Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire If I wuz a cop....

Not going to chime in about Zimmerman and just wanted to share my thoughts on LE in general. I was in LE for 12 years, out for 10 and now back in and I can see how the world has changed. The bad guys are different and more importantly societies failure to hold them accountable for their actions is even more disturbing.

Ten years ago if someone ran from you and you duked it out at the end and it was what it was, a nasty fight then ended up with someone in handcuffs, they took their lumps and did not bitch. There was nothing extra given at the end but I am not shy about using reasonable force to get those cuffs on.

A few days ago my partner and I were making a warrant service at a hotel and had a guy come walking out of the room with a gun in his pocket. I told him to turn around and keep his hands up and the fight was on. He was cuffed and still trying to reach around to his front pocket for the gun so I dropped a full power brachial stun on him that ended it. I secured the gun and he came around a few seconds later screaming to everyone the cops were beating a handcuffed man. Your damn right I hit a cuffed suspect and if a witness was standing at the wrong angle they would not see me pull the gun out of his pocket or what started the fight. They would just be all over the news screaming how the cops beat handcuffed people because we are monsters. Turns out he had just shot someone in the hallway about 10 minutes before we got there. All the way to the jail he was demanding medical attention because we "broke his legs". The night before he had been tweaked out on meth and jumped out a second story window for unknown reasons. He also accused us of planting the gun on him, stopping him for no reason, attacking him etc. The average badguy now thinks everything is the cops fault and refuses to take any responsibility for their actions.

And in case someone asks, yes I would have been absolutely justified in shooting him a couple of times during the fight but I didnt. I keep a use of force log as well as a non-use of force log. In the last year I have had 13 incidents where I could have used deadly force per policy and the law but I didnt. Do you think the public will hear about any of those times I did not pull the trigger?

I am also convinced some issues we face everyday are true "no-win" circumstance. Wanna guess what a high collision factor is for the last 5 or 6 fatal accidents I have worked? You would be right if you said cell phones. If I pull someone over for using a handheld device and give a ticket I am a total dick, but you cannot imagine the level of complaints because the police are not writing enough cell phone tickets. Even better is when I am already going to a call and sitting at a light and having a car next to me frantically waving to get my attention that someone else is using a cell phone. Sorry, as much as I would like to pull them over and educate them on how distracted driving creates accidents I need to go handle my call as well as the other calls still holding. I know recently an editorial was published about how cops are lazy and dont do anything all day simply because there was no major case posted in the paper that day. On a four day work week I average one actual lunch break and a couple of stops so I can pee before I explode.

And someone wanted to address dumb laws like registering vehicles, seatbelts etc. Well I can tell you it is a pure pleasure (sarcasm in case someone cannot detect it) to go to an accident where the lack of a seatbelt turned a non or minor injury accident into a major injury. After all we need to keep the trauma centers busy. Also a pretty solid guess that those who dont wear seatbelts tend to rely on the government for medical treatment and will never see a bill that the community as a whole will now have to pay. Please no more complaining about paying for registration since those funds go towards things like actually repairing streets, snowplows, sanding streets etc. I never figured how people somehow feel they are exempt because they dont want to pay for registration.

I have people complain all the time about registration or why they dont have insurance because it is to expensive. I explain that they are correct, cars are expensive and being a car owner goes beyond being able to put gas in the tank. Bikes are much cheaper to operate and dont require gas or insurance but nobody wants to hear that.

I see the media blitz on some topics and want to cringe, I personally refrain from commenting on those issues from the context that I was not there to see and fully experience the events. I was not the one getting punched, trying to develop a super power to see in the dark, or the strength to somehow subdue this guy with minimal injury to self or suspect.

I hear complaints we are over paid but to those not in the business I ask a simple question, what would you charge? I sat down with a reporter recently about salaries and asked him what he would charge and he mentioned a reasonable salary. Then I described the calls from the day before to include holdup alarms, a man with a gun casing a gas station, a transient that took a crap in the middle of a restaurant lobby, the same transient crapping in my car on the way to jail, a warrant service ending in a fence jumping foot pursuit, three domestic disturbances, four kids left in a motel room all day with no food while their parents were out getting drunk, a complaint from a driver that deliberately went the wrong way on a one way street for easier access to a parking spot and was mad I actually wrote him a citation and a lunch break that lasted 4 minutes because other officers were calling emergency traffic for a man with a gun. All of a sudden he did not feel real confident about doing the job for the salary he quoted. Sure there are days when nothing happens, all the bad guys are sleeping in, there are free donuts on every corner and I appreciate it when it happens. Then there are the days when I have to text my wife and let her know about an incident the news is going to cover and that I am in one piece. She has even gotten a sense of humor to ask if I am really in one piece or sitting in the trauma center in mostly one piece.

Sorry for the rant/soapbox moment but I will leave with this quote.

"There is no nice way to arrest a potentially dangerous, combative suspect. The police are our bodyguards; our hired fists, batons and guns. We pay them to do the dirty work of protecting us. The work we'are too afraid, too unskilled or to civilized to do ourselves. We expect them to keep the bad guys out of our businesses, out of our cars, out of our homes and out of our faces. We just dont want to see how it is done."
-Charles H. Webb-