How do you feel about your local police? My experience with our police department has been great. The station is only about a block away, and I used to go there often to get the key to the animal shelter. The shelter isn’t open all the time, and if you were on the volunteer list you could get the key from the police dispatcher and go over to let the dogs out to play and/or to work on their socialization skills so they had a better chance of being adopted.
Also, when our power went out late one night the police dispatcher was the person to phone. She was very friendly and helpful. She checked to make sure it wasn’t just a circuit breaker in our apartment, and that other lights in our complex were out. She then phoned the emergency crew, who found the problem and fixed it.
Not all people are that lucky, I know. What has your experience been?
January 21, 2015
Years ago, I drove a young man from Northwest Arkansas to Russellville so he could make it to traffic court. His main topic of conversation was how bad the cops had treated him and that they were out to get him and, I guess, people like him. He reminded me of some “friends” I had when a teen down in Texas, people I would not have been surprised to hear ended up doing time.
All police officers I’ve interacted with have been positive and professional, even when I was stopped for traffic violations.
That’s good. I haven’t been stopped since 1964, for doing a slow rolling stop at an intersection with no traffic, perfect visibility. It was a slow Sunday morning and the police were hidden from sight. The fellow didn’t ticket me, but gave me a lecture about how dangerous it was not to come to a complete stop. My guess is he was bored.
The funny thing was shortly after that I was driving along a side road with one stop sign right after another. I carefully stopped at each one, but the policeman behind me turned on his siren and went zipping through the rest of them. Uh, huh. That was perfectly safe, of course. I find it hard to believe there was really an emergency. 😉
Bar the one occasion during our national emergency when I was bulldozed by an arrogant policeman causing me a lot of problems, I have always had good responses from policemen. I have even blogged about one experience.
I vaguely remember you writing about the bullying. I just reread the post about you spending the night in jail, with the cell door unlocked.
i have never encountered a problem. i was stopped last year because i had forgotten to renew my license tag.
it was over 6 months past due!!! he could have written me a hugely priced fine.
instead he was very polite … asking that i take care of it immediately … and just gave me a warning. i went straight to the tag agency and took care of it.
i cringe in the middle of the night when i hear one of their car sirens.
they’re alone. and they’re out there protecting us.
they walk up to black windows they can’t see through… and in our state now… practically everyone carries a gun. since the open carry law passed.
they kiss their wife and children. walk out their door. and know they might literally die before coming back home. it’s just part of the job.
i say . . . if they ask you to put your hands up . . . PUT YOUR HANDS UP.
if people would simply comply… i think the problems with them would be fewer.
theirs is not an easy job. split second decisions of life and death.
i would hate to have to make those same decisions.
I sympathize with them too — one of my nieces is married to a policeman. And I recently saw a video of a policeman who was devastated because he had killed an unarmed man. The fellow was high on drugs and acting crazy, and the policeman thought he was reaching for a gun. As you say, sometimes they have to react right away.