At the least you sound like someone who has something to hide...
See? There's another one of those quotes that give me the willies, sorta like the "Why would you object to a search?" I quoted from a certain ex-cop.
Seems like responses to these Cop threads here fall into two camps, "Cops are wonderful" vs Cops are a "waste of skin". Might be relevant to point out some of my own experiences...
In twenty-plus years of teaching I've known a lot of High School Cops. Some are great, they become community police in the truest sense of the word, they KNOW the kids, good and bad, and many kids come to them for help and advice on legal matters. On the other hand, I've known of two such Cops taking advantage of the eighteen year-old Senior girls, one of whom comically skipped town with his wife after a girl turned up pregnant (the other was fired).
Along the same lines as School Cops, at school I have met some very fine and caring Gang Unit Cops whose work brought them into frequent contact with minors (one of which Cops was an attractive blonde with her own gun collection. Man, half the guys at the range were totally smitten.... sigh!).
I have taught many delinquent kids who had frequent dealings with police. By and large they would give honest assessments of the Cops they had dealt with, some Cops were respected, a few were well known scrotes.
Through these same kids I have learned two things never to say to Cops: "Shouldn't you be off eating donuts somewhere?" and "Can we wait until the REAL police get here"., which resulted in about an extra $300 in citations on the one hand, and some extra bruises on the other.
Along those same lines the funniest tale was related by a tough gangster kid well known to me for years, he had assaulted another kid with a baseball bat one afternoon after the other kid had driven by his house and shot at it some nights before. Leaving the scene of the assault he was apprehended by two Cops who, to hear him tell it, began to rough him up on the right side of the cruiser away from the video camera. Repeatedly he tried to throw himself in front of the camera to get it on tape only to be dragged back every time by the Cops.
I do know of a tragedy where a troubled and slightly retarded young man and a young Police Officer both died because of inept mismanagement of a warrant. The kid, who had been raped in jail, was being picked up for a minor parole violation and prefered to die rather than go back. Unfortunately he took a young Cop with him. The arresting Officer was just serving a warrant originating from another Law Enforcement agency and had no clue what he was walking in to or the background of the kid.
A family aquaintance was for a while a suspect in a violent felony investigation. During this time the man, who had no prior criminal record, endured repeated visits at his office workplace from a Detective working the case such that he lost his job. By time it was all over he was destitute and living with his parents.
One case I am embittered about is that of a young man well known to me who's life has been absolutely ruined by an aggressive Detective following the letter rather than the spirit of the law, who took advantage of an otherwise law-abiding young man's trust and naivite to obtain incriminating statements absent a lawyer (the irony being that any of the actual criminals I have taught would have known enough to "have the right to remain silent").
Didn't just ruin the kid, ruined his working-class parents too when they hired a lawyer after the fact. In this case the punishment definitely did NOT fit the crime. I am reluctant to go into specifics about this case on a public forum but I do wonder how a certain Detective manages to look at himself in the mirror.
Birdwatcher
