It’s got to happen several times a year: a cop in a cop car rear-ending someone or something.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but my guess is that when a cop and another driver trade fender paint such that the blame is not clear-cut, the cop would have a tendency simply to make it the other driver’s fault and not his/her own. Correct me if I’m wrong.
But what about when, as in the rear-end example, the cop just has to own it?
I’m curious!
At the risk of being a cynic, I’d say “The Cop writes the person he hit a ticket.” OK, I’m sure it doesn’t always happen. But the Blue Wall of Silence speaks volumes, and officers are really, really hesitant to do anything t one of their own, even when it’s really blatant. Unless they can’t find any way to avoid owning up to it, they’d just let the whole thing off as quietly as possible. And as human beings, they’re perfectly capable of seeing things in their own favor.
I know someone who was parked on the side of the street, and a cop came up to park behind him and hit his car. The officer gave his information on a business card and told him to seek compensation from some city official body of some sort, which they did without question. He said it was quick, easy and painless and nobody tried to stonewall him at any time.
I have no evidence that any of this actually happened, and I honestly cannot even remember who told me this story now, so, take it with two lumps of salt.
Oh I bet any time the other other person is even 1% at fault the cop just makes it 100%.
An recent article in the paper here (Houston) says when this happens its hell getting the department / city to own up and pay for the damages.
Ideally, this:
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20130318/NEWS01/303180014/Ohio-police-officer-cited-crash
I can certainly not answer for every department across the country. I can only say what happens in my department.
The officer does not write his own accident report. I’m sure that is true throughout the state. Here a supervisor is dispatched to take the report. An accident report is an official document. Putting something on the report that isn’t true is a felony. It would also be a charge of Official Misconduct which could have a sentence of 5 years. Trying to cover up something as minor as an accident just isn’t worth it. Especially someone else’s accident. Of course the accident will also be recorded by the dash cam so its usually easy to tell who is at fault. I don’t know about where you work but here the bosses have no problem telling us when we did something wrong.
In fact we are held to a higher standard. We have a periodic accident review board. They when they look at our accidents they don’t look at if the officer was at fault. They look to see if the accident could have been avoided. So the other driver could have been at fault officially but the officer still gets a reprimand for not avoiding the accident.
Thanks, Loach, good info.
One day I noticed two smashed cop cars in the ditch and other cop cars all over the place. I’ve got a friend that works for the police department and asked him what happened. He said a cop from our county got into an accident with a cop from another county and they were waiting for a cop from the third county to come do the report.
Then there is the story of one of our officers who is legendary in his Barney Fifeness who managed to be listed as the driver in both cars of a two car collision. Now that’s talent.
Loach, how is that possible?!
He pulled up behind a car that he felt needed to be moved. He jumped out of his car and forgot to put it in park. He got in the other car and put it in drive just as the other one rolled downhill into the other one damaging both. Since neither car was parked and he was in control of the first car when it was still in motion he became the driver of both cars in the accident.
Accidents involving police vehicles happen frequently enough that there is a specific procedure. Where I dispatch, local protocol requires that a superior officer is notified and ideally responds to the scene.
Here, members of the general public are very rarely given a citation for a typical fender bender. Police officers are afforded the same leniency.
In the UK, in London, the onus is on the Met, Metropolitan Police, to prove that they weren’t at fault.
I suspect that in large Metropolitan areas in the the US, police Officers are held to a higher standard than civilians. If you’re given the ability to use ‘blues and two’s’ and the responsibility of carrying firearms then I would expect you to know how to drive.
Peter
That’s amazing. It’s the mirror image of the story I wanted to tell, wherein my car got hit by another car, and no one was in either car at the time!
It was very simple actually. My car was parked in the lot at work. The street was on a slight incline. Across the street, someone got out of his pickup truck. This was a manual transmission, which does not have a “park” gear; he should have left it off but in gear, or at least use the parking brake - but he did neither. So the pickup truck starts rolling away, very very very slowly, and so quietly that by the time we saw it approaching my car, no one could get there in time to stop it.
I see collision reports as part of my job, and occasionally do come across ones involving law enforcement. Another officer is summoned who writes the report. Sometimes the officer is listed as being at fault, and sometimes it’s the other driver.
I handled a few investigations like this when I was working. Here’s the basics:
Officers don’t investigate incidents they were involved in. Any incident involving a law enforcement official gets investigated by somebody of a higher rank.
If a cop is driving a departmental vehicle on duty, the department is financially responsible for any damages he causes. The cop himself is indemnified - he can’t be personally sued for damages. He can however be brought up on departmental charges and may lose his job.
A cop is personally liable for any laws he breaks even while on duty and can be held responsible for any criminal acts.
How about this situation? (Claimed to be factual by a guy I met some years ago.)
Policeman in a parking lot, responding to a radio call about a burglary in progress, manages to scrape two vehicles on his way out of the lot (he apparently was taking a shortcut through a space between the two that wasn’t quite big enough). He proceeds to the burglary scene, where he manages to arrest the criminal.
Witnesses saw and reported the incident in which the two vehicles were damaged. From their report, cop is tracked down. But he claims the damage is the responsibility of the burglar, whose crime was the reason he was hurrying out of the parking lot.
The last time I saw that, over on the side was a van that said, “Hollywood Picture Vehicles.”
(They were shooting a movie.)
Just to lend my $0.02. I was rear-ended by an on-duty State Police officer about a year ago. It slightly damaged my car and pretty severely damaged the police car. Once we pulled over, we waited for his superior officer to show up and write an accident report. I then used that report to get compensation for the damage from whatever state agency was responsible for their insurance. The whole time there was never any hint that I was responsible and the officer was tremendously respectful and apologetic. I actually felt bad for the guy, because he was 3 months away from his 10-year safe driving award (or certificate, or whatever they got).