Town cops vs city cops

[Harleymsn]

I guess this would be a bit of a timely topic for me. In 24 days I will be turning in my badge after 25 years in law enforcement. I will then depart western New York for Tennessee! The original post was to make a comparison between city and country cops ... I have done both. My first 5 years as a deputy sheriff and the last 20 with a city police dept., I have worked nearly every segment of the job, from working in the jail, accident investigator, commercial vehicle enforcement, I have investigated drug cases and homicides and am going out as a patrol supervisor.
City and country officers act differently, and that is necessary due to the difference of citizens they deal with. Where a warning and a lecture may prove very effective to a country kid who was speeding on a 2 lane, the same results are unlikely with an inner city kid strung out on drugs. The home environment of the country folks is often far removed from that in the city.
The country kid with a 12 ga in the gun rack (probably for hunting) does not leave an officer with the same impression as the kid with the mac 10 in a shoulder rig. I had one of my young officers shot just a few months ago, and over the past 2 years we have had at least 25 instances of people shooting at our officers. I remember 1 incident in the 5 years while I was a deputy.
Bottom line, officers react based on what they face day in and day out. Those things may not happen in your area, but when your in a town or city where it is common ...expect the officers to repond to everyone the same way.

 

[DannyD]

By the way, we buried a good cop in Louisville today. He was shot and killed by a gun-wielding 17 year old last Thursday.

A very sad day in our city for sure.

 

[Wannafish]

Gee, and I thought we had it bad...

Local small town city Police-Woman got mad at the computer in the police station a few years ago...took out her 38 and shot it. Told not to do that again.
The powers that be decided she would make a good High School liason officer. A month ago she pepper sprayed a female student in the cafeteria because the student wouldn't talk to her. Two sides to every story? Nah, the jury didn't believe her either.

Yep, she's back on road patrol.

Be careful if you drive thru Cadillac Michigan!

 

[Egon]

Sorta a case of

" The Good - The Bad - The Ugly "

Don't think I'd like to walk a mile in a Law Enforcement Officers shoes. The qualifications to preform objectively, unbiased and with high efficency may be difficult to meet 100 % of the time.

Egon /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Junkman]

Talk about needing anger control management classes!!! I am very surprised that she was put back on patrol. She might not react properly to a casual motor vehicle stop and shoot the driver when he/she is reaching for the registration in the glove box. I wouldn't want to have her on any patrol and believe that at sometime in the future the department will regret the decision to keep her employed. Unfortunately, it is hard to get rid of a problem employee, no matter what the job is, with the way that the discrimination laws are interpreted by the courts. Glad that the little town that I live in doesn't have a police department, so we don't have to contend with these types of problems. Our police protection comes from the State Police and they rarely come to town to patrol, but only when they are called for an incident requiring a police presence. If you call for a emergency in the middle of the night, it can take up to an hour before they will arrive. They have to come from a very long distance and even lights and siren don't make it quicker on back country roads that twist and turn ever 50 feet...

 

[Egon]

Conversly we have an excellent Town Police Force. Response to our house is about 90 seconds. The police station is only a block away.

We have called them once when several slightly tipsy gentlemen were stumbling around our back yard at 03:00 AM. Three cars with the first arriving within 90 seconds. They have also visited me on a scurcilious snow removal complaint from a Town Employee. They were very polite. The complaint was rectified by a vist to the Town Engineer who lives just around the corner from me.

Egon

 

[Wannafish]

I once found a way (inadvertently) to increase the response time...

I used to live about 1/4 mile down the road from my parents. One night when my Father was out of town my mother called me about midnight, said she heard and saw someone trying to break into her house. I told her to call 911. I grabbed a gun and headed down to her house thru the woods. As I approached I could see someone run out of her yard, thru a ditch and into my grandmothers yard. As I stopped to be sure my Mother was OK, she was on the phone with the dispatcher who told her it would be at least an hour before a State Trooper could respond...to which she said, "Oh that's OK, my son's here with a gun now...we'll take care of it". To this day I don't think she realized how that sounded to the dispatcher!
I worked my way to Granny's house and saw a feller trying to open a side door which fortunately was locked.
When he saw me he took off running and after a few choice words I fired a few times in the air for emphasis...wasn't but 10 minutes and the State Trooper was there. Guess time flies when you're having fun.
I told the Trooper I would have rather waited for him but in his absence we do what is needed to take care of our own. All he said was "You can put the gun away now".

Yup, I know what alot of you are thinking...I was asking for trouble shooting in the air. I guarantee you it wouldn't have been into the air if I had caught him in the one of their houses while they were home. I followed his tracks the next morning to a home that was just rented about a mile away and informed them of what happened. We had no more "visitors" after that...and the renters moved out right after that too. Hmmm.

We all have dogs now. A bunny rabbit can't go thru any of our yards without us knowing about it. Can be a PITA in the spring when critters start moving about but a lot better than me having to shoot somebody, which I pray will never happen.

 

[MossRoad]

You have us beat. Our county police station is 3 and a half blocks and one stop sign away. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[BB_TX]

Town/city. You just never know. Many years ago when my town was still small, a lady cop gave me a ticket because my inspection sticker was expired by 10 days. About a month ago, a Dallas cop stopped me. It was very early morning about 5:45 and I was going a little fast on a main street but there was almost no traffic. He asked if I knew the speed limit. I said I thought it was 40. He said I was going 55. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif I really had not realized I was going that fast. He said slow down and have a good day. No ticket. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif I was stunned to say the least.

 

[Bird]

Bill, one thing I learned for sure in my association with police officers, not only in Dallas, but all over the country, and even in most foreign countries, that seems to surprise most people, and that is that most police officers everywhere do NOT like to write traffic citations! Yes, I know there are a few exceptions, but they are definitely the exceptions; not the rule. There can be several reasons the officers don't want to issue citations, but it's usually a combination of not wanting to have to take time to go to court and testify in what they consider a "minor" case AND the fact that you meet a lot of nice folks who weren't intentionally breaking the law (but if they run over someone else, does it matter much to the victim whether it was intentional or accidental?). Of course, there are some places, usually small towns, where at least part of the reason the powers that be want citations written is to raise revenue, but the primary reason for wanting citations written is to make the roads safer for all. Nearly everyone agrees that traffic citations are necessary as long as they don't give one to ME! /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

So, we have a dilemma. Citations are necessary for safety reasons and officers don't want to do it (they'd much rather catch a burglar or thief). So all over the country, and much of the rest of the world, there is "pressure" of one kind or another on the officers to issue citations. So this leads to accusations of the officers having a "quota" and, yes, that's actually been done, and is being done, in some places, but it's usually not that cut and dried. When I was a rookie cop, all the patrol sergeants added up and averaged the number of citations issued by their officers on the 10th, 20th, and last day of each month. Those officers who were below the average were "counseled" by the sergeant, reasons for being below average were discussed, and what was going to be done about it. And such counseling would be considered on the officer's next 6 month performance evaluation. The overall average in the mid-60s was about 3.5 per day. Now fast forward to the early 70s when I was a lieutenant, and we had a new chief of police, and one month I got a commendation because my crew had the highest "activity" averaging 1.5 a day. And at that time, I had an old senior sergeant working for me, and I noticed in his personnel file that one month in the mid-50s, when he was a patrolman, he got a reprimand because he was the low man on his shift that month; he only averaged 8 per day. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

So the "acceptable" number of citations definitely changes; the only things that don't change are the facts that citations are necessary and most officers don't want to issue them. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif