copswritingcops.com - Situs Slot Online Terpercaya Dan Bonus Terbesar Part of the problem is that a lot of cops have a real crappy attitude.
EH, there are several court cases (which I shall look up when I get the time) that have said that you have no legal recourse if the police don’t respond to your call promptly. I think catsix engaged in a bit of hyperbole, but the core of the situation is that if you call the police, they can sit back and finish their donuts without any worry that you can sue them for failure to respond. The courts have specifically stated that the police are under no obligation to respond. If the crime is happening in their presence that is one thing. A crime happening elsewhere is another. Then they are obligated only to investigate, which does the victim zero good at all. catsix summed up the “attitude problem” I mentioned previously quite well.
On the other hand (We’re up to what, six hands now? Cool, I’ve always wanted to be an octopus.) cops do exist in a different legal environment than ‘civilians’ in general. If you, or I, or even a private security contractor, were to discharge a firearm in the course of our daily work, we’d be arrested, processed, and investigated by a grand jury. (Granted DAs can, when they decide there was sufficient cause, skip much of that process, but I think I’m being fair in my description of the general case.) Cops, depending on their jurisdiction, will often get put on paid leave, and that’s it, while the circumstances are investigated.
With that kind of dichotomy between the two populations, I think it’s fair to try to find a word that differentiates between the two populations. It’s a change in the strict defintion of civilian that you’re working from, but I think it’s a legitimate use of the word. After all, for a long time layity only meant people who hadn’t taken religious vows, but now it’s come to refer those people who haven’t been initiated to the “mysteries” of the legal, medical, or any other specialized field of knowledge.
I didn’t say obligation. I said expectation. I’ll stand by that, still. My understanding of the court cases you’d mentioned is that the courts had decided that while the police are expected to risk their lives in the process of carrying out their duties, they aren’t required to sacrifice them to no good purpose, which is what probably would have happend if they’d committed themselves without sufficeint numbers and organization during the Rodney King riots.
I’m less familiar with what you think should have been done differently by the police at Columbine once the shooting started - they were working in an information vacuum, and declined to rush in without gathering intelligence first - that seems only sensible to me. And my understanding of the timeline for Columbine was that at most the cops arrived for the last fifteen minutes or so of the two shooter’s lives. By that time the majority of the carnage had been done. And going in without a plan, or any idea where the two were, would likely only have raised the death toll.
See, I can’t include soldiers with police and firefighters because they are much more likely to have killing other people as part of their job. Police may have to do it but it’s not the goal of their job.
Pittsburgh is not the only place I have lived, and not even close to the only place I have encountered cops that left me with a negative impression of those who wear badges.
I’ve spent lots of time in other parts of the country than Pittsburgh, and had no reason to think differently of cops in any locale.
Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 2005, in which the USSC decided that Gonzales had no right to sue the police department for failing to protect her, even in the presence of a restraining order. USSC had precedent to go on: South v. Maryland, 1856 the USSC held that law enforcement officers had no affirmative duty to provide protection to individuals. and in Bowers v. DeVito, 1982 the 7th Circuit US Court of Appeals found that “…there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen.”
Is that acceptable?
And in Colorado, that’s pretty much exactly what they did - and got away with - despite the fact that Colorado state law requires officers to “use every reasonable means to enforce a protection order.” Though they did nothing when Gonzales phoned them for help after her children were taken by her estranged husband against whom she had a restraining order. The estranged husband murdered both of the children and then committed suicide by cop.
The LA Rodney King riots involved police telling store owners that they were ‘on their own’. At Columbine, police stayed outside the school until after Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were dead. So far as I know, not one cop has ever been punished either civilly or criminally for failure to protect.
The only example I know of where liability on the part of a police force was found was Thurman v. The City of Torrington, in which Tracey Thurman sued the city for failing to enforce a restraining order against her then husband Charles “Buck” Thurman who was in the process of beating and stabbing her into a state of partial paralysis. I can find no reference to the police who responded to the call (with a 20 minute delay so that the officer could go to the bathroom back at the station) being punished by the police department, the city of Torrington, or in any criminal manner at all.
If that’s supposed to be an argument for giving cops more respect, it’s not a very inspiring one. I actually find it more reason to distrust cops, because what you’re saying is that they can use lethal force with virtually no repercussions for them if they do kill someone. As a matter of practicality, where I live, were I to shoot someone who attacked me, it’s unlikely I’d ever see the inside of a jail. The DA tends to make those determinations on site with the coroner present, as in the case of the Kammerer, PA man who beat to death with a baseball bat an intruder who was attemptingto strangle the homeowner’s elementary school aged son.
Seriously though, saying ‘They have guns and can use them without any punishment more severe than paid vacation.’ is one of the reasons i distrust cops.
They took their good old time in arriving.
As you can see above, such lawsuits have failed in all but exactly one case: Thurman v. City of Torrington.
Personal experience has also been, for me, too much ‘Eric Cartman - You will respect my authority’ syndrome with cops. I avoid them as much as I can because it has less risk of a bad outcome.
Part of why people do respect cops is…despite your hyperbole, they will not stand there and let it happen. Part of the powers granted to them allows them to draw their gun and shoot the person holding a knife to your throat without fearing being charged with murdering that person who may choose to take your life if the office does not kill him. IIRC Part of where the legal obligation to act is to protect the department from being sued because it took 5 min longer for police to arrive than it took to finish with the crime.
If no crime had been committed why would they be obligated to act in any offical way. IF someone is holding a knife to your throat they already have a list of crimes to be charged with assault with a deadly weapon, criminal threats, battery, the list goes on.
Riot scenarios are also a whole different ball game from typical arrest situations. Having literally hundreds of people terrorizing a town is not a simple job for the police, they will be overwhelmed in short order without a plan and preparation leading to an escalating problem.
That’s exactly what they did to Tracey Thurman. They stood there and watched the man she had a restraining order against beat her and stab her until she had partial paralysis from the neck down.
So don’t tell me they ‘wouldn’t just stand there’. Because they have done exactly that, in more than just one case. Thurman was just the only one who prevailed against the police for their refusal to act.
In case they have to go 10 minutes out of their way round trip AFTER they get the call to stop at the police station and piss?
The fact still remains that the cop is not obligated in any way to protect me, or to do anything that would put him in danger, according to the USSC.
All he’s got to do is try to find the guilty part after the crime is over.
Nope. I didn’t even mean it to be an example of something I like. Just explaining why I can see cops using the term “civilian” to differentiate themselves from the general population.
I’m not trying to convince you to see things my way on cops in general, catsix. I don’t doubt your personal experiences and view of the legal system have convinced you of the rightness of your position. I may hope you’re mistaken, but I’m not going to try to change your conclusions. I was only trying to speak to your specific counters to my own arguments. Or to speak on points that were brought up as ancillary to them.
BTW, according to this timeline, the first responders at Columbine got there within six minutes (11:24) after the first 911 call (11:19). And were dispatched within two. The last victim (aside from the two shooters) was killed eleven minutes (11:35) after the first responder got there, and that the majority of the deaths occurred in the first ten minutes of the incident. In what way is that “taking their good old time” to get to the scene?
And skimming* further, it seems that the cops focused first on evacuating the rest of the student body, then tried to figure out how to deal with the shooters. The response may not have been the best, nor the absolute quickest, but I can’t disagree with those priorities. If you want to attack an assumption of competence on the part of the police, Columbine is a fine example - looking at the timeline, I can see a lot of places where a more vigorous response would have been merited. I just don’t see it as an example of police apathy in the face of hazard.
*I’m sorry, the situation sickens me too much to have the stomach for close reading.
And I believe you. I do know a few cops who aren’t jerks (in fact, my cousin is one of them), but for the most part, a lot of them seem to have become cops specifically so they can lord it over everyone else.
It’s easy to let a few bad folks taint your opinion of a profession overall, and to draw unfair generalities from those cases. In this town, there’s a cop who’s almost universally disliked. He has all of the bad attitude that Catsix talks about. When the subject of police comes up, you tend to think about the last time this guy was an ass to (or around) you, rather than the last dozen times one of the other cops did something nice or neutral.
Generalizing the behavior of the Rodney King cops to all cops is just as bad as generalizing Rodney King’s behavior to all black people or the Rodney King rioters’ behavior to all Americans.
As an aside, my opinion of Boston firefighters is forever tainted by the time I pulled over for a fire truck that came roaring up behind me with lights and sirens blaring. I pulled over and let them by, and then pulled back out into the roadway. Two blocks later, they turned off lights and siren and pulled into the fire station driveway. I wondered why they were using sirens when returning to the station, and then I saw the guy in the passenger’s seat get out carrying a pizza. I hope it was still hot, you jerk.
I’ve seen cops around here do similiar things-turn on their lights, go through a red light, then turn them off. Fuckers.
While I don’t have the cases handy, my understanding is that what the cases essentially say is that if you call for help, they can take their own sweet time in showing up, no matter how urgent the situation.
I used to see them do that to get to Donut Connection or Eat’n Park faster. And it was in Ohio that I was threatened with arrest for not having a front license plate despite the fact that my car is and has always been registered in Pennsylvania, and I have never lived in Ohio.
They’ve already been cited, but it doesn’t matter to those who insist that the police would never do that, even though they’re allowed.
You really have a problem with reading comprehension, don’t you?
What part of “expectation” translates to your mind as, “I know they’ll always do…”?
From Dictionary.com:
Emphasis mine.
I expect that, in the majority of cases, the police will respond in a timely manner to any call for assistance. I also believe that most of the public, and most police themselves, share that expectation.
Now, where does your USSC court case state that cops will never respond in a timely manner? Hmm? Looking at the cites you provided certainly doesn’t show me where the USSC requires that the cops go sit on the toilet before responding. Though I’ll admit I lack the legal training to under all the precedents being cited by the cite you provided. It could be in there, but if it is, I’d love a translation into laypersons’ terms for that.
For that matter, as long as we’re talking about cites ignored, are you ever going to tell me why six minutes is too long a response time for Columbine? Or are you too busy being smug looking at the court cases that most piss you off?
A story jumps to mind. I don’t know what this has to do with anything but here you go.
I am a quality assessor, and I go into many different companies to audit their management systems. I once visited a company that manufactures and retrofits military weapons, which they sell to a number of Western nations - mostly state-of-the-art 5.56mm rifles and carbines. So it’s basically a machine shop and an assembly shop, really.
I noted, while reviewing the customer-related processes, that they had recently sold 1500 fully automatic assault rifles to a well known police force. I noted that this was obviously a highly lucrative new opportunity for them (these weapons cost a LOT of money, plus you’ve got spare parts, accessories, etc. 1500 weapons is millions of dollars.)
They replied that they were going to try to avoid police sales in the future. The look of disgust was evident.
I was flabbergasted. “But… but why? It’s a huge sale. You made out like bandits. This contract’s worth a fortune.”
They explained that they simply never wanted to sell another weapon to a police force. They had armed forces personnel around the plant all the time (the military contracts ran for years and so military folk were always coming and going) and when the cop representatives had showed up their behaviour was, in the words of the gun makers, “appalling.” They talked about how the cops wanted to play with the rifles and looked like teenaged boys with boners around them. They seemed to be desperate to get their hands on the rifles to empower themselves. The rifle manufacturer’s management staff were openly quite nervous that the cops planned to put rifles in ordinary squad cars. The plant manager was absolutely insistent: “Police don’t need these. Not ordinary cops, no way. They shouldn’t have these. Call in the SWAT guys, sure, but not patrol cars. I wish we hadn’t had to sell them to them.” I tried to play a little light devil’s advocate, just because I’m always inclined to try to see things fairly, but he would not be swayed by any rebuttal. I hadn’t been there to see how the cops acted, and they remembered it with obvious horror, so I wasn’t going to press the issue.
That really stuck with me, that folks in the business of making extraordinarily powerful firearms, who had worked with armed forces in many countries for many years, who tested a variety of weapons onsite and certainly were about as used to having these weapons around as you could possibly be, would not only not want to sell them to cops, but would be visibly regretful that they’d made one sale.
You might expect it. You might believe they’ll show up. The fact is, they don’t have to. And if they don’t, you can’t sue them.
The point is that if the cop chooses to go pinch a loaf for twenty minutes before responding to your call for help, your next of kin won’t be able to sue him for your wrongful death even if that 20 minutes meant the difference between you living and you dying.
It means they can’t be prosecuted (as someone here suggested they could) for dereliction of duty for not responding and protecting you because they have no actual duty to protect any individual from anything.
They can simply choose not to go.
According to your timeline, that was right about in the middle of when the vast majority of the killings occurred. Where were the cops?
Outside, where they would be safe.
RickJay, having seen some cops at shooting ranges, I can understand why this company regretted selling the cops those rifles. The absolute worst flouting of general firearms safety rules I’ve ever seen has come from cops. Some of the bragged that they only fired their guns once a year during their re-qualifying tests or that they still had the original bullets, and some of them waved pistols around like they were toys. Don’t even get me started on the DEA agent who shot himself in the foot in an elementary school classroom.
I fear the cops.
Oh, now that is just BEGGING to be expanded upon. Sounds like a Darwing Honorable Mention.
MY personal theory is that the wrong kinds of people are drawn to become cops. They crave the authority and power, and are in it for that, rather than to “protect and serve.”
Thanks. Oh dear sweet Jesus, let’s hope this guy never breeds.
I’m guessing that this happened a while ago, but if you see anything like this you need to call and complain. Make sure you get the number of the truck (Engine 19, or something like that). Driving with lights and siren like you describe is illegal:
Chapter 89: Section 7B. Operation of emergency vehicles
Also, when I’m training new EMTs and paramedics, I tell them never to turn around in a restaurant parking lot if they get cancelled off a call. It pisses people off, and for no good reason.
St. Urho
Paramedic