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.

This is Why We Have Academies

It’s one thing for kids (like myself) to admire the police and want to work in Law Enforcement. It’s another thing to dress up as Sheriff’s Deputies and conduct traffic stops. This kind of stuff actually happens with regularity, in one form or another. Usually the impersonators are up to no good, but it seems in this case that these kids were genuinely trying to enforce the law.

I’m hoping that somebody somewhere really failed in educating these youngsters, because why else would kids (who seem to be so preoccupied with public safety) not know by their late teens that impersonating police officers is a crime? Not only that, but why weren’t they taught that normal people in general don’t just go about pretending to be something they aren’t? Hopefully this was just a crime of ignorant enthusiasm rather than a premeditated impersonation.

In the Line of Fire

Maybe some of you have been following the story of the troubled woman who slammed her car head-on into the squad car a Sheriff’s Deputy, killing the Deputy’s wife who was doing a ride-along with her husband. People in the international community might not be aware that in the United States, virtually every local police agency allows civilians to ride with officers during their shift as observers.

This particular event is a tragic one, and has quite predictably brought the practice of ride-alongs under scrutiny. The general populace just realizing that departments allow this generally reacts with “Whoa, riding with the police, that’s really dangerous”.

Well, it is.

Doing a ride-along is stepping into the line of fire in many ways. On the ride-alongs I’ve done, I have been in a variety of dangerous situations, especially with reference to driving. Police departments make riders well aware of the dangers. Virtually all have riders sign liability waivers, and many have various degrees of policy restricting the practice. One department had me wear a ballistic vest (which scares lots of folks, but I thought it was cool).

Ultimately, anybody directing criticism toward ride-alongs here (and I think that not many actually are) is misguided. This was a freak occurrence and had nothing to do with whether or not there was a rider in the squad. In my opinion, ride-alongs are a great way to see what police work is really like if you are a responsible person and willing to accept the risk.

Well Done

Reading Law Enforcement news can be depressing. Aside from the fact that there is alot of tragedy and evil in the world, the media loves to report when bad things happen to officers and especially loves to report when officers do bad things. It’s hard to track down stories about the police doing good things, and this is not because they’re not doing good things.  It’s because the media seems to take those good things for granted and so rarely decides to report much of the heroism that is displayed by officers on the streets every day.

So I decided to dig a few stories up to balance the scales a bit.

- We’ll start off with a police K9 that saved the life of its partner. I never cease to be amazed at what K9s can do, and dogs in general for that matter. It’s no surprise that the animals are considered by their departments to be officers, not just dogs.

- Next up is a story about a Savannah, GA, officer that shot and killed a fleeing robbery suspect that had fired shots at bystanders and at the officer himself during a foot pursuit. Osteen and other officers then gave the suspect CPR; a great example of being protectors, not just crime fighters.

- And finally, we have here a heart-warming story from Williamsburg, VA where the police department is fixing up abandoned bikes and giving them away to neighborhood kids.

For more information about the bravery and courage that police officers display every day here in the US, visit the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund’s Officer of the Month website.

The Perfect Crime?

The city of Atlanta is losing 39% of its parking meters every year to thieves. This is the first I’ve ever looked into the crime of parking meter-theft, even though I’ve often found myself sticking coins into the things wondering to myself exactly how much money you can stick in there before it gets full and furthermore, how many unsavory types hadn’t wondered the exact same thing and decided to unlawfully acquire a number of parking meters for themselves in the name of dubious pecuniary advancement.

What can be said is that parking meter theft is undoubtedly a trend in Atlanta and the city should thus make at least some attempt at curtailing said thefts. Atlanta’s city council claims the thefts are no big deal because the cost of replacing a stolen meter is “only” $500. The math in the linked article above is somewhat curious. 500+ stolen meters this year at $500 a pop adds up to more than $250,000 (plus the loss of the money in the meters themselves) in sunk cost replacing the meters. Chump change? I wouldn’t think so.

The city also rationalizes their lack of interest by claiming that the “parking meter program pays for itself”. It took me a moment or two to process this statement. So more than a third of meters being stolen is factored into the program budget every year? If nothing else, Atlanta needs to start being more optimistic about their population’s respect for parking meters.

End of Watch

2007 was a rough year here in the United States for Law Enforcement Officers. Currently according the Officer Down Memorial Page, 176 American men and women have given their lives while performing their duties. That’s 21% more than at this time last year.

The casket bearing OFC Robert Kozminski, GRPD,
is carried past his comrades standing at attention.
End of Watch: Sunday, July 8, 2007

Few occupations outside of Law Enforcement include death as part of the job description. But millions of police officers world-wide go to work knowing that the work of the day could require them to give up their life. This is why Law Enforcement and the military have always had a close relationship. Police officers also face more than just the malevolence of criminals; the majority of Line of Duty Deaths in the United States is due to traffic incidents.

The benefit of all this is that by police officers’ courage in offering determined resistance to law-breakers and putting themselves in harm’s way, citizens gain the assistance they require and criminals are put in fear of their own lives when they abandon the protection of the law by breaking it.

“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
Winston Churchill

Finally Something I Agree With

A very surprising report was issued by a group of Canadians investigating a police shooting in 2004. In it, officers were cleared of any wrong-doing in the death of 26 year-old man who charged them with a knife. The surprising part of the report was that the group recommended that front-line officers be issued Tasers. Being pro-Taser is dangerous water these days, especially in Canada.

The best part about the report was the emphasis on de-escalation. The de-escalation theme has been getting lots of run lately, and for good reason. I completely agree that an officer’s first concern when encountering angry, disturbed, emotional, or otherwise out-of-control people should be not to increase the tension but to attempt to decrease it. In other words, rather than going straight for the Taser like so many guys are doing these days, make an effort to calm people down first. If that doesn’t work, then you start looking at compliance-inducing options.

Give Them Guns

Continuing on the topic of global law enforcement issues, you may or may not be aware of the brewing crisis in the United Kingdom. The 2.5% pay raise for the national police force was recently approved with a discrepancy: the raise wasn’t retroactive to the fiscal year, meaning instead of a 2.5% pay raise officers got only a 1.9% pay raise. The inflation rate over there is 2.5%, and math types will tell you that this actually amounts to a pay cut. To add insult to injury, the clandestine pay cut only applies to police officers in England and Wales while the Scottish constabulary’s raise is retroactive and matches the inflation rate.

The British police are even talking about striking. While this is far from a possibility due to the stout and noble character of the British police force, it is an indication of the dire nature of the circumstances across the pond. The British and Welsh police have every right to a pay raise that matches A) the Scottish raise, and B) the inflation rate. Police in the United Kingdom deal with an underclass that has no respect for the law. I’ve referenced this before, and I still think that police officers in the U.K. should be trained in the use of and be issued firearms individually. This will only partially help, because the police in the U.K. are also woefully understaffed. For further information on this developing situation, and some great entertainment as well, check out the Police Inspector’s Blog which I recently discovered.

To top it all off, the slighted bobbies get to sit back and watch while the British government approves an additional £7,000,000,000 or so for London’s 2012 Olympic budget. Clearly, the U.K. needs to get its priorities in order.