Ask Me About Being a Police Officer

[ike]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ok serious question here and this one really burns me up good....Why the hell do the police spend so much time trying to give me speeding tickets on the wealthy side of town (let's face it speeding 10-15 miles over is no crime) when on the other side of town guys are slinging crack rock and killing guys?

I mean it seems the cops give tickets to make moniez....hell, aren't i the guy paying your salary after all? who cares if my license plate is a month overdue or if i do a rolling stop. Its not serious crime.

Also, why do cops give me these tickets and then have the balls to call my house asking for donations to the police dept? R they just insane? What they need donations for when they make a damn fortune giving tickets?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was not aware of it at all, but only a small % goes to the dept. The rest goes to the state.

I really don't know why they work on speeding as compared to the drugs, but my only guess is that drug work is time consuming working undercover or with confidential informants. For traffic, police can be out there and it doesn't take much to park and watch.

I don't know anything about calling houses looking for donations. We don't do that in my area. There is no fortune to be made in citations.

And before anyone asks, there are no such things as "quotas."

[/ QUOTE ]

Is there such a thing as political pressure on police departments for civil infractions in addition to criminal ones?

[/ QUOTE ]

We don't deal with civil law.

[/ QUOTE ]

Traffic citations are considered criminal?

[/ QUOTE ]

if i'm not mistaken, civil matters are things like lawsuits and divorces. anything the police are involved in is criminal law.

[Elevens]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ok serious question here and this one really burns me up good....Why the hell do the police spend so much time trying to give me speeding tickets on the wealthy side of town (let's face it speeding 10-15 miles over is no crime) when on the other side of town guys are slinging crack rock and killing guys?

I mean it seems the cops give tickets to make moniez....hell, aren't i the guy paying your salary after all? who cares if my license plate is a month overdue or if i do a rolling stop. Its not serious crime.

Also, why do cops give me these tickets and then have the balls to call my house asking for donations to the police dept? R they just insane? What they need donations for when they make a damn fortune giving tickets?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was not aware of it at all, but only a small % goes to the dept. The rest goes to the state.

I really don't know why they work on speeding as compared to the drugs, but my only guess is that drug work is time consuming working undercover or with confidential informants. For traffic, police can be out there and it doesn't take much to park and watch.

I don't know anything about calling houses looking for donations. We don't do that in my area. There is no fortune to be made in citations.

And before anyone asks, there are no such things as "quotas."

[/ QUOTE ]

Is there such a thing as political pressure on police departments for civil infractions in addition to criminal ones?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to mention, traffic violations often lead to arrests for involvement in other crimes. For example, this is how Timothy McVeigh and Ted Bundy (twice) were caught.

[Sciolist]

How much paperwork do you do? Is all of it neccessary - is there a way to cut that down?

[mr.bum]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

It's considered illegal. I'm not a smoker and I hate the smell of cigarettes and that will include any marijuana. It's for the benefit of the people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Statements like that really irk me, as pretty much anything done "for the people" are unconstitutional.

The only roll the government should take in protecting "the people" is the enforcement of God's rights.

The founding fathers took many ideas for the Constitution directly from John Locke in which he reasons the only roll of government should be:

1. National Defense
2. Police Force - To enforce against people violating the rights of man
3. Court System - An impartial third party "No man can be the judge of his own cause" -John

If you're interested you should look up some of the founding fathers thoughts re: what the roll of government should be.

But then again, the Constitution is only a piece of paper and has been trampled on over and over in the last few centuries.

[/ QUOTE ]
TY. [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

[mr.bum]

-What are your feeling about the current state of law enforcement in this country? what needs improvement? How far from an "ideal" are we currently?

[ItalianFX]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ok serious question here and this one really burns me up good....Why the hell do the police spend so much time trying to give me speeding tickets on the wealthy side of town (let's face it speeding 10-15 miles over is no crime) when on the other side of town guys are slinging crack rock and killing guys?

I mean it seems the cops give tickets to make moniez....hell, aren't i the guy paying your salary after all? who cares if my license plate is a month overdue or if i do a rolling stop. Its not serious crime.

Also, why do cops give me these tickets and then have the balls to call my house asking for donations to the police dept? R they just insane? What they need donations for when they make a damn fortune giving tickets?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was not aware of it at all, but only a small % goes to the dept. The rest goes to the state.

I really don't know why they work on speeding as compared to the drugs, but my only guess is that drug work is time consuming working undercover or with confidential informants. For traffic, police can be out there and it doesn't take much to park and watch.

I don't know anything about calling houses looking for donations. We don't do that in my area. There is no fortune to be made in citations.

And before anyone asks, there are no such things as "quotas."

[/ QUOTE ]

Is there such a thing as political pressure on police departments for civil infractions in addition to criminal ones?

[/ QUOTE ]

We don't deal with civil law.

[/ QUOTE ]

Traffic citations are considered criminal?

[/ QUOTE ]

if i'm not mistaken, civil matters are things like lawsuits and divorces. anything the police are involved in is criminal law.

[/ QUOTE ]

Traffic laws are part of the Vehicle Code. I wouldn't consider them criminal, but they also aren't civil law. They are civil in nature given that the majority of traffic violations are monetary penalties.

Given your question, there is no political pressure for civil infractions. That is what I mean by quotas. My chief never says, "Go out there and get 5 traffic citations so that we can meet our goal of 50 citations in a month so that we can keep our budget." you get the idea. My chief does not care if we stop a vehicle and let them go on a warning. He even told me once, "This is a small town, there is no reason to crack down on every driver unless it's warranted." Something like that. He just likes to see that we are getting out there and doing our job in the eye of the public.

I would say I've let more people go than cited. That doesn't make me a soft officer, I just understand the economic effect it has. However, after seeing more and more wrecks, I've stiffened up my stance a little and started writing more...but I still let more people go.

[ItalianFX]

[ QUOTE ]
How much paperwork do you do? Is all of it neccessary - is there a way to cut that down?

[/ QUOTE ]

In my department, it's not a ton of paperwork per incident. Anything we do goes onto the computer under what we call "Day Logs." That is so everyone can see what is going on. I think at this point in 2007, we are up to around 6000 logs. That doesn't mean we had 6000 crimes or traffic stops. Some of what goes on there are messages from our chief, faxes from the State Police, telephone calls, etc.

Most of the paperwork is not necessary in my opinion, but they are records and alot of paperwork gets pushed around to judges and whatnot.

The reason that one wreck I had (explained above) had a lot of paperwork was that I had to do a criminal complaint for DUI and get a search warrant from the judge so that I could get the guy's medical records. Everything has to be precise and in depth because of the severity of the crash. Any small mistake could mean big consequences, advantages on his side.

Other departments do alot more paperwork, and state police do a ton more than I have to.

A lot more paperwork is going to the computer where you can print it out. I think that is really the only way around it. The problem with that lies in the fact that some people can't type unless they use 2 fingers. They could probably write faster than they type. I can type around 60-70 wpm, so I don't have a problem at all. I couldn't imagine being in college, being a police officer, and not being able to type. I'd go insane.

[ItalianFX]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

It's considered illegal. I'm not a smoker and I hate the smell of cigarettes and that will include any marijuana. It's for the benefit of the people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Statements like that really irk me, as pretty much anything done "for the people" are unconstitutional.

The only roll the government should take in protecting "the people" is the enforcement of God's rights.

The founding fathers took many ideas for the Constitution directly from John Locke in which he reasons the only roll of government should be:

1. National Defense
2. Police Force - To enforce against people violating the rights of man
3. Court System - An impartial third party "No man can be the judge of his own cause" -John

If you're interested you should look up some of the founding fathers thoughts re: what the roll of government should be.

But then again, the Constitution is only a piece of paper and has been trampled on over and over in the last few centuries.

[/ QUOTE ]
TY. [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

To be honest, I think drug prohibition needs to be reanalyzed. That means, and yes a police officer is saying it, I think some drugs should be legalized. However, since they aren't, I have to enforce the law and in the current state of drug policy, all drugs are illegal.

[ItalianFX]

[ QUOTE ]
-What are your feeling about the current state of law enforcement in this country? what needs improvement? How far from an "ideal" are we currently?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it's quite necessary. Police work involves a large amount of personal discretion. I don't think there is an easy way to resolve the problems without sacrificing some kind of benefit. If police crackdown harder, the public will be more and more angry. If we do less, than the public is going to be more angry. I really never understood why most people hate the police, when the reality of it is that they are their to deter chaos and protect people. Yes, yes, I know, some officers are pretty bad. But there are good and bad people in all professions.

Look at Enron. They did a very bad thing, but people aren't crying out that corporations should be abolished. Look at teachers who sleep with students. People aren't arguing that teachers should be segregating from the population.

Everyone needs to realize that bad news is publicized more than good news. When is the last time you saw the news reporting on something good happening in Iraq? Probably not often because the political side of the war in Iraq is very negative. So my opinion is, until you really know what it's like, you can't complain. The police deal with some very shady people and they are always in a heightened state of alert. I could be called to any situation and blasted away by some crazy MFer. One story that we were told while in the police academy was that an officer was called to a domestic. When he arrived, he was attacked by a man with a sword. Another story, an officer went to a domestic, let the guy go upstairs to get something, next thing he knows, he's getting shot at through the ceiling by a shotgun. It missed him, but wouldn't that make you act a little differently?

Just putting on the uniform makes people hate us. I get labeled as a Pig because of my uniform, but in reality, I'm one of the nicest police officers you'll ever find. Most people are just too close-minded to be able to take a few minutes and get to know me.

As far as being ideal, I don't really think that can be answered. Everyone has their opinion on what the police should be, but there is not one answer that will sum it up. It's just like in poker, there really is not one way to play the game. You have to take in so much information, figure out the options/alternatives, and then decide what is best. When the human element is intertwined, it's almost impossible to find perfection.

[RustedCorpse]

[ QUOTE ]

To be honest, I think drug prohibition needs to be reanalyzed. That means, and yes a police officer is saying it, I think some drugs should be legalized. However, since they aren't, I have to enforce the law and in the current state of drug policy, all drugs are illegal.

[/ QUOTE ]

So much respect for this answer. [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]