Switch

It wont let me +rep you again gringo

Excellent resource. Kinda scary #'s when you hold it against our rhetoric about upholding freedom for all man.

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|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...

Pickle

Nope. I am often told that by people who have had numerous good interactions with the police. They use it as a form of leverage against their kids not realizing how negatively it impacts children and the future relations of public/police. These people IMO don't have good parenting skills because they have to "bribe" their children to behave. I tell my kids if they do "X" they will receive "Y" as punishment. This punishment is always dealt out by me and not some spectre. I always follow through too and my kids know this.

As far as more people being in prison or the high numbers of people being in prison....The way I see it is that our laws haven't changed much over the years. Drugs are still illegal (some even less so), assault, robbery, all the normal no no's are still illegal. Prositution and drug use is still illegal (for good reason but that is another thread). The reason there are more people in jail/prison is because society's norms are changing but the laws are not. IMO this is a good thing because someone is standing for waht is right. Some here will argue that is subjective though. I really don't see the jail/prison issue being part of this discussion though.

Switch, as I recall it was not a "I agree with Switch" thread. As I recall it was if the story was exactly as you described. Again, there are three sides to every story. 1. His side 2. Your side 3. The truth.

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Vodkatonic

I've been in law enforcement for 12 years. I'll be the first to admit that I've become more cynical of people.

When you deal with the same element of people day in and day out, you hear the same stories, "The dope is not mine, I'm just giving him a ride." "I just bought this car I had no idea the gun was there." yada yada yada, blah, blah, blah.

I really don't care what people think of me or what I do, all I care about is going home after ever shift and backing up my partners. If I catch you slippin' you are going to jail, if you give me an attitude when I pull you over, 9 times out of 10 you are gonna get a ticket.

Crime is revolving door, I see the same people over and over again, they take a plea and get out in a week. Uggh.....it's frustrating.

I'm rambling, I have so many thoughts in my head if I were to type them all this would be six pages.......

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"If the sword is always sheathed, it will become rusty, the blade will dull, and people will think as much of its owner." —Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

mentholated

Make a blog or PM me, I'd love to hear em.

TheFeniX

I don't think anyone is going to argue that a lot of officers don't have good reason to get worn down by the job. But it's not just law enforcement where people are generally liars and jerks. I don't have to worry about some punk kid taking a pot shot at me while I'm going about my job, but a lot of people deal with bosses and customers/uninvolved people bitching them out for actually doing their job and doing it well.

"I didn't do anything on the PC and it quit working."
"Why is the Internet down, what did you do? We didn't touch it."

These are just two in a long list of flat-out lies told to me by customers when they turned out to either have loaded spyware infested software onto their PC or actually pulled the plug on the main router in order to force us to come to the site because they didn't like remote work.

This doesn't even mention the time my boss quoted copper cable for an outside run then blaming the failure on me when it got hit by lightning.

I would go as far to say that at least in the business world, IT is loathed about as much as police officers. At least people will, for the most part, stay respectful towards you because you have a badge.

A few bad eggs ruin it for the rest: this applies to many fields of work.

I doubt most people will look down on you for not cutting slack to people who obviously don't deserve it. Hell, I did tons of free work on the side for customers who I thought deserved it and couldn't afford our rates. I didn't do this for rude or demanding customers.

My main issue has always been people that "respond in kind" when dealing with jerks. Cutting a guy a ticket because he's being a prick is a far cry away from getting into a verbal argument with him about it.

I'm a pretty rude guy when I'm just walking down the street. For example, I opened the door for a girl on my way to class this morning and she walked by without a comment. I said "You're ****ing welcome" after she walked by. I don't know if she made a face or anything as I didn't even bother looking back.

That's a wholly immature (whereas deserved) reaction on my part, but I'm entitled to that as just some schmuck on the street. When I metaphorically "punch in" at work, that attitude is gone. I am the picture prefect IT geek (with the exception of decent social skills).

In fact, I ran into an old customer at a bar a month of so back. She never even figured me for an actual drinker. He comment was that she thought I spent my nights off "studying nerd books to keep myself so smart(Her comment)." I might have taken that as an insult, but it feels good to know that a random customer (who was positively loaded off shots) can remember my name a year and a half after I quit my old job.

If I get treated like dirt by the guy at Best Buy, I can choose to take my business else-where. Think my doctor's a hack? Find another. Where exactly does the average citizen turn when he feel cops just don't like him/her?

It just takes a few bad run-ins with a "group" of people in order to sway your perception of them. In a business world, you may have to dig, but you can find competent and respectful help. What option does a person have when it comes to police?

Just like a citizen will get farther with an officer through respect and maturity, police officers should go the same route. Seriously, when was the last time any actually had the balls to tell an officer politely: "Sir, you're being very rude, is there possibly someone else I can talk to?"

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El_Gringo_Grande

I don't think what is illegal has changed much over the years. What has change is the likelihood of being punished and the sentencing has gotten longer.

But many do think like you.

You say the "societies norms are changing". You could be, and probably are, right.

But what norms? The norms of the public? Prostitution, gambling, drugs. Been around for ever. But in the past we didn't lock people up for long periods of time or with the same gusto as we do now.

Why didn't we lock them up in the past with the same regularity and length of stay?

But maybe it isn't that the general public's norms are getting worse. Maybe, just maybe, it is that the law/government is becoming overbearing? Maybe it is overstepping it bounds much more often than it did in the past. And maybe certain segments of the population are reacting to this? Some of us are getting a general negative attitude towards the government and the poor cop is caught in the crossfire?

Or

Maybe the public is getting evil and dancing with the devil. Bin Laden is right and we need a good ol'fashion whoopin.

But it started back in 73 and hasn't got much better. You would think with all this tough love us citizens would be in line by now. That the cops would have taught us a lesson by now.

Plus, the stories I hear from my elders does not make me think that they where that much better in the old days. Moon-shining and running from the law was a game that they had fun with. There where brothels known far and wide.

Or

Maybe this is just how it is. It will always be an "us vs them" mentality. If so then "them" shouldn't complain about "us" and "us" shouldn't complain about "them". Both should just go some place else and fight it out and then, please, stay in that place.

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Sen. Barack Obama (IL) For President '08
---
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

mentholated

Yeah, if anyone is going to be a victim in the situation we find ourselves in, its the cops. They're stuck between the predator (the fed) and the prey (civilization).

CingularDuality

I've got one small example that will serve as an incredible demonstration of how society has changed and why the police are interacting with the public differently now than they did 20 years ago, if you grew up in a neighborhood even remotely similar to mine:

When I was growing up, I was told to go outside and play. I had to be back inside before the streetlights turned on (10ish years old). No matter where I went in the neighborhood, I knew that there wasn't much trouble I could get away with without being seen by someone else that would either march me back to my house, or at least call my parents and give them hell about what their spawn had done. I remember the day that I was climbing in a neighbor's tree and swinging on the branches and I broke a rather large branch off. I started to get on my bike and ride away, but the owner of the house heard the branch break, came out and asked us where we lived. We all lied, so the dude decides to follow us as we ride away on our bikes. We decided to all split up and go different directions. Dude follows me. I rode around the neighborhood for probably a half hour, turning around and giving the guy dirty looks and stopping at random houses and pretending like they were mine, but he just kept following me until I gave up and went home. When I actually went inside my house, he got out and knocked on the door soon after. He politely told my parents, he didn't ask for anything other than an appropriate punishment and that my parents try to contact the other parents of the kids involved, then he left. I think we TP'd his house that halloween. Anyway, I was grounded, as were a couple of my friends, and we were once again reminded of the power of the neighborhood and the authority of adults, even if they are total strangers.

In the neighborhood I live in now, I don't know any of my neighbors. I caught the teenagers from across the street standing on my car the other day. I came out my front door and yelled, "Hey, what the hell are you doing on my car? Get off!" I was barely done yelling "get off" when their mother started yelling at me to not yell at her girls that way and that if I ever did it again, that she'd call the cops. Regardless of the mother's presence and comments, if those girls had confronted me and said something like, "Oh, yeah? What are you going to do about it?", what would I have done? I'd have to call the police. And I'd have to do it before they did if I wanted to ensure I didn't become the suspect. I couldn't grab them by the arm and drag them to their parents without being arrested. I couldn't even go tell the parents because most of the time it seems that parents operate in defensive mode now: "My angel would NEVER do anything like that. Why are you harassing my baby like this?" It's ridiculous. Children today have little respect for authority and it's getting worse.

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Apophis

It's interesting, but I don't know what value this graph really contains. There needs to be some type of reference to go with it, such as overall population growth in the US over the same period of time. Possibly the enactment of specific laws over that period of time that resulted in large numbers of convictions resulting in imprisonment. Only then will the true nature of this graph be apparent.

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Diplomacy is the art of saying "good doggie" while looking for a bigger stick.

Apophis

I think many parents stopped holding their children responsible for their actions a long time ago. When I was growing up things were the same as you describe. You took responsibility for your actions and your parents cared more about making sure you were brought up properly than they were making excuses for your behavior.

I think most parents resorted to nothing but excuses 20 years ago and it's just now really catching up to us. It does frighten me as I see a large number of teenagers and young 20-somethings around town from the local University and just cringe at the thought that they will be running the country.

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Diplomacy is the art of saying "good doggie" while looking for a bigger stick.

El_Gringo_Grande

If you read the paper in the link it trys to put context around it. They cite increased sentencing (mandatory minimums and the like) and greater enforcement of drug laws. They also point out that much of this was enacted due to the large upswing in violent crime seen during the 70's and 80's. Read it to get a fuller picture.

But even without that context, prison population increasing 700% is amazing no matter the context. I don't think the population increased 700%, more like 15-20% I would guess.

__________________
Sen. Barack Obama (IL) For President '08
---
I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

JMJ

best.example.ever. period.

You are exactly right, similar stuff happened with me as a kid. A neighbor wouldn't hesitate to put his hands on one of us and drag us home when we screwed up, and mine and my friends' parents would thank them for bringing us home, then proceed to beat our asses for screwing up. Good times, good times...that's how you take care of your kids. Nowadays they run wild with no restrictions, it's just like Cing said. There is no more confrontation with anyone, it's "call the cops". It's funny, all my neighbors called the dog officer or the cops about my horrible neighbors, but I was the only one to confront them.

Glad to see I wasn't the only "streetlight" kid either, brings back some fond memories of my early years

Apophis

I was curious about those changes in law and I will admit that I didn't read the paper. I just looked at the graph, shame on me.

I'll have to try and read it at some point today.

__________________
Diplomacy is the art of saying "good doggie" while looking for a bigger stick.

Santa

Every generation thinks the one after theirs isnt fit to run the country. What do you think older people thought during the 20s? Those same supposedly bad people went on to fight WW2 for us.

I can see the argument that perhaps my generation has had mostly crappy parents, but I think its more of a cultural thing than anything else. History at least has shown thats usually the case.

Switch

Is it even possible to run the country worse than its being currently managed?

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|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...