Fair enough. I would not be surprised, however, if there were other states where his actions would be technically legal (though most likely contrary to department policy).

BTW, as for the confrontation between the cameraman and cop, I would suggest the best way to handle such things would be for cops to carry around business cards (say, ten on their person and 100+ in their car) with their name and badge number along with police department phone numbers and extensions, including Internal Affairs. A cop who was confronted by a cameraman as in this situation could thus courteously offer the person one of the business cards and politely ask him to direct any complaints or concerns to the IAD.

Virginia does not. Emergency vehicles can only ignore traffic laws during an emergency response and only while using lights and siren and only while providing for the safety of those around them.

That Arlington cop was in fact violating the law.

It would not be unreasonable for the legislature to explicitly allow such conduct. Indeed, it’s possible that they already did so even though the cop didn’t have the statute number handy (why would he?) If that’s the case, I think the cop should have offered the photographer the phone number for the department where someone might have more information.

I don’t know whether what the cop did was allowed by law or not. If it was, there’s no problem (other than that the cop should ideally have been more helpful). If it was not, the fact that it would be ‘a good idea’ isn’t an excuse. If people who are supposed to uphold the law won’t obey it themselves, a slide into totalitarian anarchy will surely result.

My personal guess is that the legislature allows police cars with flashing lights to park essentially anywhere (I can’t imagine arguing that a policeman is ‘illegally parked’ when he uses his vehicle to divert traffic around an accident). The issue of when a cop may use flashing lights to avoid parking restrictions is more likely a matter of departmental policy than of specific law.

Police have to be ready to respond quickly to 911 calls. The officer’s decision to leave his cruiser immediately accessible in front of the store seems reasonable to me.

Chances were that if he had collided with another vehicle at the intersection and died, the other driver would be facing manslaughter charges at minimum.

If he had a trace of anything in the bloodstream, or Dr. Hayne does the officer’s autopsy, instant capital murder.

No, he just braked a tad, enough to see I was *just* far enough back from the intersection, then blew right through.

Ass hole.

Seems pretty simple to me.

How many times have they written tickets for the same behavior and shrugged, saying “I have to ticket you. It’s the law. You broke it by parking here.”

Why have the law in the first place if it doesn’t apply to certain classes of people?

Of course most people understand that.

Wrong, it counts. This is exactly like the argument for “Broken Windows” policing. If you tolerate minor infractions of the law, you create an environment where the large ones are also not unexpected. The second order effect is that the other honorable police long used to tolerating minor lawbreaking by the majority, now have to decide where and when to draw the line and report their peers for the big stuff.

You should all be ashamed.

If we want to curb this sort of behavior by police officers, we citizens need to report this sort of illegal stuff to the Police Departments and ALL of us need to do it. If only a few people are calling and complaining, they can be ignored. If a large number of people call in and report things, then the Police Department will be forced to take action because they’ll have a PR nightmare on their hands.

The net result of this is that other cars pay no attention whatsoever to any vehicle with lights on. I’ve had taxi drivers pull right out into traffic and cut off a police car with its lights flashing. If there’s traffic and an ambulance is trying to get through, nobody will make the slightest effort to get out of its way. (Not that you’d really want to get into a Chinese ambulance anyway, it’s basically a van with a bed in it. If you really need to get to a hospital, a taxi driver will get you there faster than an ambulance.)

So the net result of police abusing their lights is that people stop paying attention to them at all. I’m originally from Texas, and I’ve seen police do this at lights all the time. The police here are, of course, an extreme example, but it shows how abuse of a power inspires apathy in the public.

It’s been done up near here, recently actually… I even think Radley posted a link at some point too..

http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=753233&category=22101

The police, of course, responded to the citations with the same cheerful hypocrisy that Cheerful Iconoclast did above… must be in the official script.

One cop, parked in the same lot as me and enjoying a snack, actually tossed his apple core out the cruiser’s window not ten feet from where I was standing. Then he blew through the four-way stop without even slowing down. He saw me looking at him and didn’t give a damn.

So…what, I should be grateful that he’s…eating healthy?