I agree. I do have some police that are friends and they have my respect. But like everything else out there, there are some who do not play fair. I had a checkpoint stop for no reason last month and I refused to give the Officer my license. He started freakin out, telling me I was going to be arrested. I eventually caved and gave him the license because my daughter was in the car. I called my Senator and Rep and the next day actually got a call for the head of the State Police with an apology. Who knew?
Have a few cop friends, and to them citizen's rights are always a touchy topic.
Police have the ability to legally lie during an interview, and often feel it their right to fabricate facts
to incarcerate whomever they suspect.
First words of advice given by anyone experienced is to not volunteer info,
and to NEVER talk with police without a lawyer present.
Your freedom depends upon it, and is easily worth the +/- $300/hr.
Some of you know I have spent the great portion of my adult life in civilian and military law enforcement...I have worked just about every facet of it to date, exception being large scale confinement, which I hope continues to remain the exception. That being said, I have instructed my older kid on how to talk to the police, and my adivce to him has always been the same. Be cool, dont admit to anything without talking to a lawyer first, be cool and dont make a scene, let the cop make it for you. Did I mention be cool? You really arent going to win by escalating any situation yourself...
It seems insane to me that we still judge performance (and dole out proportionate resources) based on inputs (arrests, convictions) and not outputs (crime [reduction]). From my outsiders view, this is the simplest of problems to me.
Reward departments and officers for drops in crime (or maintaining low levels where that already exists), and barring police intimidating their public into not reporting crimes (not a safe assumption, but addressable), they will behave in a way that reduces actual criminal behavior rather than figuring out ways to make non-crimes count towards arrests and convictions.
If you only reward outputs then you get people who game the system to artificially lower crime rates. See Japan and its missing persons vs. unsolved murders conundrum, which was addressed in the Freakonomics movie, iirc.
Actually, now that I search for it I can't find the reference, but the gist of it was that rewarding the police for the appearance of having incredibly low unsolved murder rates has led to many apparent murders being miscategorized as "off the books" missing persons cases instead.
One of the accusations in the letter was that (police chief) Rubenstein was allegedly seen at a suspected drug house in Forest Grove. A state police investigation was launched after a Forest Grove Police captain reportedly removed a paragraph from a police memorandum that included information about Rubenstein being seen at the house. The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office determined the Forest Grove captain's actions could not be proven criminal. According to court records, an investigation determined that drug activity was not occurring at the residence and that Rubenstein was not involved in wrongdoing at the location.
Some of you know I have spent the great portion of my adult life in civilian and military law enforcement...I have worked just about every facet of it to date, exception being large scale confinement, which I hope continues to remain the exception. That being said, I have instructed my older kid on how to talk to the police, and my adivce to him has always been the same. Be cool, dont admit to anything without talking to a lawyer first, be cool and dont make a scene, let the cop make it for you. Did I mention be cool? You really arent going to win by escalating any situation yourself...
It seems insane to me that we still judge performance (and dole out proportionate resources) based on inputs (arrests, convictions) and not outputs (crime [reduction]). From my outsiders view, this is the simplest of problems to me.
Of course that is the goal, but I am a realist. I know that at one time or another he will be in a position in which he will make contact with a cop in some way, negatively or positively, and he should know how to talk to them. Just like he should know how to talk to anyone.
I have seen all kinds of Cops, good, bad, in the middle, crusaders and crazies. What people forget is that once a badge is pinned on, only the outside changes, the inside remains the same.
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