Yes, again you are correct. It is probably the toughest job next to teacher. Since it is such a tough job, we should make them have to have more education and have more training to keep it.
Magical? I'm sorry let's make sure that we all require cops to have degrees. How about a four-year baccalaureate program to be a cop? Then pay their ass over 100,000 so they don't have to worry about offsetting that check. It's funny to me that the people who don't trust government want to trust the governmental enforcers...
Two short stories. Take from it what you will: My mother was once driving with me, a young boy, in the backseat without a seatbelt. They weren’t even a law then. She had no insurance and no license. She was pulled over for something. No blinker or broken taillight or something. She could have been arrested and I would have been carted off. The cop assessed the situation and let her go with a warning and a promise. The promise was to read a book to me when we got home that was aboutt he imprtatance of wearing a seatbelt. I will never forget it. The next story: I had just moved back to the Seattle area after living in Colorado for a few years. I hadn’t yet had my plates on my car transferred but had been in town three months. The cop pulled me over for obstructed license plate because my license plate light was out. He asked to see my friend and my Id. We handed them over. He then came back a few minutes later and said I couldn’t drive but my friend could. So my friend Started driving away and he pulled us over again. My friend had a suspended license and the cop and just totally set him up.
Wrote a song bout it... It's too easy to get a badge and a gun 16-week Police Academy just that and you're done We seem to believe police could never be as bad as we come From dealing with Society we grow gradually numb Desensitized from the violence that is savagely done Those who did it usually don't have adequate funds We see this violence everyday and it's a sad as the sons And it's as sad as the daughters who commit it it's a habit for some But you can't have it both ways and I just might cuss When you're say "police or regular people just like us" Because... Regular people are affected by stress We make mistakes and on bad days we ain't it our best Regular people see things that we shouldn't see Snd when we see this evil we develop PTSD Since regular people with flaws are the ones policing us all, Then they have the same flaws when police in the streets.
You are always the 1%. Why? Nothing ever sustains a 100% success rate forever. You sir, are the anomoly and the inevidble doom of perfection.
Come on, man. Most cops are good or this world would be way more fucked up. I won't put a number on it, but most are generally good cops. But believe me, I won't defend them. My wife's uncle worked LAPD gang unit, that whole Rampart investigation (look that shit up).....
It ain't rocket science, and certainly doesn't require $100,000 salaries. Although that's about what an average Portland cop makes thanks to massive PLANNED overtime pay and the most ridiculously extravagant retirement package on Earth. On top of that, their time is wasted and their results eliminated by felonious politicians who order them to abet criminals by hiding them from Federal authorities. Cops salaries should top out in the $50k-$60k range. They should not work any OT at all except in an extremely rare emergency. Cops hassle innocent people hoping to stumble on a minor infraction or otherwise safe to deal with victimless crime, and they occasionally do some follow-up documentation at crime scenes. The rate at which they save people's lives is lower than that of the average citizen, mostly because police are usually not present when crimes are committed. Most criminals commit their crimes and are long gone before police ever even hear about it. That's just how it is. They'll never be more than the cleanup crew. If it takes you 4 f'ing years to learn how to taze methheads, write tickets, and lie about the supposed reason you pulled an innocent driver over, you're probably too dumb for cop material. And I doubt any professor is equipped to teach students how to deal with methheads, murderers and mental cases. An area nearly all cops could use education is in the operation of their firearms. Most cops are lousy shots, especially in a real firefight. They are given rapid-fire weapons without being taught how to hit a target with a single shot. The norm in a shooting with a suspect is each cop involved will spray a dozen or more bullets and maybe wing the suspect, or hit him a couple times. The rest of the bullets go elsewhere, needlessly endangering others. And, in general, very few careers in life require more than a few months to learn the basics unless you're mentally lazy, or wasting your time with unneeded and virtually useless peripheral courses required for a worthless degree. The internet has made the idea of physical learning institutions almost archaic, and I expect them to rapidly fade away over the next 2-3 decades.
most cops are good most of the time, but most cops are also bad some of the time. I used to work in a grocery store in 1995 and one of the butchers was also a part time cop in Hillsboro when we I started. He left the force due to several factors including the story I'm about to tell. Anyways, he told me a story of one of his first days. Another cop car pulled over some gang-banger and they went to assist in the arrest. When they got there they were searching the car for dope and found almost $15K. One of the other cops immediately started splitting the money into four and told the gang-banger to fucking leave. My friend was handed a stack of several thousand dollars and the rest of the cops just took their cut, laughed and acted as if it was just another day on the job. Hows that for fucked up? My friend asked to be assigned elsewhere and that's what led to him not being able to get full time work and finally get squeezed to the point that he felt he had to quit.
Since he broke several laws and personally profited from the crimes, it's probably best for everyone that he quit.
I agree, although to hear him tell it, he didn't want the money, but that was just what everyone who was more established was doing. He felt compelled to take at the time and then tried to get to another department but that wasn't permitted.
Saying most are good cops is really only saying that 51% of them are. That's not an argument I've been trying to form at all. I just hate this notion that 99% of them are good when part of the 99% or watching whatever 1% you think is bad do whatever they do. That in itself means that the 99% are not good cops. If you see something, you're supposed to say something.
The common thread in most of everyone's posts in here is that they have heard of, seen, or been apart of a cop doing something scandalous.
Because Cops are treated like refs. when they do good it goes unnoticed. But when they do bad its everywhere. I would think you would understand this concept.
Referees don't go looking for fouls. They see it then call it. Referees don't plant evidence. And no referee that I know is a liar.
Hello, Tim Donaghy calling. I've no idea what the percentage of "good" to "bad" cops is. I suspect that it varies from department to department depending upon whether management is corrupt or how diligent management is in rooting out bad cops. My impression, unsupported by any research, is that there are two general types of people who go into police work: those who are motivated by and take "serve and protect" seriously, and those who enjoy having a bit of a power trip over people. I'd like to think the former far outnumber the latter, but I do wonder if that isn't naive on my part. I do know this; being a cop today isn't easy and it isn't safe. Even a routine traffic stop can end up with a cop getting shot. Expecting them to get life and death situations, often made in a split second when they're under stress, right all the time isn't realistic. Expecting them to TRY to do so is.
I agree with e_blazer that there are "serve & protect" and there are power trippers. But it is a profession where a person on a power trip has almost unlimited power, so I would guess, no solid data, that cops (along with certain other professions, like head shrinkers) attract power trip types. And there is the sad, but indisputable fact. An officer who might be polite to me, a middle aged neatly dressed white woman, treated my hippie 15 year old self differently and would treat a young African-American male FAR differently - for doing the exact same thing (or nothing).
