Wherever the dickhead cop was coming from does not justify the trauma his insensitivity caused norinew’s family. And I do mean trauma. Her kids are not only dealing with whatever’s going on with the 16-year-old, but also with the terror that CPS is going to get involved, and that the family will be separated.
IMHO, even if the local PD does not wish to fire this asshole, as deserving as he is of that, he should be relegated to desk duty pending training on handling psychiatric emergencies and training on how to be a human fucking being.
buttonjockey, while I can appreciate your point of view and willingness to see the other side of things, one small thing always sticks out in my mind when I hear of someone acting innappropriately to their proffession:
Were they not told what their job would entail?
Guess what, dicklick cop - if you don’t want to deal with car accidents, drug addicts, rapists, thieves, long hours driving around in circles and helping people with family emergencies, don’t become a Goddam cop!
This is why the guy deserves to get in trouble (though I see you didn’t disagree with that, either). Any monkey that works that hard to get into a profession such as a police officer should kow what the hell it entails. If he can’t handle it, he shouldn’t be there.
It is his duty to uphold the professional integrity of police officers and the trust of the people, and in this he failed. He should be punished.
As an aside, if anyone thinks I’m being too harsh, just pass it off to my inherant mistrust and dislike of cops to begin with. If they all acted as they should people wouldn’t hate them.
Me too. I’m an only child, and can advise neither a babysitter nor a babsittee be.
norinew, what a piece of shit that cop was. The best of luck for your elder daughter’s treatment, and I hope you can make sure that cop gets what he deserves. Jesus. Threatening violence? To a suicidal girl and her hysterical sister? Way to go, asshole.
Sorry for the delay, all, my puter was down from yesterday afternoon til now. MelCTheFirst, by law, a child cannot be left alone (unsupervised by an adult) until age 9. 12 is plenty old enough. It’s because of my oldest girl’s previous instability that we wanted her to come with us; but, as she was vomiting (my first assumption was stomach flu), we allowed her to stay home. She wasn’t “babysitting” the younger one; at this stage, she’s not capable of handling that kind of responsiblity; that’s why we took our little on with us! Leaving the oldest home did make us a little uncomfortable, given the previous winter’s circumstances. But, dammit, she’s been on mood-stabilizers since then, as well as in counseling, and you’ve got to let go sometime! I had also arranged with my best friend, right down the street, to check in once or twice during the course of the day.
buttonjockey, I appreciate what you’re trying to say, but I have to side with Gorgon Heap on this one. Cops are specifically trained not to let stress interfere with their ability to handle a situation professionally. My 12-year-old, on the other hand, has had no such training, and he traumatized her!
BTW, my 12-year-old didn’t really know the extent of what happened, until we came home. The first thing I had her do was go to my best friends’ house so she wouldn’t be alone. Then, when we got there, we dropped off the little one, picked up the middle one, and headed to the hospital. Today, hubby and the middle one and I are going to the hospital to have a family meeting with the oldest and her counselor. The 3-year-old only knows that big sister is not feeling well, and is in the hospital where doctors and nurses can help her get better.
Thank you all so much for your kind words of support and encouragement!!
I used to work in emergency services (fireman and EMT) and I can tell you what we were told concerning notifying someone of abuse.
There must be very strong evidence of abuse/neglet. It all must be documented. Then, if you feel that there’s really a case, you queitly go to a nurse or doctor and let your suspcions be known. They then watch for signs and it’s their decision to act on it. You DO NOT say a word to anyone else.
Sorry buttonjockey308, but as stated in my post, law enforcement officers are not allowed to have their feelings influence professional conduct. It’s not like this never happens, but to openly express outrage to a minor child over an incident while responding to a call is well over the line. As others have mentioned, these sort of situations come with the territory. Don’t like 'em? Don’t pin on a badge every morning.
Making threats of legal intervention to a non-culpable minor constitutes a form of intimidation. This is conduct unbecoming of an officer.
Not me, but I did have to spend two years of college with my locker next to all the Police Technology students.
A larger crowd of subhuman thinkers could not be found anywhere. Common discussions were :“How many cards are in a deck?” “Hey, I robbed a store last night using what we learned in class,” and “Feel like beating some people up tonight?”
My cousin has a 3 year old son. She also has some mental health problems that have yet to be cleared up fully. Last month, she had a panic attack so bad that she couldn’t breathe, so my sister called 911 to get an ambulance. My cousin was very distraught, almost hysterical. One of the ambulance attendants who was treating her told her:
"If you don’t calm down, I’m going to call social services and they’ll come and take your son away from you."
Luckily, my sister heard this jerk and told him, “I work for social services and that is not true!”
I wonder how many people this man has terrorized with this. Oooo, it makes me so mad. When I first heard this story - last week - I asked if she had called the hospital to complain to his manager. She had not, and now thinks that it’s too late.
Holy Crap!
I just chatted with her Monday and she said she was going out of town Tuesday and we had a date to talk yesterday!
I know she was a little upset over what happened with a friend but good Gods!
She and I have been talking off and on since she found out she has ITP.
But it’s all been small stuff about wanting to go to a concert and how she was feeling health wise.
I thought I was really getting to know her.
I mean, yeah, I’m 31 and she’s 16 but look at all the teen posters on the boards that we have been suprised by.
She’s bright, she’s funny, she reminds me of my own teen, and I’m gonna kick her butt for this.
Seriously norinew, give her a hug for me and tell her I am worried about her and missed talking to her yesterday.
If there is anything I can do to help you out drop me an e-mail and let me know.
I do feel the officer in question should be disciplined, but to address this comment.
No amount of training could ever prepare you for the realities of working in emergency services. The level of pain, hatred, apathy, and death you are exposed to on a daily basis is far greater than you imagine. This isn’t the movies, the good people lose most the time.
It is very difficult to maintain the balance of compassion and emotional armor needed just to survive in the biz. Its very easy to forget that the people you are helping are not exposed to crisis situations on a daily basis and lack the “professional distance” that is in many cases the only thing keeping you sane.
Situations like this are touchy to begin with and this officer jumped to a conclusion inappropriately that you had not been going through the proper steps to get help for your daughter.
Sad thing is, in a hundred situations like this, he probably would have been right in 75 of them, still very rude, but right.
[hijack] You guys were allowed to stay home that young? I wish I had been. My little sisters all had their own activities and day camps and stuff, and I didn’t, so I would have been home alone for maybe 3 hours in the morning, 3 days a week. But until the age of 14 I got dragged to my grandmothers every morning my parents both worked at 9am on the way to work with my dad, and picked up at noon by my mother on the way back from her job. They also did their absolute best to make sure a parent was home at all times if it was just going to be me in the house, despite my obvious protest. I was babysitting other kids by myself for sometimes as long as seven hours at a time and an 8th grader/freshman in high school, but apparently I wasn’t old enough to stay home for 3 hours in the morning. :rolleyes: I always loved staying home alone, too. [/hijack]
norinew, glad to hear that your daughter’s alright but am livid to hear that the cop was that insensitive and flat out wrong in what he said. Give your 12 year old a hug for me, and make sure she knows that neither she nor her siblings are going anywhere (though I’m sure you have).
[Continue Hijack]
Yea, but we lived in a small town when I was a kid. I mean “My mom knew all the cops personally” small town and would’ve known in a few short minutes had anything untoward happened, etc.
[/hijack]
MelC, I’ve found that US people have very different ideas about leaving kids home alone compared to us Australasians. IIRC the minimum age for leaving kids home alone in NZ is 14. My kid’s nearly 10 and has never been left home alone and I’m not sure when I would start.
Norinew, that’s just disgusting behaviour on behalf of the cop. I hope everything works out OK with your daughter and she finds good support in this hospital. Mental health issues with kids are no fun.
We had a meeting today with daughter and her social worker. We have a plan in place to have her released from the inpatient program on Sunday, follow up with a one-week outpatient program, and then a plan for (hopefully) preventing this from happening again.
Kricket, do you talk to her in a chat room, or an instant messenger? Cuz she’s gonna lose her chat room priveleges for a while. She might still have some instant messaging priveleges, based on who she’s talking to. This is not a punishment. It was a whole series of chat room stuff that set her off, and until she learns to put some coping skills into practice, we obviously cannot allow her to continue chatting.
Well, I did tell her. Then I thought, what if she thinks I’m just telling her that to make her feel better?, so I called my therapist (I love my therapist), who frequently works with kids who have been removed from abusive homes, and had my therapist explain to her that that’s not how it works! We are going to look into getting the 12-year-old some counseling of her own. She’s been through a lot in the past year, just coping with the effects of her sisters’ problems!
We talk in IM but I have a feeling I know what you are talking about. She said she was having a rough day and I didn’t think anything of it more than teen age issues.
Now I feel like a big dope because I had no idea about her prior issues.
Give the family a big hug and know that you have all been on my mind.
I agree in the OP that this officer is dead wrong. But, I also take a little umbrage with the people who say if you are going to get stressed out, don’t pin on the badge.
I could say the same thing about a saleperson who loses it with a customer or a business person who has a break down. Fact is, all of us, as humans, “lose it” every once and a while. Emergency personnel have immensely more stress than many other professions. I chose to do my job, but I still, every once in a while, “lose it”. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to deal with some of the incredibly terrible situations that I have to. For someone to say I never should have taken the job and that i should be perfect is assinine. It is also the root of why people believe that cops (and other public employees) are supposed to be perfect and if they mess up one iota, we don’t cut them any slack.
Look in your own backyard before you start throwing out these things. A good way to start would be to see if you ever “lost it” at your job and did something inapprorpiate or wrong to someone else. Maybe chewed someone out and made them feel bad. Another way to think about it would be if you are a parent. A parents job should be the ultimate “professional” (you should maintain composure even more than a cop because you are entrusted with the most important duty in life) job and is incredible stressful. How many parents have lost patience with their child and yelled at them when they should not have, or said something that really hurt them. I don’t think there are too many parents out there who could say they have not. Should all of them “give up their children” or should they never have had children?
This is written not to justify what the cop did in this situation, he should be punished (and I think he really went over the line), but the overgeneralizations of some people attacking police on this thread makes me wonder why we hold cops to such an impossible goal of perfection.
