“The juvenile attempted to engage me in defensive conversation, your honour. Fearing for my dialectical safety, I chose to wrestle him to the ground and remove his skateboard, in the belief that it contained concealed comebacks. My fears were confirmed, as the underside of the aforementioned board revealed numerous slogans, some anarchist in nature, and one referring to the owner’s lack of fear, which I took as a direct threat of violence. After inadvertently reading one of the offending slogans in the evidence locker, Officer Pettigrew had to be restrained and sedated for a period of not less than two hours, during which time he was heard to mutter the words ‘gnarly’ and ‘sick’ repeatedly. The skateboard was destroyed for the general safety of the department.”
Honestly - “engage me in defensive conversation”? Where do you get this crap? What’s next, “use of informal dialects with intent to belittle”? Pffft.
Disorderly conduct is very often a bullshit cop term for ‘didn’t lick the officer’s ass with appropriate enthusiasm’.
As for the remark about ‘defensive conversation’, well, I am of the mind that if you cannot successfully shake off the verbal commentary of a fourteen year old kid without resorting to violence against him, then perhaps you are to volatile to be walking around with a firearm.
OK, for clairification, defensive conversation in this instance would be when I am addressing a citizen and that citizen decides it is time to confront me in a way that would cause me to be ready to move to the next point on the use of force continuum.
Example:
You are at a pub, you are somewhat inebriated and harassing the customers. I am called to remove you. I arrive, approach you, and give a lawful order, on the order of “get up, it’s time for you to go” you tell me “I don’t feel like going, I want to stay” I tell you the owner wants you gone, you reply “well fuck him and you, asshole” the tack the imaginary you has just taken has escalated the tone and meaning of the conversation, and has raised my cautions about your intent. You continue “You ain’t takin’ me no where motherfucker” I put you in an arm lock, lift you up on your toes and walk your ass out of the pub.
The conversational tone has become defensive, made so by you, as such I must act to prevent you from hurting me, or any of the patrons in the bar.
It isn’t parody, it isn’t plod-ism (which, FTR levdrakon plod -in British- means cop, or more specifically a slow-witted cop) it is a fact of life for someone who interacts with the public in an enforcement capacity.
I’m still not saying the cop in the OP was right, but he wasn’t the violent malcontent the OP makes him out to be. He didn’t sodomize this kid with a floorlamp, he didn’t beat him senseless with a night stick or tazer him in the nutsac. He knocked him on his ass and took his skateboard, and now he’s on suspension. I’d say problem solved.
What abuse? I’ll tell you what abuse. Wrestling him to the ground without provocation. That’s abuse. Getting in his face for damn near five minutes, throwing thinly veiled death threats at him. That’s abuse. Telling him his parents don’t beat him enough. Well, I wouldn’t call that abuse but it’s certainly extremely insulting. Certainly far more insulting than ‘Dude’ at any rate.
An annoyance, certainly. Quick multiple choice:
What, in your opinion, is the appropriate action for a law enforcement officer to take when faced with such an annoyance?
A) Pick it up, return it to the owner & politely ask him to cease an desist.
B) Pick it up, return it to the owner and firmly tell him to cease and desist.
C) Boot it.
Ooh, wrong answer.
Word to the wise. I’m not an artist, but if I were, and you did that to my remote controlled car you should expect to be brought up on charges of destruction of property before the end of the week. Seriously, I’d write that complaint up so fast I’d sprain my fucking wrist. The car might be a cheapo piece of shit, might cost five bucks. I might spend more money and time filing the report than on buying a new car. Wouldn’t matter. It’s the principle of the thing. If you’re going to act like your badge is some magic license to be an asshole, you should expect to get treated like an asshole. End of.
“Essentially” doesn’t cut it. If he can’t do his job without bullying kids and fucking up other people’s property he doesn’t deserve to wear the uniform. Fuck him. He’s a cunt.
As the author of the OP I feel honour bound to call bullshit on this. This thread was designed to do one thing: Expose a bully. Nothing more.
Since being exposed as a violent bully, Rivieri has made just one statement to the press. I present it here in its entirity:
“I have no comment. Thank you.”
Now if, as you have speculated, Rivieri’s outburst was uncharacteristic, and largely attributable to private stresses, that would have been a good time to say so, wouldn’t it? People are generally pretty forgiving and, had Rivieri used this opportunity to issue a brief apology he likely wouldn’t have received the press attention that he did and I certainly wouldn’t have started a thread about all this. That he didn’t apologise indicates to me that he doesn’t feel he has anything to apologise for. That is to say, he did what he did because he is what he is - an inadequate bullying thug. Should Rivieri apologise in the future I would be happy to revise my opinion of him.
Then he should have flushed his disgruntlement in the morning before he donned his uniform. He’s a policeman, not an anointed avenger for flabby, pissed off, white males everywhere. Besides, we have plenty of evidence that he’s a nasty, antagonistic thug, and very little to indicate that he’s secretly a nice guy. Maybe this really is what it looks like - a bully getting his comeuppance.
Rivieri wrestled Bush to the ground and took his skateboard before asking for it (that simple expedient having seemingly been dismissed as too pussy). When Bush tried to get up Rivieri shoved him back down again. Rivieri carried a club, a taser, has most likely been the recipient of a decent amount of unarmed combat training, and looks like he weighs about sixteen stone. Bush, by contrast, was unarmed and looks like he weighs about eight stone nothing. Rivieri had absolutely no cause to suspect that he was in the slightest physical danger. He had not been refused the skateboard because he simply decided not to ask for it. Thus, his manhandling of Bush was most certainly immoral, undeniably wrong, and (although I admit I could be wrong here), quite possibly illegal. Tell me, what should Bush have done after being treated like that? Seems to me like Rivieri had just given him ample reason to be decidedly uncooperative. Instead, Bush sat quietly while Rivieri continued to harangue and threaten him at the top of his lungs for several more minutes. These, to me, are the actions of a bully, and bullies have no place on any police force. But maybe you’re right. Maybe his dog had just died, or maybe his kids hate him, or maybe he can’t get it up for his wife, or whatever. Maybe this was an uncharacteristic explosion of temper. If so, he should say so. As it stands, his silence only serves to incriminate him further.
Yes, cowing to everyone larger and louder than you on every point of disagreement will certainly increase your life expectancy, but it’s hardly a recipe for happiness. A better life lesson would have been imparted if one of Bush’s friends had jotted down Rivieri’s badge number and made a formal complaint using the videotape as evidence. Then he would have learned that those in authority are continually accountable to the citizens who employ them. A far worthier lesson in my opinion.
It gets under my skin too. I was a teacher in a tough high school for over two years, so I speak from experience when I say that mouthy kids are a serious irritation. However, that’s absolutely no excuse to adopt an unprofessional attitude. I’ll give you an example of what I would consider to be the “right” way to approach the situation in which Rivieri found himself.
Bush: blah blah blah Dude blah blah.
Rivieri* (approaching Bush)*: Hey! Stand up straight. Look at me (beat). Take your hands out of your pockets. No-one is allowed to skate in this part of the boardwalk. Has anyone ever told you that?
Bush: Uhh…no, dude.
Rivieri (calmly, but firmly): Well I’ll tell you now. There’s a lot of people on this boardwalk. Some of them are very old and some of them are very young. They can’t always get out of the way in time. A few months back a skater about your age hit a little girl, broke her arm. Total accident, but the little girl had to go to hospital and the boy found himself in court. That’s why we have this rule. Understand?
Bush: But I wasn’t…
Rivieri: Stop! I’m not interested. I’m asking you if you understand.
Bush: Yeah.
Rivieri: Good. Now, there’s a skate park about ten minutes that way (or wherever). You can skate there as much as you want. But if I catch you skating round here again I’m going to confiscate your board and write you up a citation. Do you know what that means?
Bush: No
Rivieri: It means your parents would have to pay a $250.00 fine and you’d have to go to court. (Here Rivieri adopts a slightly more conciliatory tone) What do you think your mum would have to say about that? Do you think she’d be pleased?
Bush: No.
Rivieri: 'Course not. I’ve warned you now, so now you know. I do not want to see you skating on the boardwalk again. Okay?
Bush: Ok.
Rivieri: One more thing. When I first spoke to you, you did something wrong. What was it?
Bush: I don’t know.
Rivieri: You called me ‘Dude’. That’s disrespectful. (Indicates his badge). You see this? This is an officer’s badge. If you’re talking to an officer, you don’t call him ‘Dude’, you call him Officer or Sir. Okay?
Bush: Yeah.
Rivieri: Yeah, what?
Bush: Yeah Sir.
Rivieri: That’s good. See, wearing this badge means I’m the guy who’d come and help you if ever you were in trouble. If you were in trouble and called the police, and they came and helped you, would you call them ‘Dude’ or ‘Sir’?
Bush: Sir.
Rivieri: That’s right. An officer may be giving you a hard time one day but he might be saving your life the next day. Remember that when talking to an officer.
Bush: Ok.
Rivieri: Off you go.
Part of the above dialogue was adapted from a conversation I had with a kid I caught riding his BMX around the school yard. Never saw him riding it again. Of course, you may consider that approach to be too lenient. Diff’rent strokes, I guess. You might, if you had been Officer Rivieri on that particular day, have told Bush to sit his dumb ass down and keep his mouth shut while you wrote him out a ticket, and I wouldn’t have had any problem with that. You, as an officer of the law, would have been perfectly entitled to do that. But Rivieri’s approach was far different to either your approach or mine and both would have been far more effective and less assholish than his.
I’ve had considerably sterner talkings-to(?) from the police. The thing is, I never doubted who was in control. Rivieri wasn’t in control. What he was communicating to the boy was something along the lines of “This is how I get when I’m frustrated, so don’t frustrate me.” It doesn’t teach respect for the law, it just teaches them that the police are bullies.
And right here is where you’d lose any semblance of respect that I might give you if I were Bush. Being less than polite to you is not illegal. Hell, being rude to you isn’t illegal, no matter how much you and buttonjockey308 want to exercise ‘discretion’ in claims of ‘disorderly conduct’. If you said that to me, there is no possible way ever that I would respect you, and I sure as hell wouldn’t call you sir.
I find that when you have to demand terms of respect from people, it’s because you don’t deserve their respect.
Yeah, I bet that would make me, if I were Bush, really likely to want to call the cops for help. Who’d want more opportunity to deal with the kind of asshole that would make a stink about not being called ‘sir’?
Anyone who treats rudeness, or even the daring to not be meek and contrite, with violence and threats of arrest is a bully. That description seems to apply to a lot of cops.
“P.C. Plod” is, on reflection, a probably exclusively British term for the very particular type of policeman who likes to make up grand-sounding terms for pseudo-offences that he thinks ought to be illegal, e.g. talking to said policeman as if he were not some sort of minor deity, or being seen in public with hair below the collar, or loitering with intent to be a teenager. “Engaging in defensive conversation” just struck me as the sort of phrase that even Peter Cook in his more barbed moments of anti-authoritarianism could not have bettered.
buttonjockey308 - the kid had stopped skating. All he said was that he didn’t hear the cop the first time because he had his headphones on, and called him (gasp!) “dude”. If you believe this even remotely justifies the cop’s behaviour, then quite frankly I never want to come within 50 miles of any jurisdiction of yours. I find it little short of astounding that any cop would want to defend such behaviour; if it were one of my colleagues degrading my profession in such a manner, I would be cringing inwardly, and probably outwardly too. That you seem to think this has all gone off swimmingly and to no-one’s particular harm is truly surprising. Perhaps you should stop to think whether the respect you believe should be afforded to those who wear a badge is truly automatic, or whether it has to be earned like any other respect. Then ponder whether you really want to defend Rivieri’s actions (and defend them you do), and whether he isn’t making your job and every other cop’s job harder.
Your example is utterly incomparable, by the way; you’re talking about someone refusing to leave private property (i.e. refusing to comply with a legally enforceable order), whereas this thread is about someone who had already complied with the cop’s request to stop skating. The kid merely failed to kiss his ass while he did it. And why should he? Rivieri is clearly a complete manchild, and should be serving fries, not Street Justice™. Fuck him.
I agree with your point but I think that George Kaplin is showing how the officer dude could have more professionally (or rather professionally period) made the point that it’s respectful to use “sir” and “officer” instead of saying that you might end up dead or that you deserve to have your father beat you for using it.
Not true. He was armed with subversive California words, which make cops fear for their lives. Don’t play dumb: we all know that there’s nothing more dangerous than a 14-year-old kid saying “dude”.
Not to worry; levdrakon will probably never see the inside of a cop shop. They have psychological exams now to keep his kind out, you know.
I think you’ve misunderstood me, but that’s my fault for not being clear. I’m not a cop, and if I were I wouldn’t really care if you called me “Sir” or not. All I was doing was demonstrating, for those posters who seem to think Bush’s lack of deference in any way mitigated Rivieri’s behaviour, that Rivieri could easily have handled this little faux pas in a professional manner without resorting to the slightest degree of assholishness or thuggery. As Tony correctly perceived, I was simply trying to show how Rivieri’s point could have been made civilly.
That said, I did find this pretty funny:
Yeah, sure. I can see it now. HELP!! HELP!! I’M BEING MURDERED! QUICK. CALL THE CO…oh wait, that guy was a douche…QUICK! CALL THE FIRE BRIGADE
You’re right about that. I probably won’t see the inside of a cop shop because I don’t think it’s fun to deliberately break the law and piss off cops so they’ll yell at me so I can get it on tape and laugh later with my friends because “there’s no law says I gotsta say 'sir.”
You knock yourself out though. When come back, bring funny stories of your civil rights abuses.
Oh, and while you’re amusing yourself pissing off cops, remember they could have been otherwise occupied stopping real crime, which I’ve heard sometimes occurs in Baltimore.
Yeah. Unfortunately, they seem to be more interested in making sure they are never called “dude.” I mean, yeah, murder’s bad, but you don’t call a cop dude!
It wasn’t the kid who prevented the cop from getting on with his life and stopping real crime.
Also, why do you keep bringing up civil rights so dismissively? Is the idea that no action is condemnable unless the victim has earned the lofty status associated with civil rights leaders? This isn’t a racial discrimination or voting access or whatever case, sure, but… well, the cop was an out-of-line asshole, and he deserves to be called on that.
The right thing would’ve been for the cop to be civil; at least, more civil than he was.
That’s silly. Rivieri wasn’t out stopping “dude” sayers. He was telling skateboarders who knowingly skateboard where they know it’s illegal to leave. One got smart-ass. How many times does this have to be repeated? They know it’s illegal, they’ve said they know it’s illegal and “100% wrong” but they like to do it anyway and film it because it’s fun.
Sooner or later one of these kids is going to run over a two-year-old toddler and all you usual suspects are going to be back here demanding the cops do something. But what you expect cops to do is give out hugs and let them keep skateboarding because of course if you talk calmly and lovingly to a 14-year-old he’ll understand and stop deliberately breaking the law and getting cops to yell at him because it’s fun to film it and laugh later.
Hey, everybody! It’s “Spot the False Dilemma” with our charming host, levdrakon! He’s pretending not to see a gaping middle ground somewhere; can you find it? Lollipops and a beating to the first kid who guesses correctly!
