“Have you ridden along with them when they have to do their job under the worst circumstances?”
Yes, I have. I volunteer for my town CERT team and work with the Fire Corps. Any other questions? I’ve done about half a dozen ride alongs over the last few years. Seen some nasty stuff, too. A dead kid hit by a drunk was about the worst. Although there was the drunken idiot who thought it would be a good idea to walk along railroad tracks at night. He was scattered for about 100 yards or so.
Once again, being inside a city owned vehicle talking on a City owned radio is NOT a situation where anyone has an expectation of privacy. I don’t understand why you can’t grasp that very simple fact. Every word he utters is subject to FOIA requests. That’s just the world we live in. And he should know that. If he didn’t that’s a very big problem.
Half the country right now is just waiting, cell phones in hand, for cops to screw up so they can yell “See! They’re all heartless ***holes!” And this bonehead handed them a perfect example on a silver platter. He should be disciplined for that alone if nothing else.
He’s made the job of every other cop on that Department more difficult because he didn’t use his head. THAT is the problem I have with him.
Is being a cop a tough job? Damned straight it is. Do they have to deal with the absolute dregs of society? Damned straight they do. Do they have to deal with decent people who are having the worst day of their lives? Once again, damned straight they do. THAT is exactly why cops need to be professional at ALL times while they’re on the clock.
Cops have a tremendous amount of power so they absolutely MUST be held to the highest standards of behavior. If they’re not then everyone suffers. The good cops who get compared to the boneheaded ones AND the public they’ve sworn to “serve and protect”. His behavior eroded the trust between the Department and the public. THAT is the problem here.
I don’t hate cops. We need good cops. Hell, we need a lot more good ones these days. But what we can’t have are cops who can’t keep their damned mouths shut when whats left of an innocent girl is being scraped off the bumper of a police car.
L
You live in a small town, by your admission. A murder is basically a generational thing in small town America. It’s front page news when somebody is murdered in small town America and, according to the stereotype, the criminal is always named Dwayne.
That is a far different culture in Big cities, where handling the worst that humanity has to offer is a nightly thing. You can get a dozen incidents of the worst that humanity has to offer on every shift. Your expectation is that they should be professional, no matter what they find and deal with is unreasonable. It’s not even on this side of the galaxy in remoteness of reasonableness.
You sound like those anti-war activists who want soldiers prosecuted for shooting a terrorist dead, while not waiting for the terrorist to set off his bomb before not responding. They are being as reasonable about soldiers as you are about police officers.
Cell phone photographs don’t because we are in agreement when they are operating in public they should conduct themselves appropriately. But when they are operating with an expectation of privacy, there should be no expectation of professionalism, if it means dealing with what they have to deal with.
If a cop can keep professional at all times, then he’s in a cream puff job. Your expectation of police officers might fit a small town, but in no way would it work in the city.
You claim to not hate cops, but your expectations of them would drive them out of the police force.