quote:I normally hate the police, but I am glad to see them doing their jobs.
What causes a person to feel this way about an entire profession of individuals? I've met a lot of people who "hate the police", but not a lot who "hate waiters" or "hate firemen" or "hate accountants". What makes the police so special that they should receive a broader, more universal sort of hate than other people?
And should my friend the policeman be offended at this?
PS: And feel free to get all the "Police" band references out of your systems in postscripts Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
They hate authority? Perhaps they are African American males who have been racially profiled a few times and now hate all police officers? Maybe they are people who like to speed all the time and get tickets constantly. I cannot say I hate police officers anymore than I can understand hating an entire sports team that never once destroyed your lawn by letting all of their dogs soil it. So I definetly don't get hating EVERY SINGLE COP or EVERY SINGLE LAWYER or all policians. Perhaps I hate politicians... But, mostly the stupid dishonest ones that lie constantly and try to manipulate the public too much with hot button issues they care nothing about. Also, I do not like James Dobson, Pat Robertson or Fred Phelps, but I cannot say I hate all ministers. I have, I believe, a good reason for disliking these men, or at least 90% of their belief system.
(Also, I thought of the BAND the Police as soon as I saw this, for example, that creepy song)
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Probably because policeman can easily abuse their power and be jack***** whenever they feel like it, while firemen and accountants don't really have much power over people and if waiters are like that then they don't get tipped.
Someone also once told me that they think that alot of the people that become policeman are usually power-hungry jack***** that like to feel like macho men...That's not my opinion in any way that's just what someone once told me.
Edit: "hating an entire sports team that never once destroyed your lawn by letting all of their dogs soil it. " Has that happened to you???
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I don't hate police, but I can't say I hold any special love for them either. Mostly because the majority I've been in contact with have been on power trips, strutting around like their on TV. Not all, but the majority. And, I'm a fan of less laws (though I'm not an anarchist. I'm a teenager).
I will say though, all 5 times I've been pulled over it's been legit. I've never gotten a ticket or a warning, but they have been legit. The officers themselves have just been jerks (other than the fact that they let me off clean )
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I don't hate the police. I think a lot of them work in a profession that gets less pay and less respect than it deserves, and still manage to perform their job very well. Any profession is going to have bad apples, but I've never had a bad experience with a police officer, and I'm glad they are there.
Edit to add: except in Ohio. The two times I've been pulled over in Ohio they've been jerks. The place I've been pulled over the most was in Detroit, but I've never gotten a ticket there, mostly the cops are just checking to make sure I'm not lost and to make sure I get home safely (which is a whole different issue in Detroit, but I won't get into that).
quote:Originally posted by Dr Strangelove: I don't hate police, but I can't say I hold any special love for them either. Mostly because the majority I've been in contact with have been on power trips, strutting around like their on TV. Not all, but the majority. And, I'm a fan of less laws (though I'm not an anarchist. I'm a teenager).
I will say though, all 5 times I've been pulled over it's been legit. I've never gotten a ticket or a warning, but they have been legit. The officers themselves have just been jerks (other than the fact that they let me off clean )
I thought you said that one in Orlando was cool to you!
posted
Probably a combination of the degree and type of power that the police have over your lives (as opposed to say a fireman or a waiter) and the traits of the people that are often drawn to that type of a job.
My father is a cop, and I have known dozens of officers over the years. I'd like to say that knowing many personally helped changed my negative POV toward the police, however it just reinforces it.
I can't say I hate the police, but I have a very negative view of them in general. There are always exceptions though. *shrug*
P.S. I mentally flipped a coin on whether the thread was about the band or the job
Edit: Wow I'm a slow typer
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I don't want to imply anything here, but generally I've seen that people who "hate" the police are those that have altercations with them in the past and lost.
For example, my current boss *really* hates the police. After all, he was a mob truck driver that went to jail for six years...
I myself got recently "temporarily" arrested (because I didn't have a ticket for public transportation for the third time; don't want to get in to it, but it's been discussed on another forum), but I was never booked and it's not on my record. Do I "hate" them? No. They made my life miserable, yes, but that was because of my own stupidity.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I don't hate all police. Just most of the ones in Chicago. And I think it's funny (in a sad way) that Chicago police just don't understand why they have such a bad reputation.
1. The Democratic Convention (The Whole World is Watching. And they were.) 2. I have seen police enter an intersection on a red light, flash their lights, pass through the intersection, and then turn their lights off. There was no emergency. They just didn't want to wait. 3. I got a ticket for riding my bicycle, with a helmet, on a bike path. 4. Drunk off duty cops beat people up. Link There was another incident recently, I can't find the link. 5. Someone stole my dad's antique lighting fixtures. The cops gave him a list of places where 'hot' merchandise shows up, and said he could check there. Isn't it their job to check?
So while I don't don't hate all police everywhere, I do think that most Chicago police officers are jerks.
Posts: 511 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
I dunno what DD meant, but I've uttered the phrase "I hate cops" before, and I can try to explain why.
First off, the use of 'hate' in the phrase is similar to the use of 'hate' in the phrase "I hate asparagus." I don't really hate it, just the idea of it makes me unhappy and my experience in the past with it has not been pleasant.
Second, when I say it, there is an understood (in the audience I'm talking too, not the audience here) "a**hole" between "hate" and "cops." The sad fact that I've met many many more a-hole cops that nice cops causes me to leave the expletive unsaid.
Third, for those of us that feel peaceful noncompliance and nonviolent crimes being punished by extensive jail time and harsh fines is cruel and unusual, the idea of a person wanting to go into a profession that enforces punishment of these crime does not inspire warm fuzzies.
Fourth, the cops I come into contact with are not out arresting rapists and murderers (at the time), their pulling me over for having hippy stickers, interrogating me on campus for being out late, coming into my house for having friends over, and each time somehow having cause to search my person. I'm sure that they do very heroic things sometimes, but not when I see them. They're just harassing me and my friends.
I've come to realize that this list could have no end, so I'll just say that when I walk away from an encounter with a police officer and he acts in a way that reminds me of all of the other unhappy encounters with police, I tend to mutter "I hate cops" at some point. But I do realize that not all cops are a-holes, and even the a-holes do good things sometimes. Based on my experience, however, I have to realize that completely on faith, and not anecdotal evidence.
This has taken a little while to write, so is probably inconsequential now, but there you have it.
(I hate The Police way more than I hate the police.)
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Dr Strangelove: I don't hate police, but I can't say I hold any special love for them either. Mostly because the majority I've been in contact with have been on power trips, strutting around like their on TV. Not all, but the majority. And, I'm a fan of less laws (though I'm not an anarchist. I'm a teenager).
I will say though, all 5 times I've been pulled over it's been legit. I've never gotten a ticket or a warning, but they have been legit. The officers themselves have just been jerks (other than the fact that they let me off clean )
I thought you said that one in Orlando was cool to you!
-pH
He was cool because he didn't arrest me . He still acted like there was a camera over his shoulder.
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I have more problems with female cops than male cops.
They have more of a tendency to act like they have something to prove, in my experience. They also seem to have more of a tendency to shrug off things you tell them, like when I got that creepy note in the mail, and the patrolwoman wouldn't even take a report.
posted
I also don't understand the "I hate cops" mentality. Sure I've been pulled over for silly things (burnt out tail light), but that doesn't mean I hate cops. All of the police I've dealt with - either people I know who are cops or cops who I've dealt with - have been very pleasant. Nothing they've done have left me with any resentment towards the entire profession.
quote:Third, for those of us that feel peaceful noncompliance and nonviolent crimes being punished by extensive jail time and harsh fines is cruel and unusual, the idea of a person wanting to go into a profession that enforces punishment of these crime draws does not inspire warm fuzzies.
I thought it was the legal system doing this, not cops...
Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:I thought it was the legal system doing this, not cops...
It's the legal system that started the laws, it's the cops (edit: that I have come in contact with) that enjoy enforcing them. I say 'enjoy' because on a number of times I've heard an arresting officer voice a hope to be able to arrest someone for nonviolent crimes.
Literally. I worked as a hotel clerk and there was a smell reported on one of the floors and the local police came buy, and while they were waiting at the desk one of them said "I hope they have pot in there, I haven't arrested someone for possesion, I really want to." Similar things have been said to me when pulled over. Inside the Mexican border, I can almost guarantee that the officers really really wanted to arrest us, and for no other reason than that we were kids, sleepy and driving on their road. (In each of these cases there was nothing illegal found and the searches were warrantless(well, I don't know for a fact that the hotel incident was warrantless, but they didn't find anything))
posted
I know that in my case, "I hate the cops" means that I distrust them. All of the power in an encounter is behind the officer. Furthermore, a malicious officer can ruin your life in a moment.
Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I feel somewhat intimidated by police, but I don't hate them. If I were at a restaurant or establishment and I were to see a firefighter, paramedic, soldier, or some other profession that typically wears a uniform, I might strike up a conversation with them. I would ask what their job was like, talk about the weather, etc. etc. With a police officer, I'd be much more reticent to speak, but I'm not sure why.
Though, I had an interesting casual conversation with a state police officer a couple weeks ago.
I was at a fast-food place waiting for my food to show up. When I made eye contact with the officer, he nodded to me in greeting, and I nodded back. He then asked me, "So you're a teacher?" (I was wearing my ID badge.)
I replied, "Yep, over at the middle school over there."
He grimaced. "Man, I can't imagine the kinds of things you have to deal with over there. I don't think I could deal with all those kids."
I was shocked. "C'mon, I said. You surely deal with hardened criminals in your line of work. What's a 12-year old going to compare to that?"
He chuckled a bit, then said, "Yes, but in my line of work, I get to have a gun."
posted
I don't like cops and I am one of the most law abiding person I know. They are never there when you need them and always there when you least need them. On top of that, very few are genuinely nice people; although part of that might be the line of work.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I don't know, I guess I just have this neurotic fear that they are watching every move I make, every step I take . . .
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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The “I hate cops” mentality actually makes me really angry because I think the people who feel this way are stupid. Most people who say things like this often feel this way because they acted like an idiot one or more times and got caught for it. They were doing something wrong and a cop tried to enforce the rules (How dare they!).
I can’t even tell you the amount of times I have overheard other college students utter this phrase while they proceeded to tell their story about how they were drunk, high, speeding, having rowdy parties with underage drinking, or being prevented from brining down the field goal poles after a big football game win. In all of these cases they were acting like complete idiots and a cop tried to stop them.
I am sure there are bad cops out there just as I am sure there are good cops out there. From the stories I hear, I assume there are some surly cops out there, but how many surly post office workers, fast food workers, politicians, doctors, etc. are there? I would bet you could find many others in different careers that treat customers/others like crap so I do not think that is an excuse to hate all cops.
quote:4. Drunk off duty cops beat people up. Link There was another incident recently, I can't find the link.
. How many people of other professions get drunk and beat people up? You just don’t hear about it because they aren’t cops or famous people.
I am also sure many of them enjoy their jobs as well; otherwise they shouldn’t be in that career. I just don’t see what is so wrong with wanting to stop people from doing illegal things or wanting to catch people who cheat the system. These men and women don’t get enough credit for what they do. They do what is needed to keep you from hurting yourself or others.
I bet if more people quit having this attitude the cops would be less likely to assume you hate them and might act a little nicer to you. If you thought someone hated you for doing something right/doing your job you would be less inclined to act friendly towards them too, wouldn’t you?
Posts: 306 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
the problem as I see it is the way in which your average citizen is going to come in contact with police (or other authority figures, which I'll expound on).
As an average citizen who's biggest offense is generally speeding, my personal interaction with cops is almost entirely in feeling very on edge when I'm driving because I'm sure that I'm accidentally violating rule #327 of the road (or whatever). While in principle I am very appreciative of those officers who investigate violent crime, help resolve theft and other serious disputes, that aspect is far removed from my daily life and is hard to quantify. However, every time I get nervous because a cop might pull me over for doing 2 mph over the limit, that experience is very personal and easy to quantify. Additionally, it's always easier to remember and focus on the big negative issues (such as the afformentioned Democratic Convention) than it is to focus on the nebulous concept that I'm safer at night because the police are around.
I see it as very similar to why people are very untrusting of the CIA or NSA etc (other than general opposition based on concepts of universal right to privacy etc). When these organizations are doing their job right (which is probably a majority of the time) they are probably averting massive losses of life, but we don't get to hear about it. however, whenever it comes to them incorrectly arresting someone, or tapping the phone line of someone who turns out to be innocent, it smacks home to us on a more personal level.
Also, it doesn't help when there are entire divisions of law enforcement dedicated to the minor crimes. Example: at Purdue there was the regular police and the Excise Police. The regular police were pretty neutral in my book, but since the Excise Police's main job was to arrest people for public intoxication (an extremely minor offense in my opinion, especially around a college campus) it brought a big negative to the concept of the cops.
all that combined with what people have been saying above about personal experience, and the type of people who often become cops makes for an often negative view of the group.
Posts: 1038 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by ludosti: I also don't understand the "I hate cops" mentality. Sure I've been pulled over for silly things (burnt out tail light), but that doesn't mean I hate cops. All of the police I've dealt with - either people I know who are cops or cops who I've dealt with - have been very pleasant. Nothing they've done have left me with any resentment towards the entire profession.
quote:Originally posted by BandoCommando: "C'mon, I said. You surely deal with hardened criminals in your line of work. What's a 12-year old going to compare to that?"
He chuckled a bit, then said, "Yes, but in my line of work, I get to have a gun."
What traits are policemen selected for, and what kind of people are drawn to the position? In my experience, they are generally not the brightest and tend towards smug. They are the enforcing arm of a flawed legal system, using violent solutions to address moral problems. In a way, they are our legally sanctioned terrorists, and I don't think that we should be so supportive in our public policy of threatening people to be nice.
Maybe it's different in small towns, where cops have a personal relationship with the neighborhoods they are patrolling and can therefore use a more judicious reasoning in their bearing(so I'm told), but I've only ever spent time in cities where cops didn't know me from Adam, and that's always been part of the problem.
I've been hassled. I've been detained. I've been threatened, and I'm a non-drinking, non-smoking, non-stealing class of pacifist.
posted
One of the things Dave was involved with in Madison, WI, was working with the Boys & Girls Club to get kids involved with the local authorities of various sorts. A community group met with Dave to identify concerns of the community -- both having trouble accessing 911 and a non-urgent trouble line and having a different vision of the community than the police were identified as core issues.
Community members went to an open-house day at the dispatcher office to meet the people behind the voices on the phone.
Additionally, one of the local activists helped organize a GPS mapping of the community coordinated to pictures and photos taken by kids which showed what that world looked like from their eyes -- what made them feel unsafe, where they knew they could relax, etc. The university provided Dave's skills and disposable cameras, and the kids presented to the police & other community leaders a large map and photoessay of their world.
Both the kids and the cops said it made a differece to look one another in the face, apart from confrontations. Pretty cool.
(I love my husband. He was instrumental in setting this up and getting it done, all as an extra project on his free time.)
---
Edited to add: This doesn't fix things, of course. It's not all birds singing and lions laying down with the lambs. But it was a good, practical step in facillitating a working relationship. With the face-to-face contact, something new was introduced that needed to be introduced.
I hope those are kids that are more likely to become activists in their own right. Maybe not comfortable activists for the rest of us (nothing wrong with that), but at least having been listened to. Getting your voice listened to can be addictive, especially when you have very really wrongs in your own daily life to right.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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I-Frim, although I would never associate them with terrorits and think that is insulting for why they exist, I must say that my experience is small town cops are not much different than larger city cops.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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There are a lot of hard-working men and women in law enforcement who really are out to help people. Officers who exemplify the notion of "to serve and protect".
But there are also a certain number of cops who got into the line of work for all the wrong reasons. As an outlet for aggression, say, or for the power to impose their standards on others. It doesn't take much to get on the bad side of someone who's looking to exert power, and it can ruin your whole day.
And in a very few (thankfully!) cases, it can end your life. Which is a hard thing to forget. It can make one feel very uncomfortable to feel that someone walking among you could kill you, and it might not come out as a crime- just as paperwork. Or a suspension.
When I was living in Seattle, our car was ticketed repeatedly for being parked outside our house. Yet when our car was broken into, the police came out, basically made us out to be asking for abuse for not having a wheel restraint or a car alarm, and then we never heard from them again.
Later, I encountered a couple of guys breaking into a car outside our house, called the police, and gave them descriptions and a license plate of the car they departed in. Never heard about that again, either. Which lead me to the unfortunate conclusion that the Seattle police are only effective against parked cars.
(sigh)
I don't hate the police. I just...
I wish that some of them didn't think there job wasn't something that it was never meant to be. And that some of them didn't seem to be little more than private security for the rich and powerful. And maybe that some of them didn't seem to view everyone outside of uniform not as civilians to protect but as untrustworthy suspects who might not have committed crimes... Yet.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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I have however had ugly experiences with individual police officers.
Many years ago my mother told me to run an errand for her and take her car. She did not tell me that the inspection sticker on her car had expired, so I was totally baffled when a police officer pulled me over. He interpreted my bafflement as snottiness, ordered me out of the car, and felt me up for a weapon, screaming at me the entire time.
He then fined me $79, saying that it didn't matter if it wasn't my car and I hadn't been told by the owner that the sticker had expired, I was obviously a careless idiot who wanted to cause an accident.
Even years later, I can recall every detail of how he screamed at me, jerked me around, and in general did his best to humiliate a clueless kid who was only trying to run an errand.
I don't hate the police in general, but I certainly despise individual officers.
posted
Sterling, thanks for giving an example that explains what I mean when I said, "They are never there when you need them and always there when you least need them."
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Puffy Right after I got my car (shiny brand new, still had temp tags), my friends and I drove to Orlando and got lost. I was 19, I think my friends were 18 and 21. It happened to be Fourth of July weekend. We realized we'd gone the wrong way, and I tried to pull out onto the main road but didn't see that there was a car coming (the visibility was awful...big plants and a sharp turn). So I turned in front of said car...not too close, but it was a cop car. It followed us for twenty minutes until we realized we'd gone too far and turned around. Kept following us. When we turned onto the right road, it pulled us over.
The (female) cop ordered me out of the car, started shining a light in my eye and got in my face, screaming at me about how I was going to cause an accident and kill my friends and how she could take me to jail right now. She didn't write me a ticket or anything...just screamed and screamed and then let us go. I mean, maybe she thought I was drunk and pulled me over for that, but she shouldn't have taken it out on me if she was upset that she was wrong.
posted
Virtually all the cops I have ever interacted with have been extremely polite. Respectful, even. I have had a couple of exceptions, but mostly I have a very positive opinion of the way cops do their work.
And it's demanding, frightening, stressful work.
Of course, I've never been ticketed for any moving violation nor found to be at fault in an accident, so in almost all of my interactions with cops, the cop was on my side. Speed less, and maybe you'll like cops more. Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I did have an experience like Puffy Treat's, which is why I said virtually all. It was the day after my nineteenth birthday, and I had just returned to college from an HSA conference. My girlfriend at the time was being driven back to college from a trip home over the weekend. She had just recently been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis and just recently been released from the hospital. She was in a wheelchair, and I had been helping to take care of her in her first days out of the hospital. She had gone home while I was out of town, because otherwise she would have nobody really caring for her. I was an emotional wreck in general at this time. The whole time she was in the hospital I had been there every day from morning to night. I had all but stopped attending classes, and was just barely scraping by in my job. This was the semester that I lost my 4.0, and though it hadn't happened yet, I could certainly see it coming. I was burning the candle at at least three different ends, and not getting any sleep at all. (Heck, at the conference, I remember yelling at a girl because she offered to iron my shirt for me; I thought she was being sexist. ) So I called her--I guess she had not yet left, because this was before cell phones--and she asked me to pick up dinner. I took her car, which had pretty much not been driven in a couple of months, to pick up McDonalds.
One of her lights was out. It was not yet dark enough to require headlights, but I put them on anyway because I'm a safe driver that way. I got pulled over because of the burnt out light. This was the very first time I had ever been pulled over--and the only tickets I ever received, not counting parking tickets. I begged the cop not to give me a ticket. I was pathetic, but I was stressed, and I didn't know that the ticket wouldn't affect my insurance. I could barely afford anything as it was, and if my insurance had gone up, my driving days would have been done. He clearly was enjoying himself. He gave me a ticket for the headlight--almost anyone else I've ever talked to had gotten warned for that, not ticketed. He gave me a ticket for not being able to find her registration. He gave me a ticket for not having proof of insurance (it was in my car). He started to give me a ticket for not having my seatbelt on, and I got indignant. I always wore my seatbelt, because I was a safe driver. There was no doubt in my mind that I had been wearing my seatbelt, and now he was just making crap up. That was the ticket he didn't give me.
I think he was just looking for my spine.
The "face value" of the tickets was $30 each. $90 was a lot of money to me back then, and I was unbelievably stressed about that. As it turns out, though, all I had to do was show up at the courthouse with the registration, my insurance paperwork, and an affidavit signed by a cop saying that the light was repaired, plead no lo contendere and each ticket was reduced to $9.
(That actually did come back to bite me years later when I moved to South Carolina, because in SC a ticket for a burnt out headlight actually does increase your insurance rates--it does not in Florida. And a plea of no lo contendere was considered a guilty plea. But I only had to tough it out for one more year then before it was off of my record. And insurance was much cheaper in SC than in Florida anyway.)
-o-
In my opinion, any cop who catches me doing something ticketable and lets me off with a lecture--even a yelled lecture--is an extremely cool cop. I can't imagine being pissed about that.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I hear cop stories all the time from the friend of mine that works at the police station, and a lot of the time when they are yelling at you, especially if you're younger, they're seriously just trying to scare you because you were doing something they view as unsafe, and they honestly don't want you to get hurt, and they don't want to punish you for it.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I hear cop stories all the time from the friend of mine that works at the police station, and a lot of the time when they are yelling at you, especially if you're younger, they're seriously just trying to scare you because you were doing something they view as unsafe, and they honestly don't want you to get hurt, and they don't want to punish you for it.
I didn't know my Mom's car had a defunct inspection sticker, and was honestly confused when he pulled me over. Ordering me out, feeling me over, and screaming at me until his face turned mottled magenta sort of makes me think the cop in this case did want to hurt me. Or was taking something else out on me.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
A few people have mentioned that the main reason one would dislike the profession is because they are a law breaker. A few people have also given their reasons why they don't believe that, and I'd like to add mine.
I've been arrested, between high school and college. The officer that arrested me was, by far, the nicest police officer I've ever met. I was rather intoxicated and having a hard time of it and he was very gracious, and a little amused, as he explained in a normal voice why I was being arrested. I pretty much agreed with most of what he said.
The officers that I've disliked, and by and far most of the officers I've met, have been the ones I've observed before/during/after a potential arrest. It's not what they do; I understand that the law is the law and that's what they have to do. But a person, cop or not, who enjoys the prospect of making another person's life much worse is not a good person, in my book.
Most of the officers I've observed enjoy 'busting' people and 'taking them down.' To me it seems like they would rather put every criminal on earth in jail than have there be no criminals on earth to begin with. I'm probably wrong about this, but that's the impression that I get.
So it's not about me being a law breaker so I hate the law enforcers. I don't like the law they eagerly enforce and I don't like the attitude that most do it with.
quote:The “I hate cops” mentality actually makes me really angry because I think the people who feel this way are stupid.
This would be an excellent conclusion if it were at all true, but too many people in this country have every excuse to feel inherently distrustful or disdainful of cops, based on prior experience with them.
Trust me, if you live in the right place, there really is no such thing as a good cop. Some districts are rotten to the core. Even the good districts can't really avoid having the occasional problem cops, since the career has this nightmarish tendency to attract arrogant twits with a societal Napoleonic complex.
My cops rule though. <3 cops!
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I've had a few times where I wouldn't have been suprised if the cop pulled me over but didn't end up doing anything.
One time it was late at night and I was making a U-turn. There was only one incoming car and it was kind of borderline on whether I had enough time to make the turn. It was late and I was tired so I made it anyway and pushed the gas hard. As soon as I was in the other lane the car zooms past me and I realize it was a police car as it turns it's lights, but not the sirens, on for a second. He must've been in a rush though because I'm pretty sure he was going fairly fast to pass me so quickly and the fact that he didn't ticket me for kind of cutting him off. I guess he just turned the lights on to scare me but didn't have time to pull me over.
Another time I was on the way to school and I passed a speed trap doing like 8-10 over. The cop looked me in the eye after he put the radar down and looked away as if he didn't notice. I found out when I got to school that my friend got pulled over by the same speed trap doing 12 over.
And my final mistake was at a stop sign in a residential neighborhood. I looked to the left and then to the right and then paused for a second to say something to my friend and then I made the left turn. While I was looking to my right a cop car came up from the left and he had to slow down significantly when I made the left turn. He probably could've ticketed me pretty easily, but again I saw him look out his window, acting as if he didn't notice.
I guess I'm pretty lucky when it comes to cops.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:But a person, cop or not, who enjoys the prospect of making another person's life much worse is not a good person, in my book.
Perhaps they are angry at the person who is making other people's lives worse, and thus savor the opportunity to put a stop to it.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I don't feel like I have much to add. I do have some personal experiences with bad cops, but I don't see a point in adding them.
To put it into D&D terms, I tend to be aligned Neutral Good and the cops I meet tend to be Lawful Neutral at best and Neutral Evil at worst. I admit that "hate" was a strong word there, but I know of many instances where officers have outright failed to do their duty, and many where they seem to go above and beyond just to scare or torment someone for a purely personal reason.
Edit: Plus you'd be amazed how many cops I know that smoke pot and outright break laws, without a second thought.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
My experiences with police also differ from everyone else here. I don't have any issues with police doing their jobs and catching me in the process. Say, for example, the single speeding ticket I've ever received causes me no emotional distress. No, I wouldn't get angry or upset about that. (Except to say that sitting at the bottom of a hill is a dirty, rotten trick. )
I do, however, hold in my mind the memory of police who did not do their jobs, and caused a significant amount of emotional harm. I won't elaborate further, except to state these facts: it was their choice and (at least partly) their responsibility for what happened.
But I'm friendly and respectful of people and I like to feel that I at least attempt to show respect for people even if they don't do the same for me. In other words, the uniform brings some respect with it, in my eyes. If the person wearing the uniform acts in a disrespectful manner toward me, then I could care less about the uniform, and I'll treat the person accordingly. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:I don't want to imply anything here, but generally I've seen that people who "hate" the police are those that have altercations with them in the past and lost.
Yep.
quote:Perhaps they are angry at the person who is making other people's lives worse, and thus savor the opportunity to put a stop to it.
Yep.
The majority of my experiences with police officers have been neutral at worst. I have had one encounter with a power-tripping officer who laid down a penalty on me (banning me from driving the rest of the evening and threatening me with arrest if he saw me driving away) out of proportion to the offense (trying to make it through an intersection before the light turned red and not quite making it; no accident was caused), but even that has nothing to do with "the police" as a profession. It was one a-hole cop. Of course I hate him, but it's because of the "a-hole" part, not the "cop" part.
Okay, so there are a-hole cops. There are cops that get into the profession for the wrong reason. There are also a-hole doctors who get into their profession for the wrong reasons, and can make quite a lot of money while being incompetent and costing people their lives who could have been saved by a more competent doctor. Yet people don't look to those bad apples in the medical profession and say, "I hate doctors!"
Yet people have encounters with a few cops who are bad apples, and they stretch their resentment of those individuals into a generalized hatred of all cops. They assume that because the few cops they've personally dealt with were bad, then all cops must be rotten to the core and worthy of scorn.
(Take the word "cops" out of that last paragraph and replace it with a word like "blacks" or "Jews" or "immigrants" or whatever. Now you know why I feel nothing but disdain for the person speaking when I hear someone say, "I hate cops!")
It's also asinine, by the way, to assign blame to the police for laws you don't agree with. They don't make the laws. There are bad laws, I agree, but the police cannot pick and choose which laws they will enforce--or they aren't supposed to, at any rate. Often when people complain about the police, it's because they've been busted for breaking some law and they thought for whatever reason they should have been an exception; perhaps because they personally feel the law they broke was a bad law to begin with, or perhaps for some other reason. At any rate, they are uncivilized for believing they should have been an exception.
Actually, it's when the police do start making exceptions that things really start to get bad. The moment the police stop enforcing laws consistently, the door opens for corruption, higher crime rates, and a general breakdown of society. Our civilization is only a bearable place to live because we have a system of laws and a whole profession of men and women whose job is to see that those laws are obeyed and that lawbreakers are dealt with. I have no patience for people who break the laws--even the bad ones--and then complain when they are caught.
[singing]Don't do the criiime, if you caaan't do the tiiiiime![/singing]
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I don't think society hinges on law (as I said, Neutral Good here).
You shouldn't be filled with disdain over statements like "I hate cops!" For starters, most people don't mean it in a genuine way.
Expecting police to continue to behave in a way they have behaved in the past seems acceptable to me. Occupation profiling is very different from racism, and a good measure better than racial profiling performed by police. In racial profiling, people have very little in common outside of appearance, whereas police officers as a population can be expected to have more commonly shared attributes. The risk for stereotyping is absolutely there, but expecting police to be apathetic and corrupt might be a very realistic and practical position to take in some districts.
Instead of launching into sweeping statements about the nature of people who "Hate the police," consider that these people could have a very legitimate need for law enforcement reform where they live. Granted, complaining about the police online isn't going to fix the problem, but your attitude of brushing complaints aside isn't going to help anything either, and it's an attitude that tends to ignore problems in law enforcement rather than help solve them.
As for the doctor example, if things got bad enough in a community, people absolutely would start hating doctors. It's a little easier for bad doctors to blend in, because if your doctor is a jerk, you can most likely get a new one. If your local or state police are jerks, you can't go to a new police officer or get a second opinion. You're pretty much stuck with the law enforcement you're given.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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quote:Granted, complaining about the police online isn't going to fix the problem, but your attitude of brushing complaints aside isn't going to help anything either, and it's an attitude that tends to ignore problems in law enforcement rather than help solve them.
Quite the opposite, I think. To try to solve the problems in law enforcement requires a belief that the problems are soluble in the first place. You can say that the majority of police officers in a given locale are corrupt, and for many locales that's probably even true. But if you extend that observation into a general hatred of "the police" as a system, as a concept, then you won't work to get rid of the corruption because you'll assume the corruption is inherent and can't be gotten rid of. Therefore statements like "I hate cops!" are detrimental to fixing the system in areas where it truly is broken. Only by discounting the sweeping anti-police attitude as the bigotry it is can you actually solve the real problems with law enforcement that exist.
Posts: 1814 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Has that happened to you???
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. He still acted like there was a camera over his shoulder.
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Right after I got my car (shiny brand new, still had temp tags), my friends and I drove to Orlando and got lost. I was 19, I think my friends were 18 and 21. It happened to be Fourth of July weekend. We realized we'd gone the wrong way, and I tried to pull out onto the main road but didn't see that there was a car coming (the visibility was awful...big plants and a sharp turn). So I turned in front of said car...not too close, but it was a cop car. It followed us for twenty minutes until we realized we'd gone too far and turned around. Kept following us. When we turned onto the right road, it pulled us over.![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
) So I called her--I guess she had not yet left, because this was before cell phones--and she asked me to pick up dinner. I took her car, which had pretty much not been driven in a couple of months, to pick up McDonalds. ![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
