I’m inclined to believe fush.
That doesn’t prove that the military police are being employed in their capacity as military police to perform civilian police functions in the civilian community. It can just mean that the local cops will turn over a member of the military after he’s arrested so that he’s available to the military for his military duties & the military agrees to ensure the military member appears as required by the local police and courts.
NinjaChick, can I ask you to guess the Camden Cops age? I’m not trying to be a wiseass here…I just want to know if he was a shave-tail straight out of Seagirt or what.
Jeff: Just sent an e-mail to Sumpter’s police department regarding this. Will update thread with response.
Hey fush, do you disappear like this when the bullets start flying, too?
You opened yourself up to questioning about an apparently illegal stop and search(at least as far as my liberties are concerned), and now you’ve just up and disappeared. Hopefully you’re sleeping or on-shift and can clear this up pretty soon.
I wait with bated breath.
Signed,
Sam
One who questions the legality and constitutionality of planned stop-fests and license checks(AKA-money-grab).
Good idea there, Monty.
Heh.
Can - Open.
Worms, everywhere.
When I was first dating my husband, I remember one of his friends (who was also a neighbor) had a similar thing happen. We all lived in run down slummy rental houses near the University of Arizona and she had come out of her bedroom to find a cop in her living room. He was a UofA cop, not Tucson Police. UAPD is known for being assholes. He hadn’t knocked or anything, just come right in.
Apparently someone had gotten beat up and had their boots stolen nearby and for some reason the cops thought they guys who did it were at this girl’s apartment. Whatever.
She ended up having to call the Tucson cops to come get the UA cops out of her house.
In a bizarre twist, I learned about a year later that the guy who had been beat up and had his boots stolen was my ex boyfriend.
I’m sorry, but Ninjachick was out of line. A cop’s job is to ask questions and make sure he knows what’s going on. Allergies? I’m sorry, but if I saw someone with red eyes and screwy sinuses, “stoned” would be my first guess, despite knowing several people that get severe allergies.
And you call the guy an asshole for doing his job? Self-centered bitch, I calls thee.
Thank you. I didn’t realize that “being a rude asshole and publicly humiliating innocent citizens” was part of the job description for cops. :rolleyes:
quietman1920: I’d guess he was in his late twenties, about.
Yes, but where is the line between “asking questions” and “harassing people”? I mean, the cop could have accomplished the same goals by simply asking Ninjachick “Are you feeling okay? Your eyes are really red” in a friendly voice.
Back when I was in college, I and a few friends took some blankets out to some land my mom had bought, lay out under the stars, and watched a meteor shower.
The folks down the hill from my mom’s land, not knowing who we were, took it on themselves to call the cops. We didn’t realize this until the cops began reading our license plate numbers over their bullhorns, surely waking up everyone in a quarter-mile radius.
We eventually convinced them to call my mom to verify that we had permission to be where we were; while one officer placed the call, the other one continued to shine her Maglite directly in our eyes and question us aggressively. Once they found out we were there legally, they accused us of doing drugs.
They were being assholes, but not prosecutable assholes.
I think that policing, like teaching, is primarily populated by good people. However, they both hold a peculiar appeal to midget dictators, people desperate to wield some sort of authority over others. It’s a damn shame that the few shitheads in the field can give the entire occupation such a bad reputation.
Ninjachick, take an important life lesson from this: sometimes, you can get away with being rude to cops, but you can ALWAYS get away with being nice to them. Mock the asshole cops behind their backs, but it’ll save you lots of money and hassle to be respectful to them to their faces. As an added bonus, it guarantees you’ll be nice to the non-asshole cops.
Daniel
Oh, get off the cross, honey. I apologize for calling you “self-centered” and I apologize for calling you a “bitch” (which means, by extension, I apologize for calling you a “self-centered bitch”), but my point still stands. He did NOT “publicly humiliate” you. He asked you a question, as per his job. YOU opened the line of communication. YOU addressed HIM. YOU invited HIM to respond. If anything, you publically humiliated YOURSELF. If you truly were minding your own business, you would not have said anything at all.
I’m seeing, Ninjachick, a double-standard. Your main complaint is that the cop assumed the worst about you… but, at the same time, you’re now assuming the worst about the cop. You don’t find that the tiniest bit hypocritical? It’s PERFECTLY valid to assume that a person, with bloodshot eyes and screwy sinuses, standing off in a corner, quietly and minding her own business (you’ve never been stoned, have you? It’s a lot different than being drunk) might be on something. For all you know, that same cop might’ve just busted some kids for pot use twenty minutes prior, or he might’ve been told by his superiors to keep a close eye out for drug users.
It all comes down to this: He was doing his job. Maybe HE didn’t care, but he has to make sure, just in case. Better to err on the side of caution, after all. YOU are making a mountain out of a molehill. You are grossly overreacting… you weren’t “interrogated” or “victimized” or anything.
So after she said she was sick from working and he was obviously not planning on questioning her any more, whey did he continue to stare at her with all the other train passengers watching?
I’m no cop hater- I have nothing but the utmost respect for cops. But I’ve run into a few that have the “I assume everyone’s a crimminal and you’re next” attitude, and have seen the exact attitude she’s talking about. Whether he suspected something or not doesn’t give him an excuse to be a rude asshole to her.
I have a little book called You and the Police by a libertarian dude who calls himself Boston T. Party (very droll, i know).
This book gives advice, based on Supreme Court ruling regarding police procedure (Terry v. Ohio, etc.), about what to do if you are pulled over by the police, and otherwise questioned by them.
While i think that some of the author’s attitudes verge on the paranoid, he gives some excellent advice.
He starts out the book by suggesting that people do all they can to avoid contact with the police, and that includes obeying the law. He then divides police into three groups:
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Good Cop: this is the true peace officer, who is genuinely concerned about doing the job properly, and “is a treasure and should be actively supported. He’s nearly all alone out there.”
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Rogue Cop: who is “beyond reason. Knowing the law will rarely help you when he is rousting you.” The author believes that most federal agents (FBI, ATF) are Rogue Cops
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Intimidating Cop: this is the majority of regular state and local cops, accoring to the author. This cop’s “basis for intimidation is bluff,” and can usually “be ‘neutralized’ on Scene with a firm, intelligent and polite stance.”
Sounds like the OP ran into Intimidating Cop, and she got him to back down. The main rule she broke was the politeness part, which could have made her life difficult. But asserting her rights and refusing to answer further questions was right on the money.
The cop, though, did have the right to ask the questions, even if was being an asshole. As Terry v. Ohio, 392 US 1 (1968) says: “There is nothing in the constitution which prevents a policeman from addressing questions to anyone on the streets,” or on the subway, i assume.
But, as the author of my little book says, your rights during such a contact are “nearly total. You have the utter right to ignore him and walk away. Simple.”
Disclaimer: I have nothing at all against Good Cops. My step-father’s a retired cop, my brother-in-law is just about to enter the force, and a i have quite a few cop friends. But being aware of our rights as citizens is not disreprectful; it’s smart and logical.
No, she didn’t. She looked him in the eyes after he was staring at her for a while. From the OP:
So because she dared look him in the eyes after being stared at for a while, he decides to open up with accusations of being on drugs, in front of everyone in the car? I know that on the train line I ride, I tend to ride with the same people every day - and live in the same neighborhood as some of them - and hell yeah, I’d be at least embarrassed and angry to be questioned about using drugs just because I had red eyes and then looked a cop in the eye.
Oh, and since I’m a moron I forgot to add that I agree that a police officer can check into situations that he thinks may involve law violations, and that includes asking questions of people. However, he was being a real prick in how he went about it. What if she’d said (honestly), “I just got back from my mom’s funeral,” would he have demanded a funeral home name, and her name and date of death from NinjaChick?
Because talk is cheap. It’s VERY easy to say “I came from work, bad sinuses.” What do you do if you to check and see if someone’s lying? Continue asking questions! We don’t pay our cops to believe every conceivably plausible story or take every alibi at face value… if we did, there’d be no crime committed at all!
See, the thing is, Ninjachick is looking at things from the wrong point of view. From the cop’s point of view, she coulda been a potential problem (despite her less-than-Herculean stature). So he had to make sure she WASN’T. What’s he gonna do, use telepathy to confirm whether or not he’d need to intervene?
And if I were a cop, and someone I just asked a question to called me an asshole, I’d do a bit more than just keep staring.
Conceded and retracted.
Yeah. WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT THAT?!?
To ask another way: Suppose the cop had spotted a girl that was totally freaking out on crack and LSD and mescaline and Britney Spears… standing in the corner, bloodshot eyes, screwy sinuses, minding her own business (who DOESN’T when a cop’s around?). If that cop had thought “Oh, she just has allergies from being in a dusty warehouse all day,” and then she goes on to jump from the tracks or pull a gun and start firing, you’d all be on his ass for not doing his duty and checking her out to see if she were all right.
Like I said… double standard.
He should’ve. We pay cops to be suspicious and semi-paranoid so that we, the average Joe, don’t have to be.
Well, maybe you think that’s what we pay cops for. I was under the impression we paid them to enforce the law and keep the peace. If cops keep behaving like that, then we, “the average Joe,” will end up becoming “suspicious and semi-paranoid” all the time.
No doubt your next argument will be the tired old saw “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Still doesn’t excuse asshole behaviour, in my opinion. Nor does it justify asking citizens to waive their rights, which in this case included not answering questions.
As i and others have pointed out, Terry v. Ohio holds that the cop was well within his rights to ask questions. But ninjachick was also well within her rights to completely ignore him. To detain her, the cop would have needed “reasonable articulable suspicion” of criminal behviour, and to arrest her he would have needed “probable cause.” And the courts have held that refusal to concede to a search, or refusal to answer questions, do not, by themselves, constitute reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause.
Here, I believe is the skinny, so to speak, on Ninja Chick and Fush.
NinjaChick was legally questioned in a gruff, but not altogether improper manner. She felt a sense of outrage, that likely stems from her lack of knowledge about the rights of citizens and officers, and the interaction thereof. Perhaps he could have been a nicer guy, but he wasn’t. So what?
A scenario to consider NC…You’re a commuter, leaving where ever you’ve been, going to where ever you’re going. Presumably, you have driven to the train station. A potential driver that has a look of possibly being impaired…hmm. As an officer, I’d want to check you out, as a citizen, I’d want you checked out. Your response though, likely told the guy that while you were being pissy and juvenile, you probably weren’t under any influences, which is why he didn’t ticket you or hook you up for disorderly conduct on state supported land, which he very well could have.
(that kinda thing is a catch-all for obnoxious and altogether rude ass people)
Methinks Fush is just wishing he was something he isn’t. As an x-DoD cop (928th TAG/AW, ORD-IAP) meant to deal with civilians on military bases, (whilst the SP’s dealt with Military personnel), we had a “working relationship” with our local civilian authorities as well, never once did that relationship include pulling traffic stops, working road blocks, or writing traffic citations. Fush is a MILITARY police officer (he says) which means he deals specifically and directly with all things under the provence of the military, not the civilian public. If this county/local jurisdiction is allowing this activity, they are doing so blatantly in violation of the Constitution. SP’s are NOT, I repeat NOT PEACE OFFICERS. They are (usually) active duty military police officers, engaged in a mission support activity, despite them most likely being paid out of the Civil Engineering budget. They are there, that is to say they exist to support the mission, which, at Shaw, if I ain’t mistaken, is to keep the fighters of the 20th FW in the air and the brass from the 9th AF HQ safe.
Fush, if you wanna be the po-lice, skip on out of the SP corps and do so, but for now, leave the policing to the ACTUAL police.
You can man an ECP, you can stand sentry, you can do routine patrol, but attempt to pull me over in a military vehicle on a public street fush, and I will climb so far up your base commanders ass, his sneezes will smell faintly of my cologne for a month.