No offense intended to you or the other "good cops" who are there to "serve and protect", but it is badge happy "law enforcement assholes" like this that make the rest of us leery of ALL of you.
You don't know if you are dealing with a good citizen or a murderous maniac, well, neither do WE.
Yep. Had a state cop pull me over when my boys were younger on the way to a ball game. 4 year old, 6 year old and 8 year old in the car...well, on our road out of the woods right at the county highway the officer (using the term loosely) was writing someone up. From his mannerism's I called it...citizens can read people too. Anyway, I told my boys by the way his head was bobbing up and down we were going to get a ticket. Here's the scenario I told them...He'll hurry up with his ticket, nearly trip over his feet, pull forward turn in the driveway to that new garage, either when stopped in the driveway, or upon turning around, he'll flip on the lights. We will stop at the stop sign first, make our turn, then you'll see him do all that and totally disregard the stop sign hauling ass to catch us.
Bingo. Just as I said....the boys were incredulous. They had faith in officers until that point. Valueable life lesson.
I pulled over and he walked up shaking his gun in his holster...no kidding. I hollered he better calm down I had thee little boys in the van and he better not hurt them...now, the van was open, windows either down or not covered, sun shining in to us with him from behind he could see in clearly and easily...and he was parked at the end of our road collecting taxes on a regular basis I'd waved at him for months. He asked what I was doing...heading to a ball game observing the law I said. To which he told me no sir you were speeding and I even gave you a chance on this county road to slow down before I pulled you over. To which I called him a damn liar, that his lights were on before he got off the woods road and then he said, well you weren't wearing your seat belt...so I called him a liar again...that I'd been driving for 25 years and could count on one hand the times I hadn't worn a seat belt and this was not one of them.
Tough crap. I was ready to go to jail for that POS because my boys had to be shown what was right.
Damn straight Tom, we don't know who we are dealing with. I can tell you about cop scams in New Orleans, Golden Meadow Lousiana, Bunkie Louisiana , St. Landry Parish Louisiana, Pine Bluff Arkansas, etc. etc. The time I was robbed and a POS officer went in my home to inspect the robbery and tried to walk out with some of my stuff (hey, insurance is going to cover it right) ...give it a break. You're either a good cop or a POS and guess what...... we don't know you and since you both wear uniforms and drive police cars we need to be careful too.
I'll treat you with courtesy and submit to your authority but I am not going to trust you until at very least we are done with our business. It's like a LEO buddy of mine explained to me, to open my eyes when I was yet naive, that there are a lot of home break-ins where an officer makes off with a little "pirates booty" too....I asked him why he didn't report the bad apples...answer...next time or two when he responded to a domestic disturbance call he didn't want to end up face down dead with a throw down laying next to him and no witnesses to know who pulled the trigger.
Which, by the way, if you are in New Orleans walking around, especially around the French Quarter, and see an officer stay off your cell phone. Tourists are shaken down every day....cop walks up being gruff and beligerent and threatening to haul you off...why you ask, what have I done, what's up...then you get really threatened and informed that little cell phone you were on...you stole it from that boy standing over where he was. When you tell him it's your phone he grabs you to haul you off and threatens to beat the crap out of you.....of course if you and the boy can work it out he'll let it slide....to which the cop steps away, the boy walks up and says something like, "Give me fifty dollars bitch."
No profession is immune from the criminal element in their ranks....it's just especially bad when the people you are supposed to have faith in and trust to keep us safe can be criminals too. Officers say you never know, so do we. Officers need to have procedures to stay safe...so do we. Officers need to stay alert, so do we. Officers can beat the crap out of you and drag you off....we just have to take it if it happens and hope we can prevail in court because if we try that to defend ourselves against a criminal gang of officers there may be no tomorrow.
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Where my button gets pushed is like in events like in the NE where a Hispanic boy gets killed by four non-Hispanics by being beaten up in what the police called a hate crime. The most time any of them will serve is one year. No outraged citizens complaining about it.
Post it and give us a chance to be outraged about it. I get outraged about anybody being mistreated....without focus on their racial makeup.