The Right to Ignorance Shall Not Be Infringed

I had a Statistics professor in Undergrad whose pet peeve was the website ratemyprofessor.com. He spent three whole lectures talking about how ridiculous the concept was. “I could have gone on there and left ALL the comments about me by myself, and nobody would know the difference!”, he’d say. I hope he never goes into Law Enforcement, because now we have ratemycop.com, which operates in about the same way. I’ll spare you all the usual “they have the right to say what they want, bla bla bla” disclaimer and go right into three reasons why something like ratemycom.com is just not a good idea.

1) The public in general has very little understanding about what police officers actually do, specifically about what good officers do. The media is to blame here. The actions of the nation’s best police largely go unreported, while news outlets strive to dig up any mistakes or corruption and spread it around like manure on a field. Thus, the public isn’t in any position to comment intelligently on whether or not a police officer is doing his or her job properly. Hence, it’s not a good idea to make a website that by its nature will only exacerbate the ignorance about police activities.

2) Since few people know what good police work really is, to include the makers of the website evidently, the rating system concocted by these guys is really lame. Authority, Fairness, and Satisfaction are the three rated categories for officers. I don’t even get what Authority is supposed to mean. Does a high rating indicate overbearing tyrannical power-hunger or does it mean self-assertion and being in control of tough situations? Does a low rating mean the same officer is a wimp, and isn’t that just as bad as the other end of the pendulum? Fairness is a strange idea when you’re dealing with drunk drivers, homicidal 5th graders, wife-beating crackheads, an ex-convicts. Satisfaction is the most ridiculous one of all. It’s basically saying that the only way to be a good police is to keep everybody “satisfied”. So don’t put that drunk driver or wife-beater or jail escapee in jail, because then your Satisfaction rating just took a huge nosedive.

3) The results of any of these “ratings” cannot be anything but entirely subjective and wholly misleading as to the actual conduct and ability of a police officer. The only people that are going to take time out of their lives to go on the Internet, look up police officers on some random website, and leave a comment are those who are really pissed off at them. Interestingly, that accounts for the majority of people with which the police come into contact. As has been said in the past, police see people at their “saddest, maddest, and baddest”. Not only that, but there’s no way of knowing just who is leaving the comments, how many they leave, and if they even know anything about who they leave them about. The whole thing is like putting jet fuel into the gas tank of the Ignorancemobile, and with what purpose?

Not to mention that it’s not a good idea to piss off an entire nation of Law Enforcement agencies, which is exactly what these einsteins have done with their little nickel thrown into the wishing-well of Free Speech.

No Word Bank This Time

I read a cool article today on PoliceOne about Use of Force; it’s basically a 10-question, true or false quiz on the topic. I found myself involuntarily reading the questions and marking down answers. As a warning to Across-the-ponders, the test is written in the context of U.S. Law Enforcement which of course depends heavily on the Constitution. Thusly the test might not be quite as relevant to such as do not find themselves ruled by said venerable body of law. At any rate, I had fun with it, and you no doubt will do the same. Click here to take the test.

I got a 70%, which of course means I passed. One of my favorite quotes from Undergrad was “C’s get degrees”, and the fact is that truer words were never spoken. But I digress. The questions I miffed on were 1, 2, and 7. I won’t discuss the answers in this post so as not to give any unfair advantage to folks who should want to give the test a go for themselves.

Reflections

Two months down. A successful two months by any standard. My perspective on the world of Law Enforcement has changed considerably since the pre-Academy days, mostly because I have begun realizing what it must take to do the job well. The two best parts so far would have to be the physical training and my internship.

Physical training has taught me how to push myself to do things that both my body and mind don’t want to do. It’s also partially been about overcoming obstacles. I ran two miles without taping my foot this past Saturday, which to me was a big deal as I’ve been taping the thing since the beginning of the year. No problem there, so that’s one scare behind me. However, last Tuesday I came away from PT with a sharp pain on the side of my leg right by the knee – and it didn’t go away. Looks like it could be a muscle pull or even a tear. So the hurdles just keep coming.

I’m interning at the local Sheriff’s Department. Interning basically means doing lots of ride-alongs in addition to observing some of the other units doing their job. Ride-alongs are a special thing for me. I never find myself so intimidated as when I show up for a ride-along. Imagine a police recruit that nobody knows from Adam, and a police officer who is usually a 6-10 year veteran is going to be stuck with him in a squad car for the next 12 hours. I always feel at the start of a shift that I am quite out of place; intruding into a world where I haven’t yet earned the right to be, in some sense.

Ride-alongs in my area often involve long periods of inactivity. Some officers will fill this time with proactive stuff like lots of traffic stops and other what-not. Usually all will make mention at some point about how they’re sorry it was so slow and boring, and how it’s not usually that way, and so on. To me, traffic stops and even just patrolling an area is exciting. An officer will go on at length about some inter-departmental drama and how it’s affecting everybody, then they’ll feel bad about dumping on you. As someone wanting to eventually be in their place, I highly value that kind of interaction because it reinforces the lesson that the police are real people, not just a big collection of emotionless stoics.