you. After about five hours of this tension and abuse, someone says something hostile and you get snarky. Then, the person you snapped at walks away bad-mouthing cops in general because the cop was “rude.”
And how did you come by this knowledge of what every cop in the United States experiences? Secondly, how is it that my husband has not been bullied into becoming a petty authoritarian in the seven years he has worked with law enforcement?
Sure I would. I would expect nothing else. One of my husband’s close friends is a detective. By God, if I ever committed a crime, that guy is the last person I would want on my case. Not because he’s an asshole, but because he’s very good at his job.
Yes, they do treat suspects differently than others. It’s part of their methods, part of their training. I wouldn’t expect them to be “nice” to me if they suspected me of a crime. I would expect them to arrest me and try to get as much information out of me as they could without violating my rights. (And from what I’ve seen, a good portion of suspects aren’t smart enough to keep their mouths shut.) They would lie to me and try to trick me. That’s what they do.
I’m not an automatic cop apologist. I have sided with law enforcement in several threads, especially when I see people making broad-brush, prejudiced statements that don’t even remotely resemble the experiences I have had.
And as for giving the benefit of the doubt, well, I prefer to err on the side of caution. I’ve never enjoyed condemning people without a fair examination of the evidence. (There’s always more to the story . . .)
There are bad cops out there, just like there are bad apples in any profession. What I’ve seen doesn’t mesh with the old “blue wall” legend. The Blue Wall does exist-- you cover for your buddy when he’s late for work, or if he doesn’t get a form turned in on time. It doesn’t extend to covering up violations of people’s rights.
Let’s say you’re a lieutenant: Even if you don’t give two shits about people’s rights being violated, you do care when it means extra work and headaches. Every time there’s an “incident” it means bunches of paperwork and headaches. God help you if the mayor or governor starts breathing down your neck because of something they heard in the media. (Media scrutiny can be a nightmare, even if you’ve done nothing wrong because the media tends to exaggerate and leave out crucial bits of the story in order to make it more sensational.) The end result: you order your guys to toe the line because if they don’t, it’s your ass.
Let’s say you’re an officer: Do you want to work next to a guy who’s volitile, who may escalate a situation in which you might get hurt? Assholes tend to be assholes all the time. They don’t reserve their nastiness just for one situation. Assholes are terrible to work with because they’re generally all-around bad people. They’re assholes to the public, assholes to their co-workers, and usually assholes to their families.
My husband’s job at the prison was to get rid of bad employees. The institution didn’t want people working there who might start fights or violate inmates’ rights. The co-workers of bad employees often came forward to report any violations that they saw-- they didn’t want to work with someone who was causing trouble. All they wanted to do was “do their eight and hit the gate.”
Yes, there are bad cops, who for one reason or another stay within the system. Either they haven’t crossed the line enough to give grounds for removal or a report hasn’t reached the right hands. It happens, just like bad people slip through the cracks in any profession.
However, I submit to you that they are not as numerous as you believe. Just like you’ll notice the one screaming brat in a resturant but not the children who are dining quietly, you remember tales of bad-cop interactions. There have been ten thousand arrests nation-wide today, but if one of them went bad, that’s what you’ll hear about and the one you’ll remember. The media doesn’t focus on tales of cops doing their jobs professionally.
That’s right.
And there are also fairies at the bottom of my garden, and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Seriously, are you actually asserting that cops never cover for one another when citizens’ rights are violated? You’re a fucking dreamer if you actually believe that.
Of course. Bad things happen and there are some bad people out there. All I was saying was that it’s not a common occurance.
And what color is the air on YOUR planet again? :rolleyes: Must be nice to live someplace where that kind of naivete can exist long enough for you to reach adulthood.
And I’ve always wondered what it must be like to have nice, neat categories in which to place people. “All [group members] are bad.” I’ve always heard that prejudice is a lot of fun, but then again, I also have to pity the people who are wrapped up in it because they’re missing out on some great life experiences.
Personally, I’d rather base my opinion on* actual experience *with the people accused than second-hand stories and brief encounters. But that would take all the fun out of it, wouldn’t it?
It’s no different than saying: “All black people are criminals,” and then backing up your claim with stories about the black guy who stole your car, or the black guy you heard about in the media who killed someone in a robbery. Prejudice is prejudice and it’s always pathetic.
Roll your eyes all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that you prefer to believe all cops are bad people. Nothing I could say would change your mind because you enjoy hating.
I’m fully willing to admit there are bad cops out there. Why? Because I’m a reasonable person and I know there are bad people in every profession. I know it would make it a lot easier on you to dismissively pigeon-hole me as a “blindly ardent cop apologist” if I said that every officer was good, but, sorry, I try to be reasonable about these things.
If during every single speaking encounter one has had with an on-duty cop, the cop has exhibited behavior ranging from unpleasant to evil, is it unreasonable to start thinking ill of cops as a group?
Well, it’s a state law, so it might make a bit more sense in your neck of the woods. Seems I exagerated the amount of the fine (no more than $100), but here’s a cite.