Police Issues

[EricM]

May be the most brilliant POV on the internet I have ever read.

I'd like to say I came up with that, but I actually heard it from my father growing up. This was before hybrids existed, but it applies nicely to them as well.

 

[Edbert]

I didn't read the whole thread, but just the 1st page.

Perhaps there was an APB (whatever they call those in the 21st century) for a Raptor that fit your description/color. They tailed you while running the plates and left when you came back clean.


Edit to add (now that I read it all)...

That turned dark (I really dislike the personal attacks I see here) but then changed for the better!

I've been pulled over many times (almost always deserved), I'm 55yo this year and been driving (licensed) since I was 15. Generally know how things will go when I stop because of the officer's position. Probably the wrong term but I don't know the right one. But LEO from small towns or counties are to be feared, they could be related to the judge and the DA. Mid sized cities are a crap shoot, big city cops (Dallas or Houston for me) are a generally a cut above, but the state trooper is elite. I've said for decades that if I get pulled over by a state trooper it will go well.

It has been years now but I did have one single bad experience with DPS (state), I learned from it and moved on. I chalked it up to what the practicing LEOs on this thread have said...that dude was having a bad day/week/whatever. When he started testing my window tint and put a sensor up my tailpipe (was only a 4.6 2005 Mustang GT) I knew what I was dealing with, so every word outta my mouth started and ended with "sir". Pretty good for a guy who never went through boot camp eh?

I dont care if you are driving 100 mph......keep right except to pass

My favorite line (from back when I was young and stupid (okay younger and stupider) was "I don't mind those maniacs who want to drive 90mph in the passing lane...as long as they move over when I flash my lights".

 

[CW2isComing]

Get used to it. I’ve gotten tickets written way down, (low-mid 70’s when I was driving high 80’s). One hot female stater plum let me off the hook when she had me busted at 86 mph in Bellevue, WA. Cops like Raptors.

The worst thing is all the wanna-be’s. Every fool in a clapped out Toyota or dodge is going to be looking to race. Prius people will sneer at you too. One idiot in a Prius yelled that I was wrecking the planet with my gas guzzler. I told him that I was “enhancing my carbon footprint” lol!

You're too polite! I'd have said, "ingest feces" or something like it....

 

[Ricoman]

Been reading through this extremely pleasant thread and thought I'd through in my two cents as a current LEO in the lower part of Missouri. I will absolutelyyyyy try to stay very neutral in this response because I tend to (at least I think) try and keep an open mind with anything I do, not just in the policing profession, but in life. (Deeeeep right?)

Baggins - As the above comment suggest, you ABSOLUTELY should file an internal complaint with the department if you felt mistreated by the officer during the stop. While I'm at work, I don't care if i'm in a ****** mood or having a ****** day down 10 reports etc, I will do my best to treat EVERYONE (even the biggest shit bag/tweakers you can think of) with respect until they give me a reason not. One motto that stuck with me from the academy was "treat them like family until you can't" and I try to stick to that piece of advice every call.

One thing I would like to point out just for knowledge, respectfully: Police Officers have a LOT of discretion with enforcement actions, especially with minuscule violations such as traffic violations and even misdemeanor crimes (weed for example, is still illegal in Missouri. If I stop a 19 year old college kid with some pot in his car, there are several different venues I can explore with enforcement action. I do not HAVE to do anything in terms of enforcement. Obviously department policy may change this from department-department, but no where in law does it say I SHALL enforce such and such violation or law.) With all of that being said, when I stop a vehicle for (fill in the blank) violation, my goal upon contact is to see if I can educate the operator of the vehicle WITHOUT issuing them a summons for that specific violation. For example, if your tags have been expired for 6 months and you have been stopped for this violations 4 times without fixing it, i'm going to assume you genuinely don't give a shit and think you're going to keep getting warnings, so this enforcement action isn't working and you probably need a summons. But what if that same person just went through a divorce, has 4 children, only has one means of transportation to get those kids to point A-B and genuinely can't afford to pay to update the tags? Then what? It's never black and white. I know i'm very far off on a tangent, but I'm just trying to give you a little perspective.

I have no idea why the officer you dealt with was a ******* or *******, I think that's completely unacceptable and unprofessional if it was unprovoked and I completely agree with you there. Robocops are not fun to deal with at all and that's why I recommend to completely stay off any interstate forever so you don't have to talk to a trooper. (joke)

To the OP: Probably just checking out your ride or as the other officer stated, you'd be shocked with how many cars you see driving down the street are actually stolen, at least in my neck of the woods. I could also go off on another awesome story about how the supreme court has ruled pre-textual car stops are absolutely legal and constitutional, but that's for another time, haha!

Good and Bad in every profession...and at least out where I live in WA,the Troopers have been really cool....Have had my Raptor for a year....pulled over twice...once for Seat-Belt and once for a sure big ticket...30MPH over in a 55 ...both were really cool and let me off...AND then started asking me questions about the Raptor and my Whipple SC...

 

[Chris Thomas]

Should have thanked the officer and told him "You're a great American!" Ha!

 

[Ricoman]

Should have thanked the officer and told him "You're a great American!" Ha!

Of course I thanked them both,that goes without saying...and YES...most are great guys...Personally know a few...and they have a tough job for sure..! I'm not some 18 year old...one of the old guys on this forum....and have always respected law enforcement...

 

[Gerald]

As a cop myself in a metropolitan area, I pay no extra attention to nice vehicles, other than the normal, “nice ride you got!” It’s the wanna be guys who are looking to race everyone even though they have nothing to race with. Those guys are the ones who create hazardous conditions on the roadways.......the same roadways my family drives on and yours. Trust me, even if a nice truck or sports car hits the throttle at a stop light, I don’t get worked up as long as they do it with some common sense in a way not to cause danger to others.

Just some FYI, sometimes there are occasions where police are on the lookout for a stolen vehicle, one that may match the physical description of the one you’re driving. In those cases, they may be following you while they run the registration plate to see if it’s the one they are looking for. If not, they will pull off or go on.

Thank you very much for serving your community and protecting us all!

 

[Gerald]

Been reading through this extremely pleasant thread and thought I'd through in my two cents as a current LEO in the lower part of Missouri. I will absolutelyyyyy try to stay very neutral in this response because I tend to (at least I think) try and keep an open mind with anything I do, not just in the policing profession, but in life. (Deeeeep right?)

Baggins - As the above comment suggest, you ABSOLUTELY should file an internal complaint with the department if you felt mistreated by the officer during the stop. While I'm at work, I don't care if i'm in a ****** mood or having a ****** day down 10 reports etc, I will do my best to treat EVERYONE (even the biggest shit bag/tweakers you can think of) with respect until they give me a reason not. One motto that stuck with me from the academy was "treat them like family until you can't" and I try to stick to that piece of advice every call.

One thing I would like to point out just for knowledge, respectfully: Police Officers have a LOT of discretion with enforcement actions, especially with minuscule violations such as traffic violations and even misdemeanor crimes (weed for example, is still illegal in Missouri. If I stop a 19 year old college kid with some pot in his car, there are several different venues I can explore with enforcement action. I do not HAVE to do anything in terms of enforcement. Obviously department policy may change this from department-department, but no where in law does it say I SHALL enforce such and such violation or law.) With all of that being said, when I stop a vehicle for (fill in the blank) violation, my goal upon contact is to see if I can educate the operator of the vehicle WITHOUT issuing them a summons for that specific violation. For example, if your tags have been expired for 6 months and you have been stopped for this violations 4 times without fixing it, i'm going to assume you genuinely don't give a shit and think you're going to keep getting warnings, so this enforcement action isn't working and you probably need a summons. But what if that same person just went through a divorce, has 4 children, only has one means of transportation to get those kids to point A-B and genuinely can't afford to pay to update the tags? Then what? It's never black and white. I know i'm very far off on a tangent, but I'm just trying to give you a little perspective.

I have no idea why the officer you dealt with was a ******* or *******, I think that's completely unacceptable and unprofessional if it was unprovoked and I completely agree with you there. Robocops are not fun to deal with at all and that's why I recommend to completely stay off any interstate forever so you don't have to talk to a trooper. (joke)

To the OP: Probably just checking out your ride or as the other officer stated, you'd be shocked with how many cars you see driving down the street are actually stolen, at least in my neck of the woods. I could also go off on another awesome story about how the supreme court has ruled pre-textual car stops are absolutely legal and constitutional, but that's for another time, haha!

Thank you very much for your service to the community and protecting us all!! You guys in blue have a thankless job! As an aside, LEO threw me for a loop for a few seconds there. LEO in my vernacular means Low Earth Orbit. Couldn't for the life of me understand why you were in low Earth orbit..........

 

[Gerald]

This thread could have gone bad, but some level heads (particularly @Leftsidej ) saved it. Thank heaven.

I serve as a reserve sheriff's deputy and am the background investigator for the Sheriff's Office. No, I'm not a wanna-be. I'll be 65 years old in August of this year, and I have no adolescent aspirations or pretentions. I served as a Department of the Army career civilian for 36 years, retired, and serving got under my skin. So I've very happily found another way to continue to serve. That's not germane to the thread, but it tells you where I'm coming from.

Many people only see the uniform. I have had pleasant conversations with people while in uniform, see them the next day and greet them just as warmly, and they look at me like I'm a psycho because they didn't see me as a person when we talked the day before. They didn't talk to ME, they talked to a COP. My sense is that a great many misunderstandings would be avoided if the citizenry saw LEOs as real people, real living souls. The same thing happens to members of the military, sadly, and it's a remarkable commentary on how preposterously blind to the human element humans can be on a routine basis.

The LEO who pulls you over is a real person. His momma just died, his marriage is going south, his kid just got picked up for drugs or DUI, his hemorrhoids may be killing him, or it may simply be the end of a long shift in which somebody's 14 year-old kid took their own life. Yes he's supposed to be professional, polite, kind. Officer Friendly. But he's just a man, or she's just a woman. He (or she!) will try, he truly will, but he may not always succeed like he'd like to. Please keep this in mind.

I got stopped by a female officer in my Raptor one time. I have forgotten why, but I do remember that my truck was new at the time. She was polite and warned me about whatever I'd done, and I was polite and accepted her admonitions with thanks. She smiled, started to turn away, and then turned back and said something nice about my Raptor. I said, "Thanks! Want a peek under the hood?" She shook her head, said no, and then stopped. "Um, yeah," she said, "I really would!" So I popped the hood, hopped out, and gave her the Ford Raptor Orientation Briefing. She loved it, and I made a friend.

The most common radio call I hear from members of my agency is "10-8, verbal." That means that the deputy is back in service from an encounter with a civilian, and he issued a verbal warning in lieu of a citation. I hear that so many times a day and hear "10-8, one cite" so infrequently that it's literally astounding. Leftsidej is right - an LEO has a great deal of latitude in his encounters with a civilian. One of our guys was involved in a deadly force situation with a civilian who was armed with a big Bowie knife and a club, and was confronted by this screaming man at very close quarters inside a truck stop. Another LEO might have shot him and would have been entirely within department guidelines and the law to have done so. Our guy tased him. He lived. No blood on the truck stop linoleum. The guy turned out to be completely crazy and instead of being prosecuted for assaulting a protected person, he was transported to a mental hospital. Get it? Latitude. Discretion. Give an LEO enough wiggle room to exercise that latitude, be as polite to him as you would to the Pope or the Queen, and he will almost always take that opportunity and be glad of it.

During my career with the Army I came to understand that the people who work for the military - uniformed or civilian - are most definitely not a cross-section of Americana. It's a different mix than what you might see at the bus depot or the airport. They're a cut above. I've found that the very same is true of LEOs, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to work with both.

Thanks for lifetime of service Ruger!

 

[RICHARD A CUGNO]

The first day I got my Raptor I pulled up to an intersection and stopped. There was a motorcycle cop doing radar on the corner, and I said hi and he acknowledged. I proceeded to take a right and he put the lights on and pulled me over. He walked around and looked at the truck and commented “nice truck, license and registration please” I asked why I was being pulled over and he said no right turns during school hours. I politely said, I didn’t see a sign. I told him that I was recently in church and the sermon was about being honest. He looked a a little confused, and I proceeded to tell him the rest of the true story that the Pastor shared during the sermon.
.....A guy is driving along and an officer is coming in the opposite direction and notices that the driver had no seatbelt on. The officer makes a U Turn turns on his lights, and stops the guy. As the officer approaches the car the driver puts his seat belt on. The officer walks up to the driver side window and says to him “you didn’t have a seat belt on.” The driver responds to the officer and says “I Had My Seat Belt On” and the officer says no you didn’t. After a few more replies from the driver telling the officer I had my seat belt on! The officer looks over to the passenger side where the drivers wife is sitting, and says to her “did he have his seat belt on?” She looks at the officer and says “ I’ve been married to him for over 30 year, and one thing I’ve learned is that when he’s been drinking you can’t argue with him:>) Well after the officer stopped laughing he only gave me a warning!