Or, more commonly, if someone cuts you off not giving you enough time to back off and maintain a safe distance.
Or he could just not choose to feed the troll. Good for him.
-Joe
Not always true. Exceptions to this driving myth have already been posited in this thread. Traffic law has circumstances built into it for drivers who indiscriminately slam on their brakes, causing others to rear-end them.
Nope. There are great cops and lousy cops, just as there are great soldiers and lousy soldiers, great moderators and lousy moderators. It’s wrong to assume they did the wrong thing and it’s wrong to assume they did the right thing.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
We do.
The problem is not that there are bad cops. The problem is the police protect bad cops. The police rally around and it becomes us against them. The doctors have the same problem. They too are politically powerful and can keep doctors shielded from information about their mistakes.
The default position for most people is that cops and doctors do a pretty good job. But we all have bumped into some that are in the wrong profession. Cops can not police cops. Doctors should not defend other doctors who are incompetent.
Ah, ok, there actually was a cat. I also only read the article.
Still, planning your lie in front of your own camera…
I don’t think I ever expected myself to say this in the BBQ Pit, but: That is a great point, gonzomax.
And for the record, I don’t know how many times I have to say it before people stop calling me a cop-hater for questioning a few very shady instances such as this one and some tasings, but I think the overwhelming majority of cops are awesome. I have several personal friends that are cops. My wife’s grandfather spent his entire career as a cop. One of my mountain biking buddies is a State Trooper (they call them DPS Agents in Arizona but no one outside the state knows what that means.) Every Phoenix cop I’ve interacted with has been great.
I don’t think they fuck up too often. With all the thousands of citizen/police interactions that go on every day, there might be something questionable enough to make the national news twice a month or so. Even if a handful of incidents are slipping through the cracks (which I have no doubt they are), that’s still a great track record, percentage-wise. There IS a problem with them protecting their own when they fuck up, though. This is well established. And I cannot even grasp why the people who are completely ok with giving police the power to maintain order in our society (as I am) get so angry and offensive when abuses of that power are questioned. This was a gross abuse of power and trust, and we get, “What’s with all the broad-brushing? What’s the alternative, anarchy? Silliness.”
Yes. The alternative to blindy trusting police and never questioning any of their actions is anarchy. :rolleyes:.
I admit that that point wasn’t a good one, but I, for one, completely understand the frustration that gives rise to it, just as I completely understand the frustration that gives rise to crap like “OK, cop defenders!”. The fact that there are dozens of threads a year pointing out the misbehavior of bad police officers and maybe… what? One? Two?, that praise police officers, is sometimes a pain to deal with.
Yeah, sometimes cops go above and beyond the call of duty, and we hear about it, and I’ll be the first one to praise them, but for the most part this reminds me of the Chris Rock bit:
Cops are supposed to do good deeds! They’re supposed to serve and protect! And not only that, they chose their job. It wasn’t forced on them.
How many threads are there that praise anyone? Yeah, cops catch more shit than a lot of professions (but no where near what lawyers come in for), but get a hell of a lot more praise than most (probably any except soldiers and firefighters).
I’d like to see how many threads praise waitstaff and customer service people vs. how many bash them. I bet cops would win that comparison in a landslide.
Or telemarketers! 
Now, there’s a job I have very rarely seen defended. But it has happened a few times.
We argue endlessly about tipping though.
Both fireman and cops get great press. There are a bunch of TV shows showing cops solving crimes within a one hour time limit. They are all beautiful people and have the highest standards possible. They get 50 hours of great press every week.
All I know is that cop who gave me a warning instead of a ticket when I’d parked in the fire lane to make a cellphone call outside the vet where I’d taken my cat to get declawed was a real mensch.
Those cops acted stupidly.
I am not angry or offended, but I don’t get what the big deal is. The cops were jackasses and got themselves caught. Good. They obviously fucked up. It doesn’t surprise me, so I don’t have much outrage to share in, that there are unethical cops – just as there are thieves working in security, bad doctors, and self-serving politicians. They don’t deserve their jobs and all is right in the world when karma catches up with them and they lose their jobs.
The thing is just because there are unethical cops, teachers, politicians, doctors, mechanics, cashiers, security guards, plumbers, et cetera, it’s idiotic to vilify the entire profession, as some here like to do. You can’t reasonably say, “I don’t trust teachers because of people like Debra Lefave.” Hey, you teacher defenders out there, what do you think of that? :rolleyes: That’s why I called it broad brushing. Does the OP expect anyone to defend bad cops’ behavior? Or is she using the story to try to convince us why we should think cops are just awful?
Yes, it’s outrageous and disappointing when people in positions of public trust and power abuse both. It’s bad. It’s worse than when retail employees dip into the till, but it stems from the same place (lack of ethics) and I don’t see why anyone should believe that all cops are above unethical behavior just because they wear a badge. Though we wish differently, there’s always going to be a bad apple in every bunch be they teachers or cops.
Who said you should blindly trust police? Don’t be an idiot, but it’s ridiculous to assume every cop is a bad one. Are we questioning the actions of cops who set themselves up on their own video tape? What’s to question? It seems pretty straight forward: bad apples.
I think it’s the first one. She didn’t seem to be implying all cops are bad, but instead that there are people on this board who will always the cops regardless of the situation.
She was asking what those people have to say about this situation. Although, I’m not sure who those people are, since she didn’t cite any specific posts.
Very often, and very simply, cops have the power to ruin your life. A teacher or a Home Depot cashier doesn’t have that. I think that’s a pretty strong argument for holding them to a higher standard.
That you, McNulty?
Who assumes every cop is a bad one? We all know some decent cops. Some of us know good ones.