The first time I waved to the cops I got pulled over.
Why is almost everybody against more police ?
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Lexicus
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I'm firmly in the "mmm, mmhmmm, don't look over there" school of dealing with the cops.
Timsup2nothin
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Would it? Have you ever had a cop for a neighbor?
Your lawn is a little overgrown, a nosy neighbor gets snotty about it, what do you say? What if her husband has a gun, and the local police force won't even question him if he shoots you on your own front porch?
Your neighbors are having a loud marital dispute, and it sounds like he is slapping her around. What do you do? Do you do the same thing if you know that if the cops show up they are not only not going to do anything about their 'brother in blue,' but they will surely let him know that he should probably shoot his neighbor?
Your neighbor's kid has a habit of shooting out everyone's porch lights with his BB gun. How do you go about informing the parents when one of them is armed with a real gun and has the authority to shoot you pinned to their chest?
When I had a business I had a rule about clients. No cops. If there is ever a dispute over payment, service, anything, you cannot win, or even settle on anything other than giving them whatever they demand and hoping they just go away.
Farm Boy
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I don't wave to cops when I'm driving unless it's on my street and I know who they are and I'm going like 15mph. I do wave at people I pass *walking* on the street alone, including police I don't know. It's not a full blown Gomer Pyle, but I do make eye contact and at least nod. I still get pulled over. Particularly driving past bored small town cops in the wee hours. They generally want to interact long enough to smell my breath. Probably not as much. I'm inclined to believe people about their experiences.
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He's probably not gonna shoot you if your kids play T-ball on the same team.
In Chicago the municipal workers are required to live in the city. The reality of it is that there's a narrow band near the boarder where all cops and fireman live.
I doubt any police live in the problem areas on the south side. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn't.
I doubt any police live in the problem areas on the south side. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn't.
Timsup2nothin
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Really? You mean that guy that hollers constantly at every game, makes ridiculous demands on the coach, and wants to fight with every parent that says anything other than how great his kid is is somehow better if he has a gun and a badge?
I am the coach.
Most parents aren't like that, including cops.
And yes... even that guy isn't going to shoot you if he knows you... he might fight, or shoot one of the parents on the other team, but not the guys he knows.
Timsup2nothin
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Sure, but there's always one...and there are established ways of dealing with that one. But none of those ways work if the one happens to be a cop.
Just like my business. I usually had about a hundred clients. In any given month, without any particular marketing effort, I would add about five, which was good because circumstances would usually lose me about five. They would have some financial problem, or otherwise decide I was a luxury they could no longer afford. They would think that being one client out of a hundred entitled them to re-organize my schedule in some way that favored them. They would have one of those "being your client makes you my servant" moments and call me in the middle of the night. I would screw up their billing or their service and they'd rather go away mad than take a correction and apology. Or they would screw up their service and rather blame it on me than just let me fix it and learn not to do whatever they did. Any number of things. And losing five clients a month means losing sixty a year, which as I said was no big deal because I picked up that many just walking around, and a hundred was about all I could service anyway.
So they come and they go, no big deal, but at least a couple times a year one would have to be a jerk. Their check bounced, and when I told them it would be straight cash from now forward or they'd have to get someone else they started the "it's the bank's fault" tap dance and when I didn't care who was at fault they got mad and claimed that I could not stop their service and I would take their check and like it, which I wouldn't. Then when their service stopped they left rambling ranting messages on my phone and threatened to call the chamber of commerce and the better business bureau. Whatever. But they never threatened to target my trucks for selective enforcement of the traffic code. Or roughed me up and laughed at the possibility I would report them to their brothers in blue. Because none of my clients were cops. Ever.
Maybe the intersection of the jerk customer subset and the cop customer subset would always have been null, but I opted out of taking the chance. I'd just as soon take the same precautions with neighbors, parents of my kids friends, etc etc etc.
My brother's roommate in school was a cop. If he knew we were coming to visit him, he'd plan an ambush for us when we were driving into town. He always thought it was fricken hilarious. Except for that, he was a great guy and go to bat for people in the neighborhood if they were having police issues. Always nice to have one on your side if you needed it.
Farm Boy
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Mundane social non-enforcement interactions reduce violence, police and otherwise, shown over and over. It's just expensive.
More importantly, when t-ballers get to be teens and acting like them, it's somewhat less likely they get shot by their friend's dad when they recognize each other. But that does take a degree of stable community interaction and we've been atomizing hard.
It's not all sunshine and roses. Two of my friends in highschool loathed the local cop. He pulled them over regularly. We talked a lot of *#$% about him picking on them. In hindsight, they sped. In town. A lot. Still a couple of stop signs on streets that didn't have them 20 years ago, a legacy of their passing, as it were.
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Timsup2nothin
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Yeah, this actually demonstrates the problem. That "going to bat" is great, when the extra legal activity involves a cop on your side.
I had this neighbor. He was in the kind of convoluted mess that I know everyone always tries to stay out of, but so many people get into. He had credit issues in the aftermath of a divorce, and had bought this house with "help from his brother" in the form of his brother actually bought the house and he paid rent in the form of making the payments. The expectation was that after a couple years when his credit issues had cooled he would be able to buy the house from his brother and that would be that. As things tend to go, after he had spent a year or so fixing up the fixer upper his brother has some "financial trouble" of his own and decides that he needs to sell the house, which is now appreciated about a hundred grand. No one can screw you quite as thoroughly as family.
Anyway, dude comes to me and says that his brother is likely to come by and try to get in the house with a guy who is supposed to fix the A/C. He isn't trying to make selling the house out from under him any easier on his brother, he's already told him that no he isn't going to be home, and he has already told his brother that as a landlord he can only access the property with written notice to the tenant so bugger off. And he is assuming that his brother will try anyway so can I keep an eye on the house.
Next thing you know I'm on the sidewalk in front of the house explaining to the A/C guy (hey, I'm billing the same standing out here as if I were in there working) and a locksmith (yeah, I know better, see ya later) that if they participate in the B&E their customer is trying to involve them in that they will regret it. So, fat brother landlord wants to intimidate me off the public sidewalk because he owns the house the sidewalk is in front of. I give him the usual line, loud enough to be heard by the A/C guys, about personal space and beginning to fear for my life and he recognizes the self-defense claim being established and retreats up "his" driveway.
And of course tells me that he has a friend who is a cop, and he is calling him. Because in every legal sense he is wrong, and everyone involved knows he is wrong, but he assumes, probably correctly, that his friend with the badge won't really give a damn about the law.
Timsup2nothin
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Pretty much...noting that he actually threatened me first so really I was just informing him how deep the consequences were going to be if he misjudged his abilities.
Farm Boy
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Dongmouths are always going to have a retort to end things with. "Oh yea, Imma sue you." "Or, my dad is going to beat your dad up" is often the most amicable available resolution to a non-amicable situation. Possibly unrewarding if violence was desired, maybe? Dunno.
Timsup2nothin
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If he didn't want violence he shouldn't have suggested it. I'm not covetous, just compliant.
This reminded me of a story by Ray Bradbury in which one lone human decides to walk by night instead of staying in and watching TV and he's arrested by an unmanned patrol car.
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