Look, you obviously seem more interested in judging me and my motives than participating in the thread. The two statements I made are not contradictions, though I did use some hyperbole in my initial post.
In one case I was discussing the fact that too many police see themselves as, or are directed to become, a revenue producing arm of the state. Trivial parking tickets and traffic violations and enforcing various bad government policies at their whim. I think it’s fair to say that most cops spend more time issuing citations and fines versus investigating crimes.
In the other case I was saying that some 1% of police are corrupt and/or abusive. A figure used simply to make a point, obviously not a concrete statistic. The posts I made were in response to different posters and address different concerns.
Those are different arguments and I think that point was clear, by taking my comments out of context you set up a nice little strawman for yourself. Well done.
Well, it seems like that’s sort of where the thread ended up without you poisoning the well. LEO’s said they go out looking for crime and digging up dirt. I posted a link to a current story that highlighted a department trumping up a bogus charge against an innocent family.
I’m a little unclear on what your goal was. You first say that the idea of bored cops manufacturing crime was what inspired the thread. Then you say that weren’t interested in that question.
I’m not sure they necessarily are different questions. You left the OP open for interpretation on either, so it seems logical that it would delve into both likelihoods.
It seems clear that some cops screw off on slow days, some cops follow up on paper work and open cases, some cops do random checks of businesses, and some do conjure up crimes.
This reads like you don’t really know what cops do, and like you see some nefariousness behind what are obviously defensible standard operating practices. Yes, more cops enforce the law than investigate crimes; criminal investigations are handled by more experienced officers in special units set up to handle investigations. Those are the “detectives” you see on TV, as opposed to the “beat cops” in uniform. Those two categories of law enforcement do very different things, and the fact that the beat cops enforce laws instead of investigating crimes just means they are doing their jobs. It certainly isn’t evidence that any of them see themselves, or have been directed to become, chiefly revenue producers.
The point is not that minorities are fond of having their businesses broken into, thanks for highlighting the very salient point. The point is that minorities are not as confident in their local law enforcement officers’ altruism as you are. I’m not either, when they are taken as a collective. And you reinforce that point by mentioned that the model is for community policing, meaning that local neighborhood watch groups take the responsibility on themselves and away from the official police who they do not trust.
I don’t limit it to cops. I utilize lawyers, doctors and plumbers services when I seek them out. I realize that there’s a risk involved in each and since I need their help I’ll tolerate that risk. However a plumber doesn’t show up at my door and offer services that I didn’t request. A doctor doesn’t take it upon himself to administer medications that I didn’t consent to based on his own determination of my need. I want my cops to come when called and investigate crimes that have been accused. I don’t want them improvising and using their autonomous discretion for my benefit any more than I want my doctor doing the same.
Thanks for making that analogy, it’s perfect.
I never said it was an authorization to violate my rights. But if every cop goes out and rattle locks and looks into windows, it makes it really difficult to tell the honest ones from the bad ones. If no cops were allowed to make random stops it’d become very easy to see that a bad cop was racially profiling. It’s those “random checks” that give a officer plausible deniability when feels the need to exert his authority when he doesn’t have cause.
LEOs have not, so far, said they “go out digging for crime”, although why that should be such a bad thing is beyond me. I believe your objections to this involved them checking doors and stuff, and if we could have this discussion along different lines, you might find I agree with you more than you expect.
And well, I suppose I did say that “the idea of bored cops manufacturing crime” was what inspired this thread. On both occasions I mentioned that, I rejected the idea. In my OP, I did mention chainsaw rampages, somewhat flippantly I’ll admit. I at no point suggested cops would “manufacture” such a crime and dismissed out of hand the idea that they’d even hope someone else did it, just to give them something to do. Reread my OP.
The second case was harder, I’ll admit because, as I’ve already allowed, there must be some cases of LEO pedantry around. But I think that was my real question. I know it happens. But what kind of useful answer am I going to get if I phrase a question something like “You cops just enjoy harassing innocent folks! Admit it!”
What knowledge would I gain? The vast majority of LEOs don’t do this sort of thing, and every single one I have personally encountered (in the US and UK) has struck me as a person of integrity.
So I wanted to know what happened on a dull shift. I hadn’t intended the question as anything more than a request for information/experience on a forum I happen to know has some police officers as members.
Maybe you could try to have this discussion without being so goddam snarky? Unless you’re under the erroneous impression that your argument improves when you’re a bit of a jerk in how you present it in which case, hey, carry on.
Since the context of the conversation at this point is the door check, I’d like to see some cite from you indicating that minorities distrust police to the point that they would prefer that nighttime checks on businesses not occur. Because that’s what we’re talking about.
That’s not what community policing means, so you are incorrect to take my mention of community policing as reinforcing any point you are attempting to make.
This is irrelevant to my point, which is that however and whenever you utilize their services, you are trusting that they will do their job fairly and legally. You are trusting that you will get the 99% good, not the 1% “bad apple.” So pointing out that 1% of cops may be bad cops doesn’t mean much, because 1% of any profession may be bad but you don’t assume that the whole profession is untrustworthy and will do their job in an exploitive way.
Again, it’s very hard to tell the honest anything from the bad ones, in any profession.
“Racial profiling”? Where the hell is that coming from?? Are you now asserting that cops only rattle knobs on white businesses? Or is that they are rattling knobs on minority businesses, presumably so that they can find an open business to . . . do what? Rob? At this point, I can’t even tell what your argument is: That racist cops only try to help out white owners by checking on their businesses, or that racist cops focus on black owners by checking on thier businesses, presumably for unknown nefarious reasons. Either way, seems like the cops can’t win: Rattle the door on a white business, and you’re protecting them; do the same for a black business and you’re harrassing them. Don’t rattle the door on a white business, and you’re respecting their privacy; don’t rattle the door on a black business, and you’re not protecting them because they’re black. Seems like the cops can’t win with you.
Actually, I read the very first reply to the thread as exactly that, when pkbites said:
I’m not sure how any other interpretation could be reached. That’s not to say that he’s out manufacturing crime or any other malfeasance, but it’s abundantly evident that he actively seeks out crime. In his last sentence he actually uses the the phrase “dug up”.
All in all this is somewhat of a hijack because I have no issue with the OP you posted and I think it’s revealed quite a bit of useful information from the LEOs on board here. It’s clear the everyone doesn’t share the same opinion on the topic, however I think that when it comes to government and law enforcement more restriction on them is prudent. If people feel more comfortable with cops looking in on them whenever they feel like it, more power to them, but that should be something you opt into, not out of. Just like the privacy policies on websites.
Of course it does. So what? Police chief and sheriffs and others in law enforcement managers allocate limited resources where they perceive them to be most needed. Just like managers in every other field. That hardly supports your argument. Your expectation would be . . . what? That there would be numerically more cops investigating crimes than there are enforcing the law, which involved preventing crime? Hard to see how that could possibly be an improvement over the current arrangement.
Maybe you could take a step back and read what I quoted, you’ll see that none of my snark was the first salvo. Unless of course your "Ha! Pulling out your minority cred, are you? " line was somehow not snarky. Glass houses, dear.
Unless I’m mistaken you were the one to make the implication that almost everyone wants this type of stuff. You said, and I quote, "IOW, you may not want them checking to make sure everything is OK, but almost everyone else does. ". I’d say the burden is on you to provide the supporting statistics to back your claim.
It’s not irrelevant. I do not trust that anyone is doing their job fairly. This is why informed consent laws are what they are and why services are held to their quoted rates. Thankfully in each of the examples you provided I’m personally involved with the process so I can stop them at any time and they cannot force anything on me which I do not want.
Cops however CAN force anything on me that they want which makes that bad 1% so troublesome. Cops do things like check my doors and look in my windows when I’m not there to offer my consent. I never said that the entire profession is untrustworthy, not once, however because a percentage of them are it’s important that we restrict their freedom to act without my express consent, just like in every other profession.
I’ve never limited my discussion to rattling of locks. That was between you and another poster. That is simply one manifestation of the problem I have. I simply don’t want police out there improvising and performing random safety checks on anything, my business, my home, my car or my driving.
The argument for a cop rattling the locks is the same rationalization for the setting up random traffic checkpoints. It’s the same rationale for them requesting ID on the sidewalk and nosing into windows. I realize that most of them have my best interests at heart, but I can’t be sure, so please don’t make me wonder what your motives are.
I want more cops investigating open cases, more cops preventing crime in crime ridden areas, fewer cops writing parking tickets and levying fines in safe neighborhoods. The reason the police force is 100:1 beat cops to detectives is because beat cops are cheap and they write hundreds of revenue producing tickets. It has noting to do with “prevention”.
Well, OK. I suppose I tend to assume that we pay police officers to catch criminals (amongst other duties) and so I don’t find it surprising that they would try to do that very thing. On the matter of trying doors and so on, yeah, I suppose I’m uneasy in principle, but I was staying out of that part of the discussion because I have neither knowledge nor strong opinions.
If I think about it, I’d rather not see an officer randomly entering private property without permission. But I also know that if I owned a business premises, and a crime took place there in my absence, I might be pissed off if I found out that a police officer had been passing the building at the time and done nothing. Officers in the UK do this a lot too (check doors, that is, not ignore crimes) so I don’t really pay much attention.
So it’s not rational. I’d yell at the police either way. Let me rephrase that - I can see why Loach would say something like “damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”
It is very hard to argue with a pull it out of your ass argument. The reason why we have more patrol officers than detectives is that we need more. Patrol has to cover a town of 50,000 people and 30 square miles 24 hours a day. We need to be able to respond to multiple calls at the same time in a timely and sometimes rapid manner. Many times with more than one officer. Even by watching TV you should know that detectives don’t have to do that. One detective can handle multiple cases at the same time since all of the cases can not possibly as active as all the others. In my department our patrol officers are not “cheap”. As a matter of fact patrol officers make more money. We have more experienced officers on the road (higher salary). We get a shift differential for working nights and weekends. We get more overtime. I would guess I probably know more police officers than you. I have yet to find one that gives a flying fuck about making revenue. More than 90% of the money from tickets goes to the state. Why do you think we would care about that? It doesn’t help the department or us personally. I have yet to see the governor come down to put pressure on us to write more tickets. It just doesn’t happen. The more you write the more the ignorance is showing.
I don’t think you understand what the word strawman means. Not surprising, it is overused around here. Your two statements are direct contridictions. On one hand you say that not some but most officers have bad motives when doing their jobs. They are doing it just to create revenue and being the morality police, whatever that means. Then you say that 99 out of a 100 cops are terrific people who hold their authority in the proper perspective and use sound judgment. How is that out of context? So what do you mean?
I should have addressed your first sentence more. Ok lets look at this. What do you think should be done? You do realize that for many cases no amount of investigating will do anything. For instance in the burglary you mention way back if there are no witnesses and no evidence left at the scene do you think more detectives will help? How long do you think they can look at no evidence before it turns into something. Sometimes it is not possible to solve a case, no matter what resources you throw at it. Now what is your idea for preventing crime? There have been multiple theories thrown around for years. What is your idea? One of those theories is to heavily enforce traffic laws. Pulling someone over for a traffic offense sometimes leads to something bigger. Most arrests come from traffic stops. Do you like that as crime prevention? Or do you want more cops on the street as a deterent. No wait, you want them all to be detectives. So I’m waiting for you to tell us how to do the job. I don’t know how to answer the last part. I write very few parking tickets. Most of the ones I do write are for handicap parking. I don’t work in a urban area. Most big cities I know have their own parking enforcement agencies and they aren’t cops. I agree in big cities a lot of those parking enforcement agencies are just a revenue producer for the city. None of the officers I know spend any significant part of their work day writing parking tickets.
Strawman: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.
My initial statement, taken in full context, was:
I stated that there was a 1% that was untrustworthy and abusive.
As much as I dislike the fact that cops write a lot of tickets and are overzealous in enforcing some a silly law like the one I linked to with the Crestwood woman and her baby, I never characterized them as abusive or untrustworthy.
You pulled two quotes, one I made in regards to ticket writing and the above incident, and another made 17 posts later in direct response to something Jodi said regarding cops rattling locks and conflated the two as if they somehow are part of the same argument. Seems like a pretty clear case of misrepresenting my position.
Now you are cherry picking your own statements. I didn’t say anything about the statement you said about the 1%. But you also said that 99 out of a 100 cops are terrific people who hold their authority in the proper perspective and use sound judgment. How can you also say that “Most are too concerned with being the morality police and bring in revenue for the city and state as opposed to actually fighting any crime”. So most of the 99% who are terrific people who hold their authority in proper perspective are too concerned with being the morality police and bringing revenue for the city? Sorry those two statements can not be true at the same time. I read it in context many times. Maybe you don’t mean it but as written you are contridicting yourself. And then defending it.
I can only speak to what I see in my city and what I saw in my suburb growing up. Parking enforcement was a non-issue in the suburb I grew up in. Police simply didn’t have any opportunity to do it, so that does not apply. In that suburb however they acted exactly as you describe, using traffic stops in order to uncover crime. I understand the logic, I don’t like it because it infringes on the innocent activities of too many citizens for too little benefit. The main issue as it applies to the discussion in this thread is that they’d make random stops. They didn’t only pull over speeders or suspected drunk drivers, they pulled over anyone whenever they wanted. This was a constant point of contention in the papers because my town had a somewhat deserved reputation for racism and resistance to minorities moving in. Obviously racial profiling was a big sticking point. Secondarily, there were a lot of complaints about the “good old boys” network as well, families who were longtime residents tended to get a free pass from the police while out of town vehicles and young people were stopped repeatedly. On one occasion I was pulled over twice in less than a mile and given two sobriety tests for no reason I can find beyond the fact that I was 19 and driving a Mustang at 2AM.
Now, living in downtown Chicago things are completely different and no less reassuring. While there are third party agencies responsible for parking enforcement, city police are very aggressive about writing tickets in their own right. I drive for work through several heavily commercial areas every day for work and see patrolmen writing tickets as fast as they can drive up the block (disrupting traffic in the process which is doubly frustrating). On tickets it’s clear if an officer wrote them or a agency and the split favors the police in my personal experience, the agencies tend to be limited to the loop and touristy areas with extremely high turnover.
Also burglaries, auto theft and vandalism is common and investigators do not even visit the crime scenes. Any car related issues the departments instruction to you is to visit the police station in person and file a claim. They won’t even come out to the scene. For burglaries a patrolmen will come by and take you name and information but they don’t take any detailed information about what was stolen which might somehow turn up at a pawn shop or in an investigation. I realize it’s a long shot, but it seems that the SOP is to not even gather evidence.
The city papers always run editorials on the fact that during every budget crunch the city will run the tow trucks on double shifts and the police will double up their rate of ticket’s being written. Its simply a fact of life in the city and they make no effort to hide the fact that parking enforcement directly effects the cities budget. One can only assume that these periods of emphasis take police away from their prevention duties.
I don’t have any pointed solutions, as you’d suspect, but the lack of a better solution doesn’t justify the “random stops” any better. I feel like it’s a violation of our rights, but because “driving is a privilege” we apparently give up our rights when behind a wheel.
I will admit to my own ignorance and state that I have no special knowledge about policing in a large urban area like Chicago. And I never will. I also don’t agree with anything like a random stop. However the perception and reality may be two different things. I have pulled people over for reasons that were obvious to me but they thought I had no reason. Sometimes after I explain the situation they understand, sometimes not. I had one guy insist that I pulled him over for being asian. Despite the fact that he was doing 45 in a 25 and had a full motorcycle helmet on. He could have been a Martian and I wouldn’t have know until he took it off.
The 99 of a 100 being “terrific people” comment is intrinsically linked to the 1% being “abusive” scum comment. Obviously there’s a lot of grey area between “terrific people” and “abusive and untrustworthy”, in part that was intended to be an intensifier. To simplify my point, I’m just saying that 1 out of every hundred cops are type of cops I wouldn’t want looking into my windows and checking my business’s doors. Let’s forget I said anything about the other 99%, I was just trying to emphasize that I don’t hate cops ad think they are scum.
The other comment about “most being too busy being the moral police” (this was a blanket statement directed to the cop who knew better than that mother how to raise and protect her kids) and “being interested in being revenue producers” is simply a summation of the post I just made above. There’s no value judgment on their personality there. A cop can be writing a ton of tickets or performing random traffic stops in hopes of finding crime and I can disagree with the manner in which he’s instructed to do his job but that doesn’t mean I think he’s an “abusing, untrustworthy” person. Hell he might be a terrific guy, but I disagree which what his bosses are telling him to do.
Thats why the two statements are unrelated. One was a value judgment on the personality of some cops not intended to be taken entirely literally. The overt generalization was to respond to a specific argument of another poster. The other was simply a statement of opinion about the practical motivation for why they do their jobs, I wasn’t presuming that the get off on writing tickets, just that that seems to be a priority for them. No judgment of personality whatsoever.
Are you now asserting that cops only rattle knobs on white businesses? Or is that they are rattling knobs on minority businesses, presumably so that they can find an open business to . . . do what? Rob? At this point, I can’t even tell what your argument is: That racist cops only try to help out white owners by checking on their businesses, or that racist cops focus on black owners by checking on thier businesses, presumably for unknown nefarious reasons. Either way, seems like the cops can’t win: Rattle the door on a white business, and you’re protecting them; do the same for a black business and you’re harrassing them. Don’t rattle the door on a white business, and you’re respecting their privacy; don’t rattle the door on a black business, and you’re not protecting them because they’re black. Seems like the cops can’t win with you.