So, I'm stopped at a Tim Horton's, and I happen to meet an old classmate. We decide to sit down and have coffee and talk. Whilst we're seated, a trio of cops come in, order some coffee and sit down.
As we're leaving, I stop at the counter, get a pack of 20 Timbits, and drop them off on the cop's table, saying 'You gentlemen have a good day.' And walk out.
My classmate is shocked. He demands to know why I would do something like that. I respond I make it a policy to be nice to emergency services people, be they cops, firefighters, or paramedics.
I then get told, and I'm quoting here: "You shouldn't do that! They'll NOTICE you!"
At which point, my only thought is: "When the hell did we get this freaking paranoid, in SASKATCHEWAN of all places, about the cops?"
Wow.
Just... wow.
Words fail me. (But I suppose, being a civil servant, I'm nowhere near that mindset... No wonder I can't grasp it.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
He probably spent too much time in the US.
I used to have a cop as a roommate, but I also know people who either have been beaten by the police or who do live in fear of being beaten by the police (mostly due to skin color).
The problem is that most of the time police deal with bad people, and the occupation tend to attract the more violent members of society. The local area also matters if he lived in a bad neighborhood the police tend to be more violent and trigger happy.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Yeah, but in that case I'd be doubly sure to try to make friends with the cops.
I sure as hell did when I lived in Arlington. A cup of coffee every time I saw one parked outside my workplace was only a couple bucks a week out of my pocket, and it I made his day a little brighter and get him to associate my face with a pleasant memory, it's worth it.
It's not just violent members, Catty, it's also the (quoting Trek) "swaggering little tin-plated dictators", the ones who became cops for the power trip. These are the ones you have to worry about -- they're the ones trying to get filming and photographing cops turned into a felony, because they're finding themselves up on YouTube whenever they try some stunt that in former days would end up with some innocent schlub in jail for "assaulting a police officer" while the real criminal polishes his badge.
And they're out there. I've got a couple friends who are good cops, and they dislike and even fear the power trippers. And sometimes you can't tell a good cop from a power tripper until -- as in the case of that bicyclist in Times Square -- you suddenly get punched and arrested.
So I can understand Chris' friend's concern.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
I'd have sided with jpubs side of the argument once. Then my little brother saw someone selling kids drugs. He told mum and dad. They told the local police officer (Small town). Said police officer was a freemason, along with the father of the guy selling the drugs. For the next five years, my brother was that assholes target for every little crime and misdemeanor he could think of. And as much as I hate myself for doing do, I've never been able to properly trust the uniforms since. I tell myself that he was the exception, the element the other police hate, and given he got kicked off the force and is now a street sweeper (Which my little brother discovered and took great delight in a few weeks before we lost him in a car crash) I can even believe it intellectually. Emotionally though, the unease remains.
I have been detained by the police three times (funnily enough, all three times on suspcion of being the guy who robbed a local convenience store) and never had any problems aside from the mild inconvenience. While there are occasional bad apple cops, I find most of them are decent human beings.
----------------
Epsilon
I've never really had much interaction with the police in my life (a fact for which I have always been, and will continue to be, quite grateful), but have managed to acquire a distrust of them anyway.
The reason? Speeding tickets.
They have to fund themselves somehow, and if that means coming after you for being .5 MPH over the posted limit, then that's what they'll do. When you see a police car on the street, you never know if they're going to just sit there and wait for people who drive at unsafe speeds, or if it's getting close to the end of the fiscal month, and they're out to make quota.
On that note, has anybody else noticed that the group *least* likely to follow the traffic laws is the police? I can understand kicking it up a notch when you're en route to a crime, but policemen drive well over the speed limit as a matter of course. That's just the tip of the iceberg- both part of a much larger body of examples, and the only one I can see at the moment.
We've done a good job keeping this thread out of politics so far- let's keep that going, shall we?
My
Unitarian Jihad Name is:
Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate.
Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
Chris each time you've done that you've probably made that officer's day just a bit nicer. For you must realise most of the time a cop's job boils down to being a glorified janitor cleaning up the debris left by traumatic events.
I've never had any trouble with the police here, cousin's a cop, I've wandered through most of VicPol HQ changing PCs, do banking at the bank branch in the Acadamy. Even thought about being a cop.
MD, in that case your family should've gone over his head the first time he pulled that crap cos while a officer can be a Mason they aren't supposed to be doing favours for their lodge-mates, so it's no wonder why he got kicked out. It's just a pity it took so long for them to do it.
I've noticed the cops here are in the group that are most likely to follow the traffic laws, for I believe if they infringe any while on duty and not on a 'Blues 'n Twos' call, the driver get fined.
Speeding fines don't go towards directly funding cops here, it instead goes into the state governments' general revenue pool.
I've had three interactions with the police outside of traffic enforcement incidents.
The first two were when I was in college. A neighbor broke into our room and assaulted my roommate, and we were all questioned briefly as to what we had seen.
The second case, I was on a MUSH chatting with someone when they announced that they were going to commit suicide, and signed off. I happened to know where they were, so I called the police in their area and informed them of what had happened. I got a call back a few hours later thanking me - they'd gotten there just in time to prevent her from jumping.
The third occasion, just last month, I'd dropped my cell phone outside a gas station. Someone turned it in to the police. They called through my speed-dial list and got through to a friend, who called the store I was at and let me know what had happened. I immediately headed for the station to pick it up. When I got there the station was closed, but two officers were sitting in their cars in the driveway chatting. I went up to them and introduced myself, explained what brought me there, and they quite gracefully went in to the station, got my phone, and gave it to me. No trouble, no hassle.
So, yeah. Not had the troubles some had.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
My experiences have been similar. I've had two interactions with the police in the last year, both involving me going to fencing practice, with my rapier, in scabbard, over my shoulder. In the first I was in a fast food restaurant getting something to eat, and a cop was in line ahead of me. She asked about the sword and we spent a few minutes talking about Olympic style fencing versus SCAdian fencing.
The second time was in January. I got stopped by a foot patrol who asked to see the sword, and politely asked that I start carrying it in a bag or case, as there are a lot of bars, and thus drunk people on Elgin and I have to walk down it to get to and from practice. I agreed and asked about whether or not that could get me in trouble for carrying a concealed weapon[0] and they laughed it off.
Of course, as the son of a middle-class white family, my experiences and expectations may not be typical.
[0] And in the ski bag I now use, it technically is according to C-46 s. 90, but the courts have often applied the same standard of 'dangerous to the public peace' or for the purposes of committing a separate crime that s. 88 has, and they've also applied similar logic to the 'without lawful excuse' language in s. 89. However, s. 90 doesn't have the same language, and a literal reading just makes it an offence unless you've got an authorization under the Firearms Act. So the cops could make a big deal out of it if they wanted to. This is all a complicated way of saying, I didn't think I was being overly cautious to ask them that question. And why I was carrying the sword openly in the first place.
--
"This is not some swishy-pokey, Japanese finesse thing.
This is a big ****ing chisel. Use it appropriately."
- Jarl Sir Nicholaus Barchatov of An Tir - Sword training at Pennsic '03
It's things like this which make me wary of the police, and I also used to live in one of the worst areas of MD within sight of a police station.
http://yro.slashdot.org/s...n-For-Videotaping-Police
The police have a tough job and they probably don't get paid enough to deal with all the crap they have to deal with. Yet it's this abuse of power that makes me worried. Civil assets forfeiture is even worse. there are supposedly areas in DC where you are more likely to be robbed by the police than by criminals. That is probably an exaggeration, but that it happens at all is very very worrysome.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
This is exactly the kind of thing I mentioned in my first post. The power trippers, the abusers, don't want to be exposed, so they're using everything they can to bully and intimidate anyone who might bring them to light. And that gives all cops a bad name and rep.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.