I think that wanting to be a cop should immediately disqualify you.

My helmet:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1326404733.jpg

WTF are you talking about?

Add in illegal U-turns with no flashers on

Do as I say not as I do.

Wonder if you can make a citizens arrest on a cop? Tim

i was bhind what i think was a sheriffs car this morning, had MG???? something on the plates. he ran a red light. he tapped his brakes then kept going. the light turned just as he got to the white line. i was too far behind to get his plate at that point.

you can get fined here for throwing a cigg on the ground.
i was at a light on my bicycle when an unmarked cop tossed his cigg out the window. i said, you know, you would give me a ticket for doing that. he said, yea, i would, then drove off.

i see the cops breaking the all too often around here.

60 Minutes should mount some gpss on cop cars and do a show!


I've driven 1.2 million miles in Southern California. the STUPIDEST move that I've seen have mostly been done by CHP. I had one jump out of his hiding place on a blind corner into 80 mph traffic to chase a speeder. It caused a ven to go off of the highway and turn on it's side. Yes the van was speeding over it's limit. The van was doing around 73 when the chp went after a vehicle doing 80.

I had an officer cut me off that I had to slam my breaks on all the way to get my abs to work. I was in a 28' motorhome, towing a 16' trailer loaded up with motorcycles and gear. 16,000 pounds doesn't stop well on tires designed for heavy loads. Why did he do that? The last exit with an in & out for 20 miles! my kids watched him pull in! I'm sure that there wasn't a speeder there.

CHP officers really need to work on their image. I used to like them

In CA this is exactly what is occurring in recruitment/hiring.

Over the last three to five years, I would estimate that maybe one in five recruit officers "grew up wanting to be a police officer."

The economy has very much to do with this.

The overwhelming majority of white male recruit officers are from the RE, mortgage and construction industries. These guys could care less about law enforcement. Its a job. Nothing more, nothing less. Your problem is not his problem. If you don't like your neighbors, then move. If you don't like your husband, get rid of him. If you don't like your teenager, call child protective services and get him into a group home or into foster care. These "new" (not necessarily young, many are in their 30's and 40's) officers give new meaning to the term "detached." :D

The overwhelming majority of Hispanic male rookie officers are fresh out of the military and had no interest in going to college. (Which is a tragedy since they paid the price preserving our freedom and are not taking advantage of the GI Bill Education opportunities that they EARNED! :mad: )

The overwhelming majority of white female recruit officers are a mix of RE and mortgage industry refugees, ALMOST ALL with college degrees. We have one female officer with three years on the department who is on maternity light duty for the third time in three years (She is probably making $40 per hour doing a $15 per hour clerk job.) She is an Ex Olympic and NCAA division 1 Athlete. I would estimate that she has less than a year actually doing the job that she was hired to do. But she is very nice and everyone really likes her.

The overwhelming majority of black recruit officers and a lesser number of male Hispanic recruit officers have neither military nor college experience. Think Sprint Phone store salesman, truck driver or warehouse guy, unmarried, no family to support.

White male officers with no military or no college degrees don't seem to be applying anymore or are not passing the written, oral assessment interview, physical agility, psychological, medical, criminal background, drug background, employment background credit/financial background test or evaluation. Or maybe the attitude assessment. :D

This "new breed" of police recruit are great hires from a civil liability standpoint. They aren't interested in "taking crooks to jail", so they don't tend to get in much trouble = don't cost the city much money associated with pursuit crashes, uses of force, etc. etc.

The management challenge is that they aren't really interested in coming to work. The last minute staffing shortages are driving OT costs through the roof. This new breed of police officer is extremely intellectual and confrontational with regard to negotiated pay/benefits and the use of "sick time" and "comp time." They could literally care less about money. It is all about "time off."

More to the point, based on trending that we have been watching over the last three years, arrests are down (and continue to drop), traffic citations are down (and continue to drop) and officer initiated activity is way down across the board. As a matter of fact, every single quantifiable stratum of "officer initiated" activity that we track, is down. And trending downward.

I believe that police staffing in CA could and should be cut in half. There is no excuse for paying a police officer $120k per year to handle non-emergency, priority one type calls for service that could be handled by $15 per hour employees.

Would you pay a plumber to come to your house to replace the filter in your refrigerator???

The exact same principal applies.

I have a little bit of input....

When patrol officers are en route to a call, especially high risk calls or medical emergency calls, they usually seek updates. In most cases, they receive the updates through their police car computer. That is why they are monitoring their computers. In many other cases, the cops use their personal cell phones to receive updates or to call an informant or victim while driving to the call. There are some cases where the phone calls are personal in nature, but the majority of the time it is related to helping the community. As a supervisor, we hold them accountable.

This coming from a street cop with 23+years of experience in some of the most dangerous areas in the country.

Regarding the "new hires" and the typical complaints, this is a cheap excuse to place the blame and problems on the "new generation." The cops being hired now are mostly more intelligent, patient, and tactical than any previous generation. I am amazed at how well they do their job and how much professionalism they display. They are scrutinized more now than ever before. If there is a particular individual who does not meet our standards, what are we doing to correct the problem? Complaining about it without some type of corrective action does nothing but make you look like a *****. Do something!

Just a few days ago, my guys received a call of an armed gang member who entered a convalescent home at 0330 hours. He had injuries on his face and was under the influence of dope. We believed the bad guy intended to kill multiple patients as an "active shooter." My guys quickly contained the location, formed an entry team armed with both lethal and less-lethal weapons. They quickly searched the building containing more than 100 rooms, located the suspect, his handgun, and the property he had robbed from some patients. Think about this, these cops put their lives on the line in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods to better society everyday. What do you do to make your community safer? Don't tell me it is not your job and it is the duty of the police. Collectively, this is our society.

Of course, there are some bad cops, but we hate them more than the community does. We do everything we can to get rid of them before they do something stupid and tarnish the badge. There has to be trust within the police departments and the communities we serve.

I am an optimist by nature, despite seeing the worst in people, David

I believe you about hating the bad cops but I read this as meaning the David Macks and Rafael Perez types, what about the guys who are not criminals but just give the dept. a bad name with their driving or other macho stupid behavior in uniform? I realize that cops need to be tough and some of the guys are going to be a little rough around the edges but I've seen some deputies really acting like jerks in their squad cars lately. And plenty of others that represent the dept. really well, in and out of the cars. (I usually see LASD deputies in WeHo).

I saw one guy a couple weeks ago aggressively tailgating and swerving around/between slower moving cars on Melrose, he was 100% not on a call. He stopped at the next red light. He tailgated me for a bit, you could see the pissed-off expression on his face. It was disturbing. Maybe he was having a horrendous day in his personal life, who knows? I nearly called the station but had more important things on my mind. I mean this guy was driving in a way that would have got him lit-up for sure if he was a citizen. Punching the piss out of the car to go around people doing the speed limit and just mad-dogging everyone.

Kind of weird, really. Apparently there is a lot of this type of behavior around the country. FWIW, that type of arrogance is the opposite of what I've experienced in ride-alongs w/ police in L.A. :cool:

If they FORCE us under duress of a ticket to wear a blue tooth they should be under the same atandard.

If they drive like a tool trying to create stress for drivers to screw up so that they have a reason to pull us over things are wrong.

My son called me about an officer in ohio that tailgated him so closely that he couldn't see the cops headlights. this was on a two lane road and my son was in the slow lane and the cop could have gone around him in the open lane next to him. Andrew was doing the speed limit but since my son has long hair and looks like a pothead the cop was stressing him to create a reason.

I want to respect cops not fear them.

We should be free to tape record any and all encounters with cops. They're free to record us, that and destroy the tape if it suits them.

I've been pulled out of my car for driving to slow at night ( 1966 GT 390 Fairlane ) trying to keep the noise down due to being in a residental area. 1 officer yanked be out as I was opening the door. The other officer took his light shined it on the ground and told me to stand in the light, moved the light and yelled at me to stand in the light. I sat down and told him to stop moving the light. once they found my administration of justice books the left me alone.

And in this day and age when you "take corrective action", this can and does frequently happen.

LAPD suit: LAPD officers who complained about ticket quotas are awarded $2 million - Los Angeles Times


I am glad that you remain optimistic, my hat is off to you.

After 22 years, (12 years at a very poor city, Long Beach, and now 10 years at a city that is very financially solid) I am no longer interested in Law Enforcement and look forward to a career change (foreclosure servicing) in 2014 or 2015.

I'm pleased to see that the LAPD is thriving with regard to officer recruitment and retention.

When I was at Long Beach, we shared the LB Superior Court with LAPD Harbor Division. I was a violent crimes detective and met weekly with LA District Attorney filing deputy DA's. During the late 90's, the Harbor Division had a filing rate of about 40%. We had a filing rate of 90%. The DA's flatly stated that this was a result of low quality police reports submitted by the LAPD.

LAPD laterals frequently struggle with report writing during field training. The problem is not in the face pages but rather in the narrative portion of police reports.

I would love to hear from any Los Angeles County DA's on Pelican that could give an opinion on this.

We recently hired two guys from LAPD but I haven't met them yet. All of our other laterals from LAPD were really happy to get out, but it will be interesting to see what these guys say.

Everyone likes happy endings. But you never mentioned whether or not there was a use of force or whether the suspect "gave up." I am betting that the suspect "gave up."

It's easy when the suspect gives up. There is no command decision to be made when the suspect "gives up." The tough call is when the suspect is inside the room and says, "***** you, we ain't coming out" or simply starts shooting through the door. Do you engage and suffer one of the many possible consequences? Save the hostage, suspect shoots the hostage, suspect shoots cop, or the most acute political emergency, cop shoots and kills hostage?

Enter that room to save the hostage, and the hostage gets killed, the Pelican Brain Trust says that should have retreated and waited him out.

Enter that room to save the hostage, and the cop gets killed, the Pelican Brain Trust says that the cop was a poor marksman.

Hold on the door and while you are waiting for swat, the suspect shoots the hostage and the Pelican Brain Trust says the the cops in the hallway were cowards.

Hold on the door until relieved by swat and the Pelican Brain Trust says that the paramilitary police jack booted thugs etc. entered the room for the express purpose of murdering the 16 year old gang member with the air soft pistol/bb gun.

And if a lawsuit results from any action/inaction, the Pelican Brain Trust says that the cop should be fired and imprisoned immediately WITH IMMEDIATE REVOCATION OF HIS SWEET, FAT POLICE PENSION. (THIS is the most important thing)



At my department we would have set an outer perimeter on the building and notified the swat and negotiation teams.

We would have also formed an entry team, but for the purpose of evacuating the building. When we got to a room that could not be cleared (the room with the suspect and possibly a hostage), we would have set containment (inner perimeter) on that room and hallway and continued evacuating rooms until all patients and staff had been evacuated.

If the suspect presented himself and/or forced a confrontation, then and only then would we have engaged him.

After the building was evacuated, we would have held on that door (where the suspect was barricaded) until relieved by swat.

After the hour and a half that it takes swat to muster/recon and deploy, if the suspect hasn't yet forced a confrontation, then swat will assume control of the scene.

All of this while the assistant city attorney stands by schitting his pants... and hoping that the suspect goes to sleep and the hostages walk out on their own.

I think this thread started as directed towards highway patrol and conventional police driving. I still respect police who handle situations like the above but don't have any for traffic cops/highway patrol. Although, I have seen situations where CHP did nab guys doing something wrong, but that was only when the CHP was sitting and waiting for such action to occur.

The stupid cop who writes you the ticket for the stop sign is the same stupid cop who kicked in the door and arrested your brother in law when your brother in law was beating the heck out of your sister.

The stupid cop didn't care whether or not your brother in law had a gun in his hand or if your brother in law was a former GI with mental problems armed with a Rambo knife. The stupid cop heard your sister screaming, so he kicked in the door and went inside to try to help your sister.

He is the same stupid cop. That's what you guys don't get.

There's too many traffic laws in this country. I'm glad to see that at least someone gets away with breaking them. Wish I could. Needs to be done safely, though.

So the CHP responds to that stuff? :confused:

I have gotten speeding tickets which I deserved, but now I have come to realize it is not about who is driving unsafely, it is about revenue generation.

Has anyone here ever seen an accident during a traffic light power outage?