A very common entry level police interview question, potentially worded a thousand different ways, but ultimately the question is, would you give your mother a speeding ticket.

We’ll look at my oral board interview answer response to this question and when the question is wrapped up, I’ll share a few closing thoughts.

Panel: Mr. Ehlers, you’re running radar and you pull a car over for going 15 miles over the posted speed limit. When you walk up to the car it happens to be your mother. It turns out she borrowed a car from the neighbor and was on her way to the grocery store. Tell us how you’d handle this situation.

Candidate: Very briefly, I might kindly admonish her for speeding, I may even tease her a bit. My contact with her would be very brief at the scene of this stop. I might even go so far as to ask her to promise she would not speed through my district again, and in short order I’d let her go on her way with a verbal warning. I certainly would not give my mother a ticket. I would end my contact very quickly and go about my business.

Panel Challenge: Let’s say you’d given the person before her a ticket for 15 miles per hour over the limit. You just gave someone else a ticket, how can you justify not giving her a citation for speeding?

Candidate: I do understand that the insinuation is that I must be fair and even handed in my enforcement of the law, and I will be. I will also acknowledge that I carry the responsibility of officer discretion and I will use that even handedly as well. With that said, knowing that I can give most any motorist a verbal warning, I would opt to extend that discretion to my mother. As much as I would like to give you the perfect answer to this question, if there is one, it’s my desire and obligation to give you an honest answer. I’d be lying if I told you that I would give her a ticket for speeding. I’d extend that courtesy to anyone that changed my diapers for the first two years of my life. I’m simply being honest with you.

Chief Ehlers: Now, be careful with humor in your oral interview, but if you’ve developed a good rapport with the panel, and they’ve smiled a few times, this is the perfect opportunity to inject a bit of humor into your interview. If, on the other hand, your panel is made up of stuffed shirts that haven’t smiled at all, dispense with any notion of making the diaper comment. The important note that you hit in this answer, is the fact that you told them it was your desire and OBLIGATION to be honest with them. The panel knows that only one in a million cops would truly give their own mother a speeding ticket, and quite frankly, they’re just looking for honesty.

When you were challenged, you made an almost inarguable statement, and that had to do with officer discretion, and you simply used that discretion on this traffic stop. Again, you justified your response in a very simply manner, one that they can relate to. They’re just looking to see if you’re going to be honest and let’s face it, there are only two types of candidates that would say they’d give their mom a ticket. The super trooper, save the world kind of applicant, or the dishonest applicant, neither of which they want to hire for their agency. Oh, then there’s the applicant that just hates his or her mother, they don’t want to hire them either.

I’ll first note the fact that some candidates, when they enter the interview room, forget two things. They often forget that officer discretion is a tool that can be used to reasonably answer a number of scenario based, or even personal questions.

In the case of this answer, it is reasonable to believe that most officers wouldn’t give their mother a ticket. The second interview attribute that many candidates don’t bring into their interview, is honesty.

The majority of oral board panel members will suspect that you’re lying, if you tell them you would give your mother a citation for speeding, even if you really would.

This question is designed to size up your ability to be forthright and candid with the panel. You’ll note, I even added a bit of humor in my answer, with the diaper comment. Appropriate humor, strategically placed in an interview is a magnificent tool that you can use to win the affection of the panel members.

Passing an oral board isn’t as much of a science, as it is an art. Earn Your Badge isn’t about just passing your oral board, it’s about getting hired.

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The Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation has released a 12 second video captured from Burlington Police Officer Jesse Hill’s body mounted camera on January 6th–the day that Hill shot Autumn Steele when responding to a domestic dispute.


In it, it shows the moment of the shooting. While Autumn Steele is grabbing and pulling at her husband Gabriel, Hill orders the couple to stop.

“He’s got my kid!” Steele responds. Immediately afterwards, a dog can be heard. Hill orders the couple to “get their dog”.

A shot is fired. The camera falls backwards as Hill slips on the snow. Another shot is heard.

Gabriel can be heard saying “He shot you?” immediately after the shots are fired.

County Attorney Amy Beavers opted not to file charges against Officer Hill following the incident.

DCI released the video due to a request from the Hawk Eye Newspaper, which broke the story. Requests from KBUR to attorneys representing the Burlington Police Department were denied.

Police in eastern Indian were left red-faced when a raid on a sex district discovered four of their own along with a convicted murderer whom they were supposed to be guarding, a report said Sunday.

The four constables had been tasked with transporting the murderer from a jail in the underdeveloped state of Jharkhand to hospital for a check-up, the Hindustan Times reported.

But the officers decided to make a 206-kilometre (128-mile) detour to visit the red-light area in the town of Asansol across the border in West Bengal state, the newspaper said.

A Camden County Police lieutenant has admitted guilt to a lewdness charge in connection with a May 2014 incident in a Cherry Hill coffee shop.

But Benito Gonzalez Jr., who was accused of masturbating in a Route 70 Starbucks, still could see the charge waived under a conditional dismissal program.

The Deptford man, who ran the department's narcotics unit, was removed from duty after his May 16, 2014, arrest. Authorities alleged he had masturbated in public at the Starbucks nine days earlier.

A surveillance photo, posted at the Cherry Hill police Facebook page, led to the officer's arrest.

Gonzalez currently is suspended without pay, with a disciplinary hearing pending, said county spokesman Dan Keashen.

"The county will be working towards termination," he said.

Stuart Alterman, a Marlton attorney for Gonzalez, could not be reached.

Gonzalez pleaded guilty to a lewdness charge in Cherry Hill municipal court on March 11, according to a court record. He agreed to pay fines and court costs of $360.

But the court did not enter a judgment of conviction against Gonzalez, approving instead his participation in the conditional dismissal program. The program, which took effect in January 2014, covers eligible defendants who commit a disorderly persons or petty disorderly persons offense.

What began as a supposedly routine search of this single-wide in the Tennessee woods took a terrible turn when one cop shot his partner dead. Was it just a tragic accident—or was it premeditated, cold-blooded murder?

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The text messages came to light after the Attorney General’s office filed a motion to release the texts to keep former SFPD Sgt. Ian Furminger in custody as a way “to show the officer’s character” and deny him bail, ABC News reported. Furminger, a 20-year veteran, is currently seeking to appeal his conviction and a three-year prison sentence for charges stemming from “a scheme to steal money and property seized during searches and arrests in 2009,” a local CBS news affiliate reported.

Here is a selection of the text messages exchanged between October 2011 and June 2012, while Furminger was still on the police force:

Furminger also wrote that he was watching one particular black family “like a hawk,” that it was “worth every penny” to live in a neighborhood “away from the savages,” “White power,” and “Cross burning lowers blood pressure! I did the test myself!” His bail hearing is set for next week.

A yearlong NPR investigation found that the costs of the criminal justice system in the United States are paid increasingly by the defendants and offenders. It's a practice that causes the poor to face harsher treatment than others who commit identical crimes and can afford to pay. Some judges and politicians fear the trend has gone too far.

A state-by-state survey conducted by NPR found that defendants are charged for many government services that were once free, including those that are constitutionally required. For example:

In at least 43 states and the District of Columbia, defendants can be billed for a public defender.

In at least 41 states, inmates can be charged room and board for jail and prison stays.

In at least 44 states, offenders can get billed for their own probation and parole supervision.

And in all states except Hawaii, and the District of Columbia, there's a fee for the electronic monitoring devices defendants and offenders are ordered to wear.

These fees — which can add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars — get charged at every step of the system, from the courtroom, to jail, to probation. Defendants and offenders pay for their own arrest warrants, their court-ordered drug and alcohol-abuse treatment and to have their DNA samples collected. They are billed when courts need to modernize their computers. In Washington state, for example, they even get charged a fee for a jury trial — with a 12-person jury costing $250, twice the fee for a six-person jury.

In Allegan County, Mich., Frederick Cunningham pleaded guilty to forging a prescription for pain medication and was told to pay $1,000 in "court costs." Testimony from a court official in a case where Cunningham challenged his fees shows that $500 reimbursed the program that paid for the impoverished man's court-appointed attorney and $500 helped pay for the costs of running the county courthouse. Those costs include the salaries of court employees, for heat, telephones, copy machines and even to underwrite the cost of the county employees' fitness gym.

The funds from the rising costs of court fees in places like Allegan County, Mich., are used to help pay for all sorts of court-related items, including this fitness center for county employees.

"The only reason that the court is in operation and doing business at that point in time is because that defendant has come in and is a user of those services," says Michael Day, the administrator for the Allegan County Circuit Court. "They don't necessarily see themselves as a customer because, obviously, they're not choosing to be there. But in reality they are."

Courts usually offer alternatives to paying fees, like doing community service. But sometimes there's a cost with that, too. Jayne Fuentes, in Benton County, Wash., went on the county work crew to pay off her fines — only there was a $5-a-day charge, which she had to borrow from her daughter.

Denver police officers turned on their body cameras just once out of every four use-of-force incidents during its 6-month pilot program that concluded in December, according to the Denver Post. Denver's independent police monitor Nick Mitchell said in a report that there were many cases where officers punched people, used pepper spray or use Tasers that went unrecorded because cameras weren’t turned on or malfunctions occurred.

Of the 80 use-of-force cases filed by officers, only 21 were recorded. Thirty-five of those cases involved sergeants and other supervisors or officers working off-duty assignments; ironically, none of those groups were required to wear body cameras.

This video is from June, 3,2014. Stockton CA Police Officer David Wells and his goons here spent valuable time harassing these citizens for absolutely no reason what-so-ever. After these young adults declined to consent to search, a search was conducted anyways. How is it that a department claiming to receive upwards of 1000 calls a day for service, has time to profile and bully the youth of our city? One of the young me who was present in this video was wearing a "Jailhouse for Gelhaus" tee shirt, in support of 13 year old police murder victim, Andy Lopez, of Santa Rosa CA. It is well know that David wells holds contempt towards those who are against police brutality; several people have even been instructed by wells to assault protestors. He was certainly not concerned with any Marijuana in this video. This is obvious because on March 17th, 2015, David Wells drove past the scene of a fight on Madison ave in Stockton, broke it up with the sound of his siren, flipped a U-Turn, asked "what's poppin", and then left. Within minutes the fight that he ignored escalated, and may very well be the reason the 3 people died later that night, as well as 4 others injured; a drive by shooting was the cause of those deaths and injuries.

This video was taken March 21, 2015 while I was waiting to get my haircut. I was not drinking or committing any type of crime. Officers enter the establishment, immediately start to perform an illegal search and state they will ticket everyone in the shop and request ID from all patrons in the barbershop. At this point I turn on my camera and start recording. In the video I have listed questions and concerns and wonder if the officer acted accordingly.

A white east Texas police officer's suspension for slamming a black handcuffed suspect face first onto the hood of a squad car has been reversed by an arbitrator who determined the officer's actions were reasonable.

protecting himself

FHP Sgt Spencer Ross chases a motorcycle rider and sideswipes him. This trooper has a history of chasing motorcycles and violating FHP polices. He has a hard on for bikers smh.. Once he notices a citizen recording him he attempts to evade the area.. Most of his arrests and citations of bikers are falsified..