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| Police Harassment:
Recently, a California website ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) where the topic was "Policing the Community."
One of the civilian email participants posed the following question:
"I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?"
From the "other side" (the law enforcement side) a cool cop with a sense of humor replied: "It is not easy. In California we average one cop for every 2,000 people. About 60% of those cops are on patrol, where we do most of the harassing. One-fifth of that 60% are on duty at any given moment and are available for harassing people. So, one cop is responsible for harassing about 10,000 residents. When you toss in the commercial, business and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 20,000 or more people each day.
A ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. Most cops are not up to it, day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools.
They are as follows:
PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase we use. Then we come out and give special harassment.
Another popular one on a weeknight is, "The kids next door are having a loud party."
CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars blasting music, cars with expired registration stickers and the like. It is lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, are driving drunk, or they have an outstanding warrant.
RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.
LAWS: When you can think of nothing else to do, there are books that give ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called "Laws" -Penal, Vehicle, Health and Safety, Business and Professional Laws, to name just a few.
They spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people. After you read the law, you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy smash a car window. Well, the law says that is not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy.
It is a pretty cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well. We seem to have a never ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why?
Because the good citizens who pay the tab actually like the fact that we keep the streets safe for them.
Next time you are in my town, give me a single finger wave.
That will be a signal that you wish for me to take a little closer look at you, and then maybe I'll find a reason to harass YOU!
Looking forward to meeting you. | | |
| I read this and it made my deviant Libertarian Kinky Friedman voting self laugh. So here ya go. 01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning. 02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall. 03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract. 04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal. 05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed. 06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children. 07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children. 08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America. 09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children. 10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.
I thought that was funny, and pretty much sums up my thoughts.
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| This update was prompted by melody: Well I guess I should let everyone know that I am still alive. Academy is going great. We are half way through week 7 of the academy. So as of Friday we will have 17 weeks left. In the past 7 weeks I have ran more miles then I ever knew possible, and done more push-ups and sit-ups then I ever expected. In the first two weeks I lost 20 pounds, and have since put some that back on in muscle. Out schedule is MWF we have Physical Training from 6:30am till 8:30am. This usually starts with 30 minutes or more of calistenics (sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks). Then we go on a run, which depending on how well every one yells cadence and stays in formation can be anywhere from a mile, to 6 miles. We always hope for a long run, because that means that we have done everything correctly. If the run is real short then that means every hundred yards they have made us do pushups, or sit-ups. After PT we have about an hour to shower and get into our uniform and get our duty equipment on before we have formation. At formation they have us stand at attention and quiz us on random info. For each question someone misses we have to do push-ups or sit-ups. After that the day is pretty routine. On our Tues. Thursday mornings we just meet for formation at 8am instead of 10am. The rest of the day is usually taken up by classes. The classes have been pretty easy for me so far. The week was the hardest, in the classroom, so far. We had to memorize two pages of small print and write it for our instructors. I was able to finish it this afternoon, so I don't have to worry about it any more. Those who still haven't written it have until next tuesday or they are kicked out of the academy and fired. So needless to say this has been a little stressful this week. We have had five guys quit since academy started. So if we were to graduate everyone that we still have we will have 31 people make it. So thats all I got right now. Firearms, and Defensive tactics will start in three weeks, I will try to update once that gets going. But with my days starting at 4:30 each morning, it might not happen. | | |
| I start the Lubbock PD academy on July 24th. Just wanted to let you guys know that I got hired, to go through their academy. Once that starts I will try to update as often as possible, but no promise. | | |
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