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I Wish

What I really want to see is some member/s here to post up all kinds of threads talking about crooked cops. I don’t think I’ve seent that yet. These guys need to be held accountable and I think posting here in the pit would make that happen in the world. Please help this bruh out.
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I got here in 2007 and it was still mostly that way. Scout brought in a big mess.
When I got here in 2002 it was even different than when you got here. I fully understand how & why it morphed into what it did/has. Frank was paying the freight out of his pocket while holding down a job or two-three as this, was his passion. After a while it started taking a toll on him, and slowly things changed, the major was scout when many of us just passed on that. When he seen what was going on there & the direction it was going, he made a choice. The site has morphed a few times over the 23 years I've been here, mostly good for that matter. Like all things shit creeps at times, one of the reasons we lost many a good LEO over the years, who were replace by below average cops. There is a diff between a LEO & a cop, I still run with many LEO's but don't hang cops, once/if they fail LEO the test.
 
This is not my story but it is my favorite cop story.

I was driving home a bit fast and got pulled over by a police officer. I gave him my license and insurance when he asked for it.

A few minutes later, he came back and said, "The reason I pulled you over was for excessive speed. And it figures this would just have to happen near the end of my shift. What is the nature of the emergency?"

I replied, "A few weeks ago, my wife ran off with a cop."

"Oh really?" he replied.

"Yes," I said. "I thought you were him and you were bringing her back to me."

He chuckled and told me to slow down and go home.
 
Reckon that this thread is soliciting the intended responses and following the same script that all these other threads seem to follow. Just like much of our society- a vocal group on one side pointing out police abuse and atrocities and the another vocal group "backing the blue". Also- mirroring much of our society, the quiet minority lying in the middle whispering for facts on the subject before offering an opinion one way or the other.

I consider myself strangely in the middle of the whole police debate and as much as I'd like to think it's due to my fantastic personality, it's likely more so due to having personal experience on the different extremes. One one hand and I don't think it's all that controversial, the police have a shit job and the marketed 'nobility' of the profession is short lived with anyone that spent any time in the profession. It's a job like any other after all (although glamorized for at least a century in movies & literature) but they attract new employees much like the military does. Promise a career based off of the ideals of the profession, emphasize the 'service' & 'nobility' portions, but then treat them like your run of the mill government employee (aka just another number/cog in the proverbial wheel) after they "sign up". Especially early in their career they're given all the shit assignments, awful shifts/schedules, and treated by the more seasoned employees as idiots until they themselves have enough seniority to act in the same manner towards new hires that come after them.

Meanwhile they're constantly hearing about how corrupt they are, are always being scrutinized, and as a result are forced to operate under otherwise inane mandates based off of public perception & "feelings" rather than doing the job they were hired & trained to do. Also throw in countless examples of watching people you rightfully arrested (real criminals and often of the worst kind) get off time and time again due to technicalities &/or the fact they have enough money to scare the DA in either initially pursuing the charges in court and/or watch the "worst of the worst" continue to skirt charges when you feel you have them 'dead to rights' because they simply can hire a better lawyer than the municipality can afford to recruit on the prosecutions side. Who can blame anyone that works through this type of "grind" to not become jaded?

The "other" side of the proverbial coin though is the judicial system in modern times exists to generate revenue and needs to sustain its own existence through the fees it collects. If I can go out on a limb, but I can't help but find parallels between this and how the Commissary & Exchanges used to be run. Decades ago- the exchanges were an actual deal and offered products well below what they were selling for outside that system as 'present market value'. But then "we" had the great idea/perception that this created an unfair advantage of sorts and caused an undue burden on the taxpayers. The logical solution of course was to take what was originally started as a government service and try to turn it into a self-sustaining business model (which the government is well known for their aptness in running). And our 'best ideas' turn it into an entinity that's now a drain on taxpayers, no longer offers the services that they were originally chartered for, and because they can't compete in pricing (but hey it's tax free am I right), their entire existence & the service they're supposed to provide is at risk because people took their business outside of the commissaries & exchanges because the lack of competitiveness. We just live to exist long enough to shoot ourselves in the foot, lose sight of what the mission is, and blame somebody else for these self inflicted problems.

But it's disingenuous to state that double standards and abject corruption doesn't exist in our legal system (which I'd argue is built off of a self licking ice cream cone of blatant conflicts of interest). I totally get that the job is shit both in ideal and practical senses and I also get why folks get jaded and how this 'devil may care' attitude infiltrates the profession especially given their hourly compensation. But the 'checks & balances' that should be in place have become so eroded over the decades that we publicly now accept this "new normal" as acceptable governance and how a justice system "should" operate.

I personally challenge that mindset but this post is getting long so I'd best end it here and break it up into more than one post.
 
There are LEO's here but I'd imagine there's a lot more vets than LEO's so I'll curtail this statement more towards the military side because that's (1) what I understand intimately and (2) believe to be the majority of the audience. With that said- we (collectively as a country/government) need to stop looking at problems through the lens that multiple professions/specialities/mindsets can be adequately accomplished by the both convenient & available proverbial 'boots on the ground' and cut corners/save money by refusing to fund/staff those positions.

Case in point- we take Army and Marine Infantry and place them in a war zone. Impose stringent ROE's on them and expect them to act as humanitarians despite their entire training & existence as being a combative entity and then scratch our heads and wonder why they default to combative solutions instead of diplomatic ones. Or why we take a police officer who is trained to enforce adherence to laws and sit around arguing why they don't make for good social workers or tax collectors.

I'd argue that another problem we've created is by buying into this mindset we've been sold that the government jobs of previous generations were "too good" so we cut their benefits, protections, compensation etc to bring it in line with what was sold as the "normal" rates for governmental functions that don't exist in the private world. In the name of "fairness" we've now created a situation where police officers in many departments are paid less hourly than someone working at McDonalds and we as a society wonder why we aren't recruiting the 'right' people & and why we have to keep lowering standards to match the lowering of compensation we started applying to these roles.

Personally- I think we should be paying our social workers, police officers, and ESPECIALLY paramedics damn good money for those jobs to ensure we're attracting the absolute best for those positions. But we're doing and have been doing the absolute opposite of this for decades. We also should be matching that above average compensation with an above average performance expectation/standard to ensure the folks that stay in those positions continue to be the right people and combat complacency.
 
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Reckon this will be my last post before I get off my soapbox here-

As I mentioned in this thread and in numerous other threads (including ones I started) the responses here unfortunately demonstrate the polarization we have not just on the Hide/Bear Pit from contributors here but as a society. Everything is an 'all or nothing' approach and damn do I not believe that we need far more moderates than hardliners (and on either side of whatever issue).

I recently made a post about this entire subject and received the exact same responses. I'm biased of course but feel like I took a unique outline by sharing my personal experiences with close friendships on the LEO side as well as being completely raked across the coals on the "receiving" side of poor law enforcement/judicial system experience. I'm the god damn Reese's of the discussion bringing both the chocolate & peanut butter to the table and yet the same arguments there from the same people.

One side automatically agrees that I must have been wronged because the police are absolute Gestapo anymore and the other white knight for the 'blue' as if they could do no wrong and the simple accusation is enough to dismiss everything else that was said (including the actual facts as proven by no less than 4 video sources). Only a handful of folks that participated in those threads wanted to talk about the details rather than picking a side (despite what I thought was a rather fair representation of both sides).

And frankly, I can't help but feel that this is all by design and this infighting is a result of deliberate social engineering over decades. We will call jihad against each other over the most minor of nuances and fight amongst ourselves (who likely are easily 75%+ in agreement with "everything" else) meanwhile the situation continues to get worse and the corruption/conflicts of interest continue to run deeper as the entities not being singled out chip away in the background.

So my last statement before stepping off of my soap box- we've got serious societal problems in our judicial system that impacts both the Shepard and the sheep. The worst thing that's occurred in recent years/decades (in my opinion at least) is we've become conditioned to speak in absolutes across all spectrums, feelings now weigh more than data, and the "middle ground"/cooperation with each other is a sign of weakness/indecision because it must demonstrate a lack of "conviction" as well as convey the image of being "uneducated" (as an aside- when did degrees start equating intelligence/self worth? Perhaps during Vietnam when college enrollment could defer being drafted?)

We learned to 'circle our wagons' and forgot how to communicate with each other. We 'learned' to distrust each other and for over 20 years were told to 'say something if we saw something' but we only looked within and stopped looking outwards to the government telling us this and holding them accountable. Surprise surprise, while things might have never been perfect (or even good) it certainly got worse when we decided to hold the citizens to a higher standard than the government.

I'm stepping down from my pulpit now.

-LD
 
Reckon that this thread is soliciting the intended responses and following the same script that all these other threads seem to follow. Just like much of our society- a vocal group on one side pointing out police abuse and atrocities and the another vocal group "backing the blue". Also- mirroring much of our society, the quiet minority lying in the middle whispering for facts on the subject before offering an opinion one way or the other.

I consider myself strangely in the middle of the whole police debate and as much as I'd like to think it's due to my fantastic personality, it's likely more so due to having personal experience on the different extremes. One one hand and I don't think it's all that controversial, the police have a shit job and the marketed 'nobility' of the profession is short lived with anyone that spent any time in the profession. It's a job like any other after all (although glamorized for at least a century in movies & literature) but they attract new employees much like the military does. Promise a career based off of the ideals of the profession, emphasize the 'service' & 'nobility' portions, but then treat them like your run of the mill government employee (aka just another number/cog in the proverbial wheel) after they "sign up". Especially early in their career they're given all the shit assignments, awful shifts/schedules, and treated by the more seasoned employees as idiots until they themselves have enough seniority to act in the same manner towards new hires that come after them.

Meanwhile they're constantly hearing about how corrupt they are, are always being scrutinized, and as a result are forced to operate under otherwise inane mandates based off of public perception & "feelings" rather than doing the job they were hired & trained to do. Also throw in countless examples of watching people you rightfully arrested (real criminals and often of the worst kind) get off time and time again due to technicalities &/or the fact they have enough money to scare the DA in either initially pursuing the charges in court and/or watch the "worst of the worst" continue to skirt charges when you feel you have them 'dead to rights' because they simply can hire a better lawyer than the municipality can afford to recruit on the prosecutions side. Who can blame anyone that works through this type of "grind" to not become jaded?

The "other" side of the proverbial coin though is the judicial system in modern times exists to generate revenue and needs to sustain its own existence through the fees it collects. If I can go out on a limb, but I can't help but find parallels between this and how the Commissary & Exchanges used to be run. Decades ago- the exchanges were an actual deal and offered products well below what they were selling for outside that system as 'present market value'. But then "we" had the great idea/perception that this created an unfair advantage of sorts and caused an undue burden on the taxpayers. The logical solution of course was to take what was originally started as a government service and try to turn it into a self-sustaining business model (which the government is well known for their aptness in running). And our 'best ideas' turn it into an entinity that's now a drain on taxpayers, no longer offers the services that they were originally chartered for, and because they can't compete in pricing (but hey it's tax free am I right), their entire existence & the service they're supposed to provide is at risk because people took their business outside of the commissaries & exchanges because the lack of competitiveness. We just live to exist long enough to shoot ourselves in the foot, lose sight of what the mission is, and blame somebody else for these self inflicted problems.

But it's disingenuous to state that double standards and abject corruption doesn't exist in our legal system (which I'd argue is built off of a self licking ice cream cone of blatant conflicts of interest). I totally get that the job is shit both in ideal and practical senses and I also get why folks get jaded and how this 'devil may care' attitude infiltrates the profession especially given their hourly compensation. But the 'checks & balances' that should be in place have become so eroded over the decades that we publicly now accept this "new normal" as acceptable governance and how a justice system "should" operate.

I personally challenge that mindset but this post is getting long so I'd best end it here and break it up into more than one post.

There are LEO's here but I'd imagine there's a lot more vets than LEO's so I'll curtail this statement more towards the military side because that's (1) what I understand intimately and (2) believe to be the majority of the audience. With that said- we (collectively as a country/government) need to stop looking at problems through the lens that multiple professions/specialities/mindsets can be adequately accomplished by the both convenient & available proverbial 'boots on the ground' and cut corners/save money by refusing to fund/staff those positions.

Case in point- we take Army and Marine Infantry and place them in a war zone. Impose stringent ROE's on them and expect them to act as humanitarians despite their entire training & existence as being a combative entity and then scratch our heads and wonder why they default to combative solutions instead of diplomatic ones. Or why we take a police officer who is trained to enforce adherence to laws and sit around arguing why they don't make for good social workers or tax collectors.

I'd argue that another problem we've created is by buying into this mindset we've been sold that the government jobs of previous generations were "too good" so we cut their benefits, protections, compensation etc to bring it in line with what was sold as the "normal" rates for governmental functions that don't exist in the private world. In the name of "fairness" we've now created a situation where police officers in many departments are paid less hourly than someone working at McDonalds and we as a society wonder why we aren't recruiting the 'right' people & and why we have to keep lowering standards to match the lowering of compensation we started applying to these roles.

Personally- I think we should be paying our social workers, police officers, and ESPECIALLY paramedics damn good money for those jobs to ensure we're attracting the absolute best for those positions. But we're doing and have been doing the absolute opposite of this for decades. We also should be matching that above average compensation with an above average performance expectation/standard to ensure the folks that stay in those positions continue to be the right people and combat complacency.

Reckon this will be my last post before I get off my soapbox here-

As I mentioned in this thread and in numerous other threads (including ones I started) the responses here unfortunately demonstrate the polarization we have not just on the Hide/Bear Pit from contributors here but as a society. Everything is an 'all or nothing' approach and damn do I not believe that we need far more moderates than hardliners (and on either side of whatever issue).

I recently made a post about this entire subject and received the exact same responses. I'm biased of course but feel like I took a unique outline by sharing my personal experiences with close friendships on the LEO side as well as being completely raked across the coals on the "receiving" side of poor law enforcement/judicial system experience. I'm the god damn Reese's of the discussion bringing both the chocolate & peanut butter to the table and yet the same arguments there from the same people.

One side automatically agrees that I must have been wronged because the police are absolute Gestapo anymore and the other white knight for the 'blue' as if they could do no wrong and the simple accusation is enough to dismiss everything else that was said (including the actual facts as proven by no less than 4 video sources). Only a handful of folks that participated in those threads wanted to talk about the details rather than picking a side (despite what I thought was a rather fair representation of both sides).

And frankly, I can't help but feel that this is all by design and this infighting is a result of deliberate social engineering over decades. We will call jihad against each other over the most minor of nuances and fight amongst ourselves (who likely are easily 75%+ in agreement with "everything" else) meanwhile the situation continues to get worse and the corruption/conflicts of interest continue to run deeper as the entities not being singled out chip away in the background.

So my last statement before stepping off of my soap box- we've got serious societal problems in our judicial system that impacts both the Shepard and the sheep. The worst thing that's occurred in recent years/decades (in my opinion at least) is we've become conditioned to speak in absolutes across all spectrums, feelings now weigh more than data, and the "middle ground"/cooperation with each other is a sign of weakness/indecision because it must demonstrate a lack of "conviction" as well as convey the image of being "uneducated" (as an aside- when did degrees start equating intelligence/self worth? Perhaps during Vietnam when college enrollment could defer being drafted?)

We learned to 'circle our wagons' and forgot how to communicate with each other. We 'learned' to distrust each other and for over 20 years were told to 'say something if we saw something' but we only looked within and stopped looking outwards to the government telling us this and holding them accountable. Surprise surprise, while things might have never been perfect (or even good) it certainly got worse when we decided to hold the citizens to a higher standard than the government.

I'm stepping down from my pulpit now.

-LD
Readers Digest version?
That's not asking for you to write the RD version. Just asking if it was or not.
 
This. I always hand them the CCW first, then my license behind it, then the reg and insurance. Look him in the eye and be polite. Keep both hands on the wheel.

Goes a long way.
And back window/all windows down.

And engine turned off…so they know you’re not gonna just take off; and also that the car’s probably not hot-wired (stolen).

They have no idea who or what they may be getting into when they approach your car, and getting them to dial it back a notch before the conversation even starts goes a long way to the possibility of a warning vs. an infraction. Just my $0.02 as someone who is a regular, and frequent, contributor to what I call the “Random Road Tax.”

That said, if they get out of their car in the snow and/or rain, you’re gettin’ a ticket! LoL
 
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And back window/all windows down.

And engine turned off…so they know you’re not gonna just take off; and also that the car’s probably not hot-wired (stolen).

They have no idea who or what they may be getting into when they approach your car, and getting them to dial it back a notch before the conversation even starts goes a long way to the possibility of a warning vs. an infraction. Just my $0.02 as someone who is a regular, and frequent, contributor to what I call the “Random Road Tax.”

That said, if they get out of their car in the snow and/or rain, you’re gettin’ a ticket! LoL
Yep.

Cop may not be in the top 10 most dangerous professions but the thought of walking up to a random car window is terrifying. I reckon they usually have some idea through their radios, but still there are a lot of morons out there and a lot of them hate any form of authority.