4 ms·
"Bad behavior does get reported disproportionately. Most cops are good cops. For everyone like this, there are ten cops who find a lost cellphone and personally
by marincounty 12y ago
"Bad behavior does get reported disproportionately. Most cops are good cops. For everyone like this, there are ten cops who find a lost cellphone and personally deliver it back to the owner, as happened to a neighbor of mine a few months ago. That doesn't make the news."
1. Name the town? (Make the news?)
2. I'm not going compare good/bad cops. (It's impossible to
argue, unless the Federal government just finished an investigation. A investigation that didn't get much attention?)
3. I live in a low crime county, but I am seeing cops doing
things they didn't do 15 years ago. My town is Marin County.
4. I'll start with Revenue collection. Yes--it's not about safety in my county anymore--it's about Tickets. The amount
of tickets written is staggering. Many people honestly don't
know what law they broke. It's gotten ridiculous.
5. "The broken window theory"! Yes--every town in my
county is putting that theory to the test. They are stopping
people, frisking them, and digitally taking their picture. They are harassing people. It's beyond disturbing to watch
a group of officers swoop down on a female for sitting on a curb. Watch them frisk her.(they used a enthusiastic female cop for the frisk)
Empty her purse. Take her picture. And then let her go??
(I won't bring up the metaphors.)
6. As to good/bad cops, I don't care; I don't trust any of them anymore. Yes, I can say that because I live in a low crime community, but I don't think it needs to be this way?
7. As to self preservation, just a name and address, but I'm
polite. I do have front and rear cameras that turn on when
I put the key in the ignition. When walking, riding, or running I always have a smart phone with video app queued up.
8. I am a middle aged white guy, and I feel like this?
9. I feel sick just writing about this. I might understand
the mentality if crime was going up, but every decade it has
decreased in proportion to population. It's about Revenue, and Gentrification, and yes--I recall a cop retrieving a lost
cell phone. It made the paper. The kid said he found the phone. The cop accused the kid of lying. I don't know the outcome, but it did happen once--it's in the marinij.com somewhere. What's ironic is it only seemed to happen once? I wonder why? It's like getting a cop to come to the swap meet to retrieve your stolen bike--good luck! No revenue in the end? As to gentrification, it's even more ironic because local cops can't even afford to live in this county?
- mikeash 12y ago1. Fairfax County, VA. 4. The revenue generation aspect of traffic enforcement is deeply worrying. However, I don't think you have to be a bad cop to participate in that. The problem is the system, where the laws are written in a way that ignores how people actually behave, and thus virtually everyone breaks them. There's no need to entrap or falsely accuse people for the purposes of revenue generation, because there's more than enough true violations out there. How are people in your area unable to know what law they broke? It's always been clear for everyone I know: exceeding the posted speed limit, parking where prohibited, etc. The issue is simply that driving the posted limit is nearly impossible in many cases (everybody else is going faster and it's dangerous if you don't too), parking signs have poor visibility and are difficult to understand, etc. "Bad cops" is an easy answer to the woes of modern-day policing, but I just don't think it's the root of the problem.