true...generally cops do not have regular interaction with the public but i will say that mainly it has to do with manpower and calls for service. if you have 7 guys on a shift taking care of a city with 50k citizens its hard to get a break and chit chat with regular folk because you are so busy going call to call and doing all the paperwork that goes with it.

being pulled over is not just revenue generation, it is a way to reduce traffic crashes. cops dont decide where people should be...im sure there are some who are idiots and say crap like that but generally they are just trying to discourage people from committing crimes. the "us against them" mentality is actually very complicated and its difficult to understand unless you have been on both sides of the fence. i can assure you, cops don't even think about regular folk, they are busy dealing with the "regulars" and doing paperwork.

not entirely true...again, you have to be on both sides of the fence to know what is going on.

i see what you are saying but i have to disagree. the patrol car is really just a mobile office, they are mediocre performers at best and in no way make a cop an "operator hardass". they house a computer, rescue tools, paperwork, case files... no bazookas or m60 machineguns, no thermal weapon sights...AND yes you are right that they can and do isolate the public from the cop which in the end is not good for either party.


im talking about those times when people go get pulled over on purpose and try to goat the cop into an argument or a fight while video taping, a dick move. and as for the few and i mean few cops that overstep their authority, shame on them! they work for us.

yes we are in complete agreement here.

the problem is, most of these people doing this are not purposefully doing something to get pulled over; that would assume a crime was committed. Most the videos on yt are people being stopped for open carrying, during checkpoints, or taking pictures of public buildings, where they record themselves being illegally detained/stopped/questioned/searched. If someone is doing something to get pulled over, then they can't complain as they've been arrested/detained. They might be injecting themselves into these situations, but i don't see anything wrong with that.

under the circumstances you outlined then yes youtube away! im talking about the guys that are baiting to cause problems.

the check point...that is a valid stop...

but hey...your comment taught me what ftfy means

it's only a valid stop if they stop you within the law and for the reasoning stated, there's a multitude of hurdles police need to jump through in order to establish a legal checkpoint; typically they are only legal to check sobriety and registration and even then still they need probable cause to detain you or search your car.

The statistics on DUI checkpoints are ridiculous, whereas greater than 80% of arrests/tickets are made for other reasons. Which means the police are questioning motorists, who have every right not to answer, to self-incriminate.

The videos of DUI stops you see online are typically people refusing to answer, and then getting arrested/hassled/searched because of it. Which is outside the law, as the police still need reasonable suspicion based on the facts that a crime is being committed. They use stops as fishing expeditions to put people in "harms" way and put them situations where without rear cause they'd have never been stopped/questioned in the first place.

Are you a cop?

Are you a lawyer?

Have you been arrested for dwi?

Have you ever arrested anyone for dwi?

Have you ever conducted a traffic checkpoint?

Probably not...

You know. .we are kinda arguing a mute point because as far as I can tell we both agree that illegal activities by police must be pointed out. But I think you are more ready to believe that most cops are bad and I'm just saying most are good.

most people are bad, cops are people, therefore most cops are bad.

govt is inherently evil, cops are the govt, therefore cops are inherently evil.


a cop's job is to write tickets and make money for the state, so why should I like cops? a give them a break? I've never had a good encounter with a cop, im pretty sure the majority of cop who interact with one will say the same.

okay...that is your point of view, i used to think that way too but not anymore.
i do think most people are stupid though...lol...

Another data point, me and a friend making time in the mountains, hauling ass down twisty roads. Not sliding, not beyond limits of vehicle or driver, but 15ish over the limit easy. We got pulled over twice that day. My buddy is driving. He is armed. Cop comes up, he lets them know as a courtesy. One cop said thanks, the other had him put the mag on the dash (no round chambered). Let of with a warning both times. Shot the shit with one cop about the charger he was using.

I can think of several cases where cops could have generated some revenue for the state/messed up my day and instead more or less told me to GTFO. Mostly because it was pretty clear no real harm was done and I was heading home anyway.

Most people who hate cops in general are either criminals or wannabe intellectuals who need some ideological purity. Its a lot easier to hold a more or less libertarian view point if you can paint cops and other state employees as generally 'bad'. Its a bit harder to talk about over-reaching power if you have to acknowledge that cops are indeed people who do a damned difficult job and usually do it pretty well with patience.

Does the gov in general overstep its bounds all the fricken time? Yes. Are cops generally 'bad'? (whatever the hell that means) Nope.

You know, I don't tend to "like" police either...and trust me, I've had my very fair share of dealing with them, citations and going to court. But In my multiple dozens of times being in those situations, I have concluded that 9/10 times, the way you act determines how you get treated. I'm not nearly saying to have to be a doormat, but having a stern but polite attitude and not being a dick has significantly reduced the chances of getting a ticket or even getting a "reduced" ticket on the spot (which is great because when in court, it usually gets reduced even further...many times to the point of being thrown out).

My point is, that if you have that "I know all of my tights and I know the law and I'll condescendingly tell you how to do your job" attitude, you're going to get fucked with...no ifs, ands or buts about it. To do so only makes you an ignorant shithead....ignorant on the fact of how you have not learned how to interact with the real world.

If you've never had a "good" encounter with a cop....you are clearly doing something wrong. What do you mean by "good encounter" anyway?

exactly.

That may actually be a great point that I have not really linked before: the number of police relative to the square mileage or population they are supposed to be serving and protecting. I say "may," because I would need to see some legitimate statistics to verify that assumption.

But, if you really did have fewer police per citizen or more square miles per police officer, that could be a contributing factor in the context you mention: there is no time to stop in to the local bakery to say hello or stop at the newstand to chat with the clerk.


I will grant you the first part of that comment. It sounds like someone convinced you of the latter part but you would have a HUGE hurdle to overcome to convince me of it. Your argument would have been stronger if you said something like...

"Traffic stops are only partially about revenue generation. Mostly, they are about (A) throwing the net out there for possible outstanding warrants or other crime (like catching a suspect or stumbling across a drug mule) and (B) putting forth a good public image for those that don't know any better that the cops are trying to reduce traffic crashes, even though there is minimal data to show a correllative or causal relationship between speeding tickets and traffic crashes."

You keep missing the point that my bullet point list above is meant to be taken together as a whole. :) "We went from Officer Friendly to Operator Hardass for a number of reasons, including the following..."

do you think this contributes to how they treat a normal, law-abiding citizen? day-in-and-day-out responding to calls of offenders, dealing with scum, hearing every excuse in the book...easier to treat them all equally, throw the book/authority at them and let the courts figure it out?

bwhahahahah

this is unrelated.

Let me help you with that...i happen to know of a city with a population of 43k residents (per 2010 census) with a police department of 89. out of those 89 only 28 patrolmen work the street, 4 of those 28 are k9. the city is broken down into 8 patrol zones and that leaves only 6 officers to cover 8 patrol zones. so on a typical day or night you have 6 patrolmen and one k9 on duty, 2 sergeants (supervisors), and one lieutenant who is not supposed to leave the office. during the day there are more than 43k people in the city. this info i am presenting is of a real police department.

i admit, i oversimplified my comment and your follow up comment with your points A and B in fact is the way it is. while there may or may not be any data to directly link tickets and traffic crashes, there is data that shows a direct correlation between lower speeds and traffic crashes. you can find it in the studies done after the 55 mph speed limit was set in place. with that said, the purpose of the speeding ticket is to try and get people to mind the speed limit which in turn reduces traffic crashes/fatalities/injuries. wont completely eliminate crashes but does in fact reduce them.

that clarifies it a little bit. i think alzymers is starting to kick in

nope...i dont know what you have been through that you dont like cops but there is a pretty big difference between the way regular joe gets treated vs the regulars. and you know...even the regulars get treaty fairly decent most of the time...its just business, law enforcement is not warm and fuzzy full of hugs and kisses. no one likes to be detained, no one likes to be told they got caught doing something wrong, no one likes to get a ticket. and all that just makes for a bad experience. its not the cop that is mean or hateful its the totality of the circumstances.

I am very humble to any officer that has ever pulled me over.

With that said, I've had an officer become outright pissed off at me when I told him that I hadn't been drinking at all. He called me a liar and told me to my face, in front of my girlfriend, that he knew I had indeed been drinking before rudely demanding I get out of the car for a field sobriety test.

What pissed him off more, though, was that during his field sobriety test he discovered for himself that I hadn't had a single drop of alcohol that night. He was pissed at me because I proved him wrong, and he was pissed that I wasn't the liar he wanted me to be.

The son-of-a-bitch still wrote me a traffic ticket for driving on the wrong side of the street. It didn't matter to him that the street was otherwise void of traffic, or that I was in the opposite lane to drive around a herd of drunk college students in the road, or that I was almost literally idling the car to get around those students. He only wanted to write me a ticket for drunk driving, and when he found out that he couldn't write me a DUI ticket, he decided to write some BS traffic ticket instead. He would have done a much better job as a public servant by writing tickets to those college students for either Jaywalking or public intoxication. Fucking asshole cop.

And how do those numbers compare with, for example, the 1950s or 1960s? It's the delta or change in those numbers that I am interested in, in terms of thinking about the change in perception of police.

I am sure that's what you were sold. ;)

In 1970, before the national 55-MPH speed limit was put in place, there were approximately 4.74 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles travelled (fatality rate). The 55 MPH national limit was enacted in 1974 when the rate was 3.53. By 1994, the fatality rate had dropped all the way to 1.73.

Then, in 1995, Congress repealed that Federal law and some states raised their speed limit to 65 MPH. A funny thing happened: The fatality rate continued to drop in 1996, '97, '98... all the way to 1.44 in 2004.

There was a brief blip up to 1.46 in 2005, but the downward trend continued even as many, if not most, states increased their speed limits to 70 MPH.

http://www.saferoads.org/federal/200...s1899-2003.pdf
FARS Encyclopedia

[Edit: Not to mention the compliance rate in many states for actually following the 55 MPH limit was less than 30%!]

Now, I will grant you that I am talking about fatal accidents and not just fender benders. I don't know where to find good data on those.

Still, I reject the notion that traffic stops have anything to do with actually improving safety in all but rare incidences (like people blowing straight through stop signs or hauling ass through active school zones). They might be sold to the foot soldier that they are "improving safety" by spending a few hours working a speed trap, but that is not what they are primarily about.

do you love or hate your current job?

I tried, I tried, I tried to hold back but I can't help myself now.

You goad someone into doing something.

It's a moot point.

Old people get Alzheimer's disease.

I like it just fine. Im not a cop. I work with a private company.