Unreasonable private citizens not willing to give cop the benifit of the doubt

Sorry, but an armed agent of the State that wields unilateral power to initiate deadly force against me must earn, rather than be given, the “favorable judgment in the absence of full evidence” that benefit of the doubt confers.

There was the stern/firm attitude a cop gave me during an accident caused by the other driver. Now the gal who hit me was more shaken up (if I hadn’t swerved I would’ve hit her side door fairly hard but we both walked away thankfully) but I’m getting an attitude from this guy and I’ve got witnesses telling him I did nothing wrong. That ended up pissing me off more than getting in an accident. About the only nice thing he did was call in a tow truck for me via AAA.

Don’t get me started on the DA attorneys’ attitudes when I served on a grand jury. One was real snarky about how “see we listen to you folks about cases” when we took away her leverage on a case via a silly “inciting a riot” charge on a guy who hadn’t made a deal, all because two bike cops were “concerned” with their safety due to a large mob watching two guys fight.

Your own definition says “OUTSIDER”. Thats how most people take it these days, and it isn’t used in a respectful manner most of the time. Call me a fellow citizen and I’ll probably respond better.

#1, people like you are as much a reason for the “us/tem” mentality as any other factor. Unreasonable private citizens not willing to give cop the benifit of the doubt create the “external enemy” needed for an “us/them” perception to exist. Funny thing is most other cops I know personally are (like me) sympathetic to Libertarian goals , hell, several of use are LEAP members, but unreasonable smucks like the people who visit this blog, who think we are all some evil authoritarian army, thats what pushes cops futher into their own little world.

#2. You need a dictionary, but let me help you:

ci·vil·ian
Pronunciation: \s?-?vil-y?n also -?vi-y?n\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1: a specialist in Roman or modern civil law
2 a: one not on active duty in the armed services or not on a police or firefighting force
b: OUTSIDER

For example, I’m a cop, Radley blako is a civilian, to me, Balko is a civilian (not a cop), to him I’m a civilian (not a journalist).

This is a prime example of you anarchists (NOT libertarians, our founding father, THOSE were libertarians…and they created a government….) seeing what you want to, “police militarization” around every corner. “Civilian” is prefectly acceptable as a description of private citizens who are not cops.

Saying cops arne’t “civilians” isn’t the same as saying we’re military, it’s saying we are citizen public servants.

Now that the English lesson is done, please return to your regularily scheduled cop bashing (because of one idiot in Dallas PD, most of my buddys on Dallas PD have more sense than that.).

Bonus points if Powell actually has to perform homosexual acts “in the line of duty.” The best he can hope for is medical retirement for AIDS.

He threatens him him arrest multiple times is incredibly abusive, about the only thing missing was he did not repeat the phrases “do you want to try me? Do you want to try me tonight? You think you had a bad night? I will ruin your fucking night. Try me young boy.”.

I also have to go with Packratt’s view over Stephens about more pay. Pigs always say they are in it to help people, but obviously that is false. They always say they are willing to lay down their life for us, but they will beat, rape, shoot, torture, and kill us just to keep their job!

But, just to reinforce a point Scott mentioned above, there are some decent cops who see what went on in this case with open eyes. From the comment section of that report (sorry, the link just goes to the article, but this is CWright’s comment on 3/27/2009 12:41 AM CDT):

Sorry, [another commenter]…there’s a difference between “doing your job” and “doing your job effectively”

There’s no excuse for what happened, the guy turned his lights on 2 blocks away from a hospital after he saw a car (WITH HAZARDS ALREADY ON) go through a light 2 blocks away from that hospital. Any pea brain could put two and two together.

Again….I’m a cop, I’ve been in these situations before…it isn’t that hard to assess what the heck is going on. This guy simply screwed everything up. He’s a flat out idiot, who has not business being around the public, plain and simple. All he had to do was recognize his surroundings..that’s it! A.) umm, I’m patrolling a medical district..B.) there’s a car that just went through a red light with his hazards already on headed towards a near hospital, and C.) He just ran multipe stop signs right in front of me and pulled into the EMERGENCY PARKING LOT OF THAT HOSPITAL. It was a cut and dry case.

STOP making excuses for the guy, he doesn’t have the IQ or the instincts to be a good cop…he has rocks for brains, he’s a flat out idiot….and the worse thing about it, as soon as he learned about the situation he just CONTINUTED to screw up.

I wish I were confident that that perspective was the prevailing one among police, but I am at least glad it’s out there.

I agree with you about the unions. Firing a cop is probably at least as hard as firing a teacher.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2406704/How-To-Fire-An-Incompetent-Teacher

I wasn’t offering a possible solution, just a possible cause. The real solution will probably take longer than it took to get this way in the first place because you would need at least a generation to flush out the old stuff. It would be rare to get that many good police chiefs in a row.

By all rights he should be able to walk over and punch that cop in the mouth without any legal repercussions. Then we could call it a day. Too bad Moats is a 5-9 scat back and not a left tackle.

“The hospital twice sent nurses to try and get the officer to release Moats.”

I’m reeling. Unbelievable. I mean, I wish it were unbelievable.

“Sue.”

It’s the only way to get city governments to even pretend that they care…when you hit them in the wallet, frequently and hard.

Then again, it hasn’t gotten Joe Arpaio out of office.

The problem is that, under current civil employment laws and with current layers of appeal available to cops thanks to tireless efforts of their unions, it’s nearly impossible to fire a cop WITH due cause, let alone just because you want to start over.

It’s a systemic problem, throwing more money and more bodies at it without addressing the underlying root causes of color of law abuses will not solve the problem.

Wish it were easy, but it’s a rather difficult and thorny problem once you really spend some time digging into it.

Thanks for the response and apology.

I think having his name all over the place in the papers and on the internet has been quite the “puppy getting his nose rubbed in his mess” kind of lesson for him.

I overheard Dad’s half of one heart to heart this morning but I’m only going to say that it happened.

Of course I wouldn’t. And I was being mean with the “Oakland” comment. But I really think a lot of cops need to be brought back to reality with some checks and balances and maybe a slap in the face to realize that these are actual PEOPLE they are dealing with. Not everyone is a scumbag murdering rapist…in fact…the vast majority of us are just regular folks trying to make it through the day and doing the best we can for our families regardless of wha they think.

I apologize for the “Oakland” comment…it was over-the-top. But god I get pissed at that attitude so many cops seem to have.

The reverse of the cause is not necessarily the solution unless you start fresh with all new officers.

Paying the guys that could not get a job somewhere else more money is not going to make them better cops. They are still what they were.

The point would be to use more money to get DIFFERENT better cops.

“Cops do have discretion. We have the power to take away people’s freedom, which is an enormous amount of power. So discretion and common sense are pretty important.”

when asked bout the dashcam…

“Videotaping stops is great for everyone. If we’re right it’s good for us. If we’re wrong, it’s good for the other people involved.”

So, yeah… I’m not sure which is weirder. That you had to tune into a sports chat show to hear such “controversial” statements from an LEO, or that an LEO would go on-record with them.

I’m sorry, but I believe there are several flaws with the whole “Pay bad cops more money and maybe they’ll stop being bad” theory of law enforcement excellence.

In fact, the phrase “Give me a cut and nobody gets hurt” distinctly comes to mind as problem number one with that approach, don’t you think?

I mean, if that’s what you’re proposing, why don’t we try paying rapists a lot of money not to rape people?