What kind of experiences have you had with the police?

[book_worm]

I've had both good and bad.

Good=My father was an alcoholic who would physically abuse my mother and I can remember the police coming out and handling the situation and trying to sooth us children.

Bad=I've met up with a few officers who seemed to get their jollies trying to intimidate you at peace rallies and for minor traffic offenses.

What about you, have you basically had good or bad experiences involving the police?

[RB TexLa]

1. None really

[EFerrari]

2. Like you, both. And welcome to DU, book_worm.

:)

[book_worm]

33. Thank's for the Welcome!

[Toots]

3. They were pretty good, I liked "Mysterious Barricades" and "Bewitched"

I especially like that they spawned Sting. :silly:

[Le Taz Hot]

4. Mostly positive.

As the victim of a violent crime in 1984, the police officer that came immediately after the attack was unbelievably sensitive, as was the detective that handled my case.

There was a negative experience with the local Sheriff involving my brother (half African-American) that opened my eyes to what minorities sometimes face. However, the Sheriff Dept. is filled with a whole lot of total assholes, as opposed to our local PD which, in my experience, have been pretty cool.

[sojourner]

5. Both good and bad.

welcome!

[devilgrrl]

6. For the most part, good.

I have nothing but nice things to say about the LA County Sheriff's Dept. :shrug:

[spinbaby]

7. Generally, very polite and helpful

Even the one who ticketed me for going six (!) miles over the speed limit in a speed trap in West Virginia. The vast majority are decent professionals.

That said, I met a couple at a party yesterday who said that they had been pulled over and searched for drugs recently under the excuse that they were driving erratically because their tire had touched the white line. The officer in that case confiscated a PRESCRIPTION drug because the prescription was more than a year old.

[PDJane]

8. wrong question..........

I married a police officer when I was much younger. I plead youthful stupidity and rampant lust.

It showed me a side of the local constabulary I haven't seen since, thank you.

[safeinOhio]

16. local sheriff deputies

can be evil. I married one 3 years ago and she is now divorcing me. Always a law abiding person, I now have a criminal attorney. False police reports, seized property and being followed by her friends. There is a blue culture of "professional courtesy" that translates into misconduct. The brass at her department seem honorable and have thrown out her reports on me as "no crime committed". I'm now in hiding in a safe location. The truth is, if an officer is out to get you, you are screwed. Any ACLU lawyers, get in touch with me.

[Vinca]

9. Better than most ( I used to be one). nt

[Lars39]

10. The only time I have *ever* been stopped by the police

was for a tail light that was out. The officer wanted me to come to the police station to pay the ticket directly to him, on the midnight shift. :eyes:
Considering the "offense" and that was the only time I have ever been pulled over, that $75 ticket should have been a warning. :grr: My husband went in to pay the ticket. :)

[rubberducky]

11. Very, very bad experience with local police,

in my previous town. Someday I will write a book about it. Too much to get into it here, suffice it to say it caused me to move to another town. Police in this area seem to be wonderful.

[stevedeshazer]

12. I love cops, they get a bad rap

They are public employees and are undervalued.

A few I've crossed were pricks (always men, and when I was much younger) but for the most part they have been very professional and polite.

Yeah, I know there are exceptions, but overall the police have been pretty good to me and I'm glad they are there. Imagine a world without them.

My concern these days is that they would be privatized.

[paulk]

13. both

the problem is, one bad experience with someone who can exercise that kind of power over your life tends to negate a whole lot of good experiences. That goes for the entire justice system, actually.

[tridim]

14. My last experience was very bad and it stuck with me

I called the police to check out a condo where I heard a man beating up a woman. As I was giving the police report one cop actually accused me of "getting back at them because they were black". My jaw dropped when he said that, I never wanted to tell someone to fuck off more than I did right then. In retrospect I wish I had.

BTW, I didn't know the people in the condo and I didn't know their race. I called because I heard a man hitting a woman and I ~thought~ that was a good enough reason. Instead they accused me of a hate crime because of my skin color and ~their~ ingrained racism.

And what did all this accomplish? Nothing. The cops didn't even knock on the door to check out the situation. I have not trusted the police since then.

[OneBlueSky]

15. never saw 'em in concert . . . but I have a couple of their albums . . . n/t :)

.

[Swamp Rat]

17. All bad

[Dr.Phool]

18. Mostly good.

But I spent a lot of my free time at a bar drinking with them.

[cherokeeprogressive]

19. Good when I wasn't breaking some law or another, and bad when I was. n/t

[aquart]

20. My favorite cop experience was the big NYC march before the start of the Iraq war.

Cops everywhere in Times Square. Getting off the 7th Avenue train to up to the starting point, it was the first thing we saw. There were three cops against a wall in the Times Square Station. One of the beckoned me over.

"Hi, you're from Hyacinth, aren't you? I just wanted to tell you my fiance got my ring in your store."

But on another anti-Iraq march, I was one of the people cut off between the mounted police and the barricades and they would not let us move. Finally some of our people moved the barricades and we crossed the street. It was probably only a few tense minutes, easily resolved, but it was the most frightened I have ever been at a demonstration and I'm including the time I was accidentally tear-gassed.

As shopkeepers, we loved the cops and encouraged them to stand by our windows. We carried specialty items to appeal to them. The idea of having them constantly in and out felt very, very comfy.

In their community, my mother and sister helped nail a burglar last year, and it took till midnight for them to arrange a legal lineup, but they worked their tails off to make it happen, to make sure that my mother and sister's stories would hold up. They worked systematically and by the book, crossing every i, dotting every t to make sure the case was solid, and explaining what they were doing every step of the way. It was a pleasure to watch them work.

There are good cops and bad cops. I live in Greenwich Village and my cops have sensitivity training. Across the street, in the Chelsea district, well, they're a whole lot better but that precinct used to get tossed into jail regularly.

One of the oddest things I remember was a grin from a cop some months after 9/11. I realized I had never seen a spontaneous smile from a cop before...and it came to me that he wasn't afraid he would see hatred in my face. He didn't feel he needed to keep a wall up. For those months after 9/11...it is still hard for me to hear a bad word about our cops, it is.

[goodgd_yall]

31. Oh, forgot another bad experience---at a protest against Casper Weinberger

The police, on horses, started swinging clubs at everyone and deliberately broke the camera of a cameraperson from a local San Francisco television station.

[AlCzervik]

21. few and all for tickets, speeding and having my front windows tinted, all my fault.

[WinkyDink]

22. Mostly good, and the others were only mildly off-putting.

Like the policeman who told my husband that talking to a neighbor on her lawn could get him arrested for trespassing.

That's TRUE in PA., but off-putting nonetheless.

[alfredo]

23. I was raised in a very corrupt southern town. The cops were thugs

the fire department was KKK. Our police chief liked to pistol whip. They took payoffs from bars and brothels. When the chief died they had to post a guard on his grave because someone kept crapping on it. The next police chief got 10 years for coercion.

It took me decades to undo the damage they did to my opinion of the police. I still have that wariness.

[Tracer]

24. A long time ago, I had a boyfriend who was a Formula 1 racer...

... we had been at a race he was in and were going home late at night (NOT in his race car!)

We came to a stop sign a town close to the track, and had barely turned right when we were pulled over.

The cop made us come back to the station and demanded money before he would let us go (I forget the amout).

We had no money --- so we called a friend to come. Since we were pretty much out in the sticks, it took hours for him to get there and free us.

It was a shakedown, no question.

[A HERETIC I AM]

26. You had a boyfriend that was an F1 driver?

Care to say who it was? Did he stay in the series long? Was he an American? (There have only been a handful of American F1 drivers through the years)

I don't mean to interrogate, just curious. I worked in Indy Car Racing for 7 years and one of the firms i worked for built engines for Mercedes' Formula One program.

[W_HAMILTON]

25. Both bad

One time, I had my wallet stolen out of my car. The guy tried using my debit card at a nearby ATM, with cameras plastered all over the place. He was never caught.

A few months ago, back in December (during the slow time around here), I was pulled over and given a speeding ticket for the first time in my life. I usually work late, so I got off around 11:20pm or so. I was in a rush to get home, because I had a doctor's appointment for blood work the next day, and was told I couldn't eat past 12am, and I hadn't had anything to eat all day. To get home, I have to get on a major thoroughfare, which immediately turns into a bridge. You start below the bridge, so you can't see what sort of traffic you are merging into. Then you have may 50-75 yards where you get to see traffic and you have to merge...period. It's a bridge, so it's not like there's anywhere to pull off to if you can't get into traffic.

Long story short, I hate that merge, and I always build up speed so I can "catch" an open spot instead of run out of road. I was probably going around 60mph. At the bottom of the bridge, you get into more of the city part, where the speed limit drops to around 45mph. There was a cop at the bottom, with his lights turned off, just waiting to catch people. He got me going for about 10-15mph over the speed limit. He reduced it to 5mph or so, but I was still angry.

Yes, I "broke the law" by going 10mph faster than the speed limit, but I'm not going to run off a bridge because I can't merge into traffic going 45mph because the merge was stupidly thought out, and once I do merge into traffic, I'm not going to slam on brakes going downhill on a bridge and cause an accident that way either. I slowly let my car slow down into a normal traffic speed.

Everytime I see a cop now, I flip them off. Useless bastards. They cower in my tourist-y town when we get busy and have big events and a lot of tourists in town, but then when it's slow in December or January or something, they're all out on the streets, hiding in the bushes trying to give locals a hard time.

[undeterred]

27. Recently bad with both male and female

In the past good.

[mitchum]

28. Only bad experience was in a two-bit southern town...

when I was pulled over for speeding (which I wasn't)
Happened at noon on a work day. I was driving a company truck which was carrying a huge visible freakin'stained glass church window. The cop was very hostile and kept his hand on the butt of his pistol throughout most of the encounter.
Obviously, that backwater generated lots of money from traffic fines from out-of-towners. And I guess that was a necessity; just how much tax revenue could they generate from stump grinding services and bait shops?
Oh, before anyone jumps to conclusions...that asshole looked nothing like Carroll O'Connor or Jackie Gleason. If you know what I mean...

All my other encounters with the police have been exceedingly polite and professional.

[Nikia]

29. My paternal grand father and maternal uncle were both police officers

They both worked for the same department and seemed to do a good job as far meeting the ideal.
Since moving to our present location, I have been asked where I live after a police officer saw my leashed dog defecating in my yard. Previously, a police officer told my husband not to walk through other people's yards while he was in our lawn. Maybe, I should be glad that they seem concerned about our property, but it has been a little intimidating. We hope they know that we live here now.

[goodgd_yall]

30. A couple of bad ones

but mostly good. Most all have been polite, helpful, even concerned. These all had to do with traffic stops and an auto accident. One traffic stop in Richmond, CA, the cop was one of those intimidating ass* who, frankly, I think gave me a hard time because he saw 2 women together who looked like lesbians.

The other bad experience was when I called cops to help an elderly woman who had gotten out of her house and was wandering the neighborhood. I'll never do THAT again. The cops were rude and callous to her. She was from Mexico, but the cops were Mexican descent too, so it wasn't a racial thing.

[sandnsea]

32. Both

It's not really their fault. We're the ones that have created a society that insists we have the right to condemn and degrade humans, rather than forgive and protect. They're just a reflection of that.