As someone who seriously considered a career in law enforcement, I really really think you’re wrong here. Yes, there are those that just enjoy the power trips it gives them - my experience is that this is far more prevalent in small towns.
However, by and large the LEO I’ve met have been people who just want to make the world around them a better place. They have a lousy social status - due to people like Blanche and others who simply assume cops are in the wrong unless proven otherwise. Just look at the number of posters here who ‘hate to be defending cops’. They get stupidly low pay, and are asked to put their lives in danger - far more danger than firefighters - on a daily, routine basis.
I didn’t know it was customary to provide cites for your own opinions in this forum. I apologize for my infraction and will try to provide references in the future.
It’s because there’s really only two reasons to be a cop - to abuse the power or to use it to improve the world. As you mentioned, the pay is pretty lousy for the degree of risk they face (though a lot better than I’ve ever made in most cities). There’s not many people out there who would be willing to put their life on the line to help others, a lot of other jobs that let you help others at lower risk or with better rewards. From my experience of humanity, there’s a lot more people who would be willing to take a job because it’s a power trip, or the best money they can make with their level of education (many small towns hire people with only GEDs to be police, and most police departments don’t require a college degree), or they think they can make money on the side, or they like to hurt people. Though I’ve met plenty of good cops, I’ve met a lot more who fall into the latter category, ranging from apathetic at best to sadistic and sociopathic at worst.
I’m sure some areas have better cops than others, but I think the nature of the job, and the nature of people in general and how they react to having power and having to deal with annoying ‘customers’ leads to a lot of people who shouldn’t be cops working as cops, even in the best departments.
Just another vote for this tasering being completely justified. I was amused by the earlier post referencing Rosa Parks. Yes, this woman truly is the Rosa Parks of people who drive on suspended liscences.
It couldn’t be just because that’s a job they enjoy doing? If someone asked me why I like journalism, it wouldn’t be to abuse the power (obviously) or to “improve the world” (though that would be nice). I do it because I enjoy doing it.
Pretty broad brush you’ve got there. Not to mention that you just contradicted the first sentence in your post by providing at least two more reasons.
Sure. And there are a lot of people who shouldn’t be teachers working as teachers, a lot of people who shouldn’t be coaching coaching, a lot of people who shouldn’t be preachers preaching, a lot of people who shouldn’t be politicians politicking, and on, and on, and on.
But is there any evidence that they knew it at the time?
I’d compare tasers to air bags. When air bags first came out, they were the hot item. It was only as time went on that it was discovered that (as designed at the time) they were dangerous to children and other short people. Air bags were still a good thing; there were just a few kinks to work out.
The question is: have tasers cost more lives than would have been lost if the police just shoot people, or get shot? Can any current issues be worked out in time? Overall, I think tasers are good. They can readily defuse potentially fatal confrontations. The cop that abuses the use of tasers is the cop that would have abused the use of his gun; overall, an impovement.
(P.S. - to all. If they had closed off my road while waiting for a sergeant simply because some stupid fucking bitch refused to obey a police officer’s lawful orders, I’d have walked up and tased the cunt myself. C’mon!)
Could be. I thought I heard, “put your arms behind your back” which I took to be the command to order a suspect to assist in getting themselves restrained. (I.e. the officer is having the suspect place hands on butt with arms crossed so they can more easily handcuff 'em - especially when working alone.) In this case, I would think that it is simply more effective and quick to have the second officer move the suspect’s hands and arms. The sgt had to do this anyway, after the second tazer.
Again, tho, I am not bashing this officer. It’s more of a “could be done differently in the future” kinda thing. He had a partner, the partner had to move her arms for her anyway, it does not (to me) sound like her hands were out of sight, and the second zap seemed to produce no further results. Not faulting the cop.
Of course, if the officer could not see her hands, he was totally correct in administering another zap to a non-compliant and potentially harmful suspect.
…But I think justice has truly been served. I would bet pounds to pesos that this bitch was the kind of moron to use her cell-phone during a movie. The only thing that would have made this really fitting was if she was leaving a movie theater from whcih she had been removed for talking on her phone.
No you’re not. I wanted them to give her another jolt just to stop that noise…
Am I the only one that laughed when he shot her?
“No! I’m calling somebody. He’s gonna arrest me, don’t you touch me! You gonna shoot me? He got a gun and he gonna shoot me!” “bzzzt” Yup, he gonna shoot you, he gotta gun and he gonna shoot you.
A roadside stop is one of the most dangerous situations you will ever be in as a police officer. There is a National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, and there used to be a non-official website out there that gave brief biographical details/information about the deaths of the officers, I can’t find it now. However, a huge number of them died on routine traffic stops, and that continues to be a problem to this day.
A police officer has a lot of training to deal with physical confrontations that puts them at a 1 on 1 advantage against your average citizen. However, a roadside stop can neutralize quit a bit of that. Sit in your car some day, and put a flashlight in your glove box. Open it up and put your hand in. See how long it takes you to pull that flashlight out and point it at your driver’s side window. Unless you’re incredibly slow you can do it in under 2 seconds.
Everytime someone reaches their hand into a glove compartment to get their registration and insurance card an officer could theoretically be under 2 seconds away from a having a shot fired at close range, where even the most inexpert gunman will most assuredly hit the target. If the gun is under a seat it can be harder to get to, if it’s on the driver’s person, it could be easier to get to than in the glove compartment.
There are too many places of concealment and the situation can turn fatal too quickly for an officer to ever be very safe in that kind of environment. That’s why officers cannot allow people to get resistant with them when it comes to getting them out of that car. Once they are out of the car, everyone involved is much safer. As long as they are in that car the officer has to be on extreme guard, and even then they may not be able to kill the person before they get a shot off.
You don’t have time to safely make it policy to start negotiating at this point. Especially when it is so easy and non-harmful to the person who is driving to just LISTEN. Stepping out of the car doesn’t void your ability to speak with the officer, most police officers actually speak to you more than one would believe, and allow you more than enough time to explain whatever it is you think you need to explain (in most cases where an arrest needs to be made, an arrest needs to be made, however, and the person you need to explain things to is the prosecuting authority via your legal representation. In fact, the more you say to the police the worse once it has become clear you are being arrested and charged.)
Actually, at least in my experience if they ask to see your driver’s license on a traffic stop and you’ve forgotten it (or just say you have) then the officer will tell you that you need to produce your license at the local court building by X date.
You were doing well in this thread until this post (and well, the post directly prior to it.
There are many reasons to become a police officer. The pay isn’t necessarily great, but if you don’t have a college education it isn’t easy to get a job that pays well anyways. If you become a cop you have a job that typically is there to stay, aside from when local governments are deep in the red and have to slash police officer positions. This is generally somewhat rare and politicians are loathe to do it because constituents don’t like hearing that the government is in such bad shape we have to lay off the people who keep the streets safe.
Furthermore there are some people who actually enjoy police work. As other posters have already mentioned. The pay isn’t that great, but in most areas you have good benefits. Say you’re a young man, in good physical shape, you don’t want to sit behind a desk all day or do back breaking manual labor all day, and you aren’t really into going to college–becoming a cop doesn’t look that bad. Unfortunately you realize like most cops do that there is a ton of paperwork involved, but that’s usually after the person has already been attracted to the job.
LIke a lot of other fields that used to be wide-open to people with only a high school degree, policing more and more is starting to favor people who have a college diploma under there belt, but for the present time my comments in regards to “no college required” are still accurate in most places.
Unfortunately there are many who wear blue and aren’t ‘nice’ at all.
I just love it that cops can provoke a person, physically and verbally, getting right up in your face and being a dick, even hitting you, until a reasonable person would push the cop and then they get to charge you with assaulting an offcier.
Too many cops think their badge is a license to piss on everyone else.
And after the cop has inflicted this pain on you, possibly more than once, and left you with marks from where the fish-hook probes went into your skin, there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it because cops protect cops.
Good luck even trying to file a complaint with the police department.
And the ones that I’ve met are by and large power-tripping ex-jocks and frat boys who used to be bullies in high school until they figured out there was a job where they could remain bullies for the rest of their lives.
A bad teacher doesn’t get to shoot someone to death in an unjustified shooting as part of their ‘job’ and then expect to get away with it.
I did not ask for a cite, I asked for evidence; or did you form this opinion in the absence of evidence? This thought just popped into your head and you ran with it?
Through my husband’s job, he and I know a *lot *of cops. The vast majority of them are just ordinary folks, trying to make a living. I’ve only met (or even heard of in real life) of a couple of stinkers, and even they had the sense to know they could only go so far without getting into trouble.
See, those sergents and other supervisors are under HUGE amounts of pressure. Every time anything even looks like it might have possibly been a cop stepping out of line or abusing their authority, the media decends like a plague. Citizens’ groups burn up the phone lines with ouraged calls. Polititicians get involved if they think they can milk the situation for an ounce of publicity.
If anything, police supervisors are dilligent about trying to keep their officers in line just so they don’t have to deal with the headaches. They know they’re in a fishbowl, and know that any use of force, even if completely justified, is going to be attacked as police brutality.
Sure, there are bad cops, but in my experience, the superiors do everything they can to get rid of someone who they know is going to be trouble. They know that if that cop steps out of line, it’s their ass.
Oh boy, your husband’s job again. For a nanosecond, I almost forgot that he was a prison guard. Good thing you’re there to remind everyone.
In my experience with cops, they’ve been bullies behind badges, and completely willing to abuse their power because they know full well other cops will defend them. There’s a reason that the cops who report other cops for bad (and illegal) behavior are ‘rats’.
And in mine, when one cop threatens you or fucks with you or oversteps the bounds of the law, the blue wall of silence goes up and they close ranks faster than Jesse Jackson whips out the race card.
I stay away from cops. I don’t trust cops, I don’t like cops, and I do everything I can to make sure I’m not around them.
Yeah, well if people could reason from A to C (i.e. A->B and B->C, therefore A->C) and stop voting for any idiot who tells them they’re going to Lower Their Terrible Tax Burden because they realize that taxes at whatever level are needed to pay for certain basic services and if you don’t pay them at Federal level, you’ll end up paying at State level and so on down the line, maybe the government wouldn’t BE in such bad shape. As it is, most governments are coping amazingly well with the funding reductions they have had. They started “trimming the fat” (which primarily seems to have originally meant cut any non-military spending, and now seems to mean cut all social programs unless they’re religious and transfer funds into the the hands of wealthy companies on the creative theory that adding a layer of profit will DECREASE the cost.) from government about 25 years ago - by now, they’re down to the BONE. I’m not saying that there’s NO waste in government, but I doubt there’s one bit more than any successful corporation; there’s ALWAYS going to be some waste in ANY business.
And pork, of course. And guess who’s controlling the pork these days - why, it wouldn’t be those same guys who got into office promising tax cuts, would it? By George, it would! Amazing, the power of K Street.
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