Put the Knife Down

JimmieD said:
Being a former police officer for a large city in California, I've been in some tough decision making situations, and being a "Monday Morning Armchair Quarterback" is easy to point out the wrong, but I am going to do it anyway especially since I have experience!

I hope you wore a good police officer that valued human life...

If I may, I would like your input on an encounter i had not to long ago with a police officer...

Why do police get personally offended?

I commute between San Fransisco, San Jose, and Sacramento for my work...

One night I was returning from San Jose to Sacramento at about 3AM... No cars on the road, just me, and the moon lit road... a perfect night...

So im averaging about 95 mph on my e39 5 series, enjoying my self, having a blast... week is over, finally going home...

Come around a corner and bam!, cop with a radar gun... so i slow down to legal 65... he pulls out behind me with just light no siren... and pull up really quick behind me and tells me where he wants me to pull over... no problem i pull over to the side, slow down... and turn on the lights inside my car so he can see who's inside.. ( safer for me and him )...

This is where it gets weird...

When he comes up to my window the look on his face and his expression and the tone of his voice all scream like he was personally offended... It felt like I have personally insulted him or something...

I comply with every demand, pass the attitude test, im nice, show all the paperwork, sign the ticket, no problems... $850.00 speeding ticket for me... for 91 in a 65...

Now what I don't understand why he was so personally offended and upset.

I did not endanger anyone the road was empty, my car is more then capable and is absolutely safe the speed I was traveling...

I did not run,
I slowed down right away,
I followed all the directions,
I was nice and laid back,
I had all the paperwork, and insurance, and i payed for my ticket same day it was issued...
It was smooth,
but I got such a weird wibe from that guy, it felt like he wanted to kill me... just the look of hatred and disgust on his face... jeeezzz


As far as I am concerned, I have done this trip 100's of times...
My car is designed to be stable at high speed and has great stopping power...
I am willing to pay for speeding and fun...
I did not endanger any one...
 
I'm of 2 minds on this one.

The victim was a slow shuffling homeless guy the cop could easily maintain distance from. I counted (5) shots, excessive even if the victim was able and coming straight at him with the knife. This was murder.

However, other dashboard videos (see below) demonstrate a homeless guy with escalating substance abuse and behavioural problems, and increasing anger at the police. He might actually have provoked the cop - who should have had better control of his response.

However, back in Phila I have seen homeless dudes like the victim evolve into scary, violent, brain-dead wildmen as their disease progresses, seen stories of ones that ended up assaulting and killing people. This guy sure looked like he was on his way to that, maybe by murdering him the cop saved someone elses life.

[youtube]DqCela8bgdM[/youtube]
 
oatnet said:
However, back in Phila I have seen homeless dudes like the victim evolve into scary, violent, brain-dead wildmen as their disease progresses, seen stories of ones that ended up assaulting and killing people.
Not that this really has anything to do with the thread, but this is one of the main reasons why I recently finally had to make my crazy sister leave--the paranoid schizophrenia has gotten so much worse in the last year or two, and I cannot have her here anymore; I'm afraid for myself and the dogs.

The last couple of times I've seen her wandering around the neighborhood, she was violently screaming at the versions of people she keeps in her head (who mostly don't even exist in the real world, and those that do are very different from the ones she sees and hears). She doesn't respond to logic or rationality anymore, and doesnt' understand even simple concepts like "stay away from me, my house, my dogs". :(

She is supposed to take AWAY all of her remaining belongings that I have put out on the porch for her to have access to (as I will NOT let her in the house again), but instead she keeps putting more things there, and I am going to have to haul them all away to the alley next to the trashcan if she doesn't take it all away before the end of this week, or I'm gonna wind up fined for having the piles of "junk" out front. :( It's bad enough with all the crap the roofers left behind and destroyed. :cry:
 
VoKuS said:
I hope you wore a good police officer that valued human life...

If I may, I would like your input on an encounter i had not to long ago with a police officer...

Why do police get personally offended?

Hey VoKuS, I felt I was a good officer, and even when I was in the Marines in different conflicts our country was in, I still valued human life even though at those times in my life it was my job to take it.

This story you shared is all too familiar, and I'll share with you what I think. This is all from my experience I cannot speak for anyone else but myself. What is usually in a cops mind, at least it was and still is in mine, typically there are only a few type of people on the road driving in the wee hours of the morning, like the time you were driving, 3AM. Cops, drunks, and dopers. Cops, well that is the time they are working, drunks, usually the 'newer drinkers' and ones that went to 'after-parties' after the clubs closed down, and dopers since they are heading from a club to a house to get re-doped up, they are doped up and need another fix, or they are hungry or thirsty because of the dope in their system and they did no pre-planning! Grant it, in today's day and age there are a lot of people that are working multiple shifts, actually working a swing or midnight shift, traveling etc, but the ones I mentioned are who cops run into I'd say about 95% of the time at those times of the morning. In any type of stressful and, let's face it, life threatening job, and especially the things that you see and have to deal with at times, there is quite a lot of pressure on an officer. On one hand, they are an 'extension of the law' and are not to have any personal feelings or thoughts when dealing with the things they deal with and follow the 'letter of the law', yet on the other hand, they are required to be personable, think of others and follow the 'spirit of the law'. Cops are people, people have lives outside of work, those lives are not always the little white picket fence with the 2.5 kids, etc, etc, and sometimes those things affect how a person reacts and performs at work, be it becoming ill, family issues and other day to day personal life stuff not to mention the sometimes horrific hings officers have to deal with at work. This in no way is to give excuses for the officer, but to try and show their world and what a cop deals with every day. I can tell you right now, if you have never been a law enforcement officer especially in a metropolitan city, it is very difficult to understand and see from a cops point of view. It is more than just reading about it, watching COPS, talking about it or going on a ride-a-long or two, it is a life experience that many do not have the opportunity to experience. Here is an example and personal experience of when I went from nice cop to kinda pissed off cop and my ride-a-long was appalled. My ex-father-in-law was my ride-a-long, I was working downtown San Jose, car stop, probable cause: one brake light was brighter than the other, time about 2:45AM. The gentleman was in his mid 50's, drunk, and failed all the FST's (Field Sobriety Tests), multiple offender for DUI, this time was a felony, went to handcuff him, he said he was having a heart attack, needed his pills, the prescription on the pill bottle was not his nor one of his relatives I refused to let him take the pills in the bottle, had him sit down on the curb, called EMS, EMS said he was fine, he refused to stand up and said the EMS were wrong, forcefully got him to stand-up and he got to go spend some time at the Grey Bar Hilton. My ride-a-long was appalled that I was so 'mean' to the gentleman for not giving him 'his' pills and how I 'got him to stand' after the EMS were finished with him. Was I upset at the gentleman? Yes. Did I take it personally? Yes. Why? He was trying to get out of going to jail and wasting my time when the inevitable was going to happen no matter what. Did I feel compassion? Yes, I felt bad for him being a chronic alcoholic, but not for him trying to play me for a fool by using someone else's prescription and saying he was having a heart attack. Was the car stop a weak probable cause? No, it was a valid vehicle code violation and the results were that a drunk driver was removed from the streets that night. Ride-a-long wanted to go home after 'that display' of injustice, so home he went. Was I annoyed with him? Yes, even with him being there seeing it all, all he thought of was the poor guy is having a heart attack and you want to take him to jail. Was I annoyed for the rest of my shift? Yes, trying to be taken advantage of and someone lying to me and trying to play me as a fool annoys me. What can I say, I'm human! :oops: So who knows what events happen in a cops life that trickle into their next encounter with the public, that is the hard thing about being a police officer, completely forgetting about what happened a minute ago and move forward to the next thing to deal with. I think it is difficult for anyone to actually do that, and if they can, then they may just not be human!

That being said, you mentioned that you felt as if he took it personal, and that was your perception, without knowing what was going on in his mind, it is difficult to actually say if he took it personally that you were speeding. I do not think he took it personal, his mind may have been somewhere else before his radar started to 'beep' and show your speed. He may have been writing a report and was looking forward to the end of his shift to go home (just as you were excited and wanting to go home!) and he had to do his job and stop you in case you were DUI, which would mean extra paperwork and overtime, he may have recently dealt with an accident on that stretch of road where someone was driving at an excessive speed and someone was injured and you and your speed were a trigger object, who knows?! Those could just be one of the reasons his demeanor was the way it was, but it does not mean that it was the right demeanor to have or to express!

The basic speed law in California is, not to drive faster than the prevailing conditions allow if there is no posted speed limit, so let's take a look at your driving situation that you shared!
VoKuS said:
As far as I am concerned, I have done this trip 100's of times...
My car is designed to be stable at high speed and has great stopping power...
I am willing to pay for speeding and fun...
I did not endanger any one...

Most accidents occur with routes that people drive continuously and are comfortable with. Their sense of danger goes out the window since it is familiar and in the past has been uneventful and non-threatening. Your car is designed for those speeds and has great stopping capabilities......but does the driver have the motor control and reaction time necessary to ensure that the vehicle can accomplish what it is capable of? If so, how does the cop know? You also mentioned that nobody else was on the road, well the cop was! You may be willing to pay for speeding and fun, but all it takes is one time for the speeding to not be fun! You did not perceive that you endangered anyone, and in this situation you may not have been, but the bottom line is, is that you were breaking the law and you knew it since you tried to slow down only when you believed that you were caught! :wink:

Sorry for sounding like a 'dad', but you asked for my input on the encounter, not just a part of it!
 
liveforphysics said:
Those were the same cops I had to deal with street racing in that area for ~12 years.


They would do some amazingly dumb things to break up the street races. lol We get setup in some vacant industrial area, position spotters to warn of incoming traffic (though at 2am traffic in the right places would be like 1 truck per hour) so racing can stop etc. Minimal risk to the public, surely less risk to the public than a single drunk SUV driver in traffic poses (which no-doubt there are always hundreds of in Seattle at night).

The police would dispatch an absurd amount of resources to break this up. A helicopter. 20+ patrol cars. Even SWAT armored cars! (not kidding!) The helicopter flys over with a blinding spotlight and a loud speaker saying "Seattle Police, do not run! Seattle Police, do not run!" over and over.
But of course we run, because if you are a racer and you get pulled over, they like to "make examples", so the penalty between just getting a racing violation and getting an eluding + racing violation is close enough that it doesn't make sense not to roll the dice and run.

So, now you have 50+ cars and 20+ cop cars all taking off in every direction as fast as they can, and since we were all ready at the least populated area, it means you can only go towards more populated areas, only this time you don't have spotters, and you can't wait for it to be clear and verified by spotters that no traffic is coming etc, as you have a cop chasing you who will PIT you (ramming your car to make it crash) if he can catch up to you, because somehow a cop can justify that PIT'ing your car in public traffic, making it spin and wreck into whatever it happens to hit is somehow a safer better option for the public.

So, you take 2 cars running at a time with spotters in a good location. You add police, and an absurd amount of them (who could be doing things to help public safety.) Now you have 50 cars jetting away dangerously who can't stop or slow down (cop chasing them) in all directions to all different public streets etc.
Then, the conclusion to this extreme added public danger event, is once in a while they actually catch somebody, and make a penalty that ruins their job/income/money/family etc.


The Seattle police chief is crooked. A ton of Seattle cops are crooked (I've seen it personally).
The Tacoma police chief (which is the big city a little south of Seattle) who was buddies with the Seattle police chief was soooo crooked, when he got caught in a situation where cops were selling drugs confiscated from the evidence room, he took the grown-up way out of the situation, by going for a little car ride with his family, then shooting his wife in the head and himself. That's the police chief's example he set.


http://www.seattlepi.com/local/119458_chief26ww.html
I could not see that link, but this one worked for me: http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Brame-was-rated-not-fit-to-join-police-force-1113674.php
 
oatnet said:
I'm of 2 minds on this one.

The victim was a slow shuffling homeless guy the cop could easily maintain distance from. I counted (5) shots, excessive even if the victim was able and coming straight at him with the knife. This was murder.

However, other dashboard videos (see below) demonstrate a homeless guy with escalating substance abuse and behavioural problems, and increasing anger at the police. He might actually have provoked the cop - who should have had better control of his response.

However, back in Phila I have seen homeless dudes like the victim evolve into scary, violent, brain-dead wildmen as their disease progresses, seen stories of ones that ended up assaulting and killing people. This guy sure looked like he was on his way to that, maybe by murdering him the cop saved someone elses life.


I agree with you oatnet on 2 thoughts on this event, it appears that I was wrong in my questioning in an earlier post asking if the officer had known the individual as it appears many did, along with the reasoning for the officer performing a pedestrian stop, but even with the adrenaline pumping, controlling the emotions when handling a firearm is so important and I still believe that excessive rounds went 'down range'. I am still under the belief that many agencies need to take a hard, close look at their training and re-evaluate on how to improve. Seeing this video makes me think, In watching all the encounters without the commentary by the news reporters, every officer that was polite and treated the guy with respect seemed to receive respect from him in return (the video at night). Another clip was of an officer belittling him when asked about the walk/don't walk signs and he was getting visibly agitated, and the one officer in the first clip tells him to put the wood down (sign), and when he doesn't, then grabs it and throws it down. The officer was probably ticked off for having to constantly deal with him as he had said, but not even thinking that he grabbed a possession that this guy had and just threw it down on the ground like it meant nothing may not have been the best course of action. Just a sad situation overall. Even with the additional footage of past encounters, I still do not think the amount of rounds that were fired were justified, but then again, I am being an armchair quarterback!
 
Montreal police murder two men. One a mentally ill homeless man who was cutting open garbage bags looking for something to eat, the other a man on his way to work.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/as-two-men-lie-dead-montreal-police-face-some-searching-questions/article2052688/

Anti stab vests, a net, dog catching pole(suspect restraining device) and night sticks are more than adequate tools to deal with the situation, no need for any kind of gun.
 
The recent good news is the government will ban the 2001 long gun registry and put 100's of useless horsemen from Miramichi, back out on the street. It has cost approximately $2 billion dollars to date, a cost over run @ 10X estimate. Funny how what began as a civilian run registry became a division of the RCMP. A perfect place to put guys who were unsuitable anywhere else in the force. Police chiefs are outraged as they claimed the long gun registry provided a huge measure of safety for officers responding to domestic disputes. The problem with this logic is that bad guys do not register their guns, only responsible citizens, registered their guns. So now you have a stupid cop, who checks the gun registry and wrongly determines that there are no guns to worry about as he approaches the bad guy's house. :shock: :shock:
In the mean time, I'm under threat of having all my guns, which I voluntarily registered, taken away because one of two 125 cm length stickers, which must be affixed to both of my shotguns, got lost in the mail. I applied for the stickers both on the same day and received one 6 weeks later. It was not assigned to a specific gun. So I asked the registry, which gun to put it on, where is the other sticker, why they didn't send them both together and when can I expect it. This sticker is so important that it required a separate application for each gun, but it does not matter which gun it goes on. :roll: I am still waiting, 3 years later, for the second sticker. This puts me in violation of the soon to be scrapped Federal Gun Laws. :lol: :lol: :lol: The authorities have run amuck.
 
Don't register your guns.

Buy them cash from gunshows or private sellers.

Its nobodies business but your own what guns you have or what type they happen to be.
 
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