Daedalus454 said:
Pros:
- I can walk down the street in my neighborhood without being mugged
- None of my cars has ever been stolen
- None of my female relatives or friends have ever been accosted or raped
- etc
- etc
- etc
Cons:
- I got a ticket for unsafe passing on the right that I probably deserved, but the cop had a patronizing attitude that pissed me off.
Wow, you guys are pretty shortsighted. Cops are so vital to our personal safety, they put themselves at risk every time they put on their uniform. Thanks to the proliferation of YouTube and camera phones, they are constantly being second-guessed by Internet pundits who are more than happy to base their opinions of a potentially complex situation on a 6 second low-res video clip from teh Intarweb. This of course can result in officers being afraid take any action, lest they make the wrong decision and someone catch it on video. Resulting again in a deterioration of the safety of law-abiding citizens.
I have a great deal of respect for the Police, and I admit, I am going to go out of my way to give a Police officer the benefit of the doubt, regardless of the situation.
My $.02.
I can say the same about my neighborhood and I haven't seen a cop drive down my street in months. When they do show up, it's usually in the spring (when it's warm out) and they write a bunch of parking tickets on cars that have been parking in the same spots for the last year without any apparent problems.
I'll make a short list.
Pluses.
Cop ordered me to get up and walk out of the street after being pushed into a lamp pole by a lane changer on my motorcycle. I had seven broken ribs any of which could have punctured something necessary. The plus is he cleared the lane and got traffic moving again and I didn't bleed to death.
My house was robbed, cops took a report, never heard from them again. The plus was, the insurance actually paid.
Tires and rims were stolen off of my Jeep, In L.A. I actually found them about a month later on some other guys ride. I had serial numbers, receipts and could tell the cops what the original color was on the rims and how many layers of paint they had. The cops blew me off. The plus was, I had the fun of getting my own tires and rims back, which was actually pretty entertaining. we rolled the guys car onto the roof to make removal easier.
Reported a guy trying to sell my little brother Heroin, Cops called me a rat. Never bothered to take a report. The plus was the same dealer took one to the brain pan about a month and a half later.
Minuses.
Stopped to help a little old lady who passed out from the heat and fell into the street. Cops pull up, throw me face down on my hood, cuff me and throw me head first into the back seat of their cruiser. Little old lady store keeper came running out and said, let him go he was trying to help. They stand me up, take the cuffs off and threaten to beat my ass if I filed a report. Little old Lady says, funking Cops.
Girlfriend and me get into an argument, I was a little upset that she gave me an STD. Cops show up and arrest me, stole almost $800 of my bosses money (road money, I was driving truck at the time).
My dog gets off his leash while I'm at the beach. I'm running up the parking lot trying to keep him in sight as he runs through the crowd. Cop runs into me with his car. Bounces me of the side of his cruiser half a dozen times for entertainment (I think the guy had a Napoleon complex, he was like 5'2" tall), his buddies show up, put me face down on a 120 degree plus asphalt (I'm wearing swimming trunks) and pound my face into the pavement a half dozen times. The whole front of my body was blistered from the hot asphalt, they said I was resisting arrest. I had a concussion and had a hard time trying to tell my side of the story. Charged me with interfering with an officer in the performance of his duties. Karma took care of two of them, one got shot in the face, the other died in a cruiser wreck. I lost track of the other three, hopefully they had similarly poor luck. Maybe I should move this to the plus column.
All I ever hear is the law this and the law that. Record number of people in jail, any way you figure it, percentage or straight numbers (you could populate a decent sized country with the number of people in American prisons). More laws on the books than ever before. Is it possible the Cops actually produce more criminals than they arrest?
And by the way, one reason Simi is so nice and safe is the Goodfellas, not the Cops.
does not give you the right to be an azzhatt to other forum users; paid or unpaid.
