|
|
| Re: (SEAN BELL) ROBBED BY A COP— PROPERTY DESTROYED! (424654) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: (SEAN BELL) ROBBED BY A COP— PROPERTY DESTROYED! |
|
|
Posted by JPC on Thu May 3 08:36:00 2007, in response to Re: (SEAN BELL) ROBBED BY A COP— PROPERTY DESTROYED!, posted by Jeff Rosen on Tue May 1 20:26:04 2007. Hey Sarge,Actually I think he makes a valid point. (I'm speaking as an EMT here, to you as a LEO.) Forget about Fat Albert (Sharpton), who just muddies the water wherever he goes. If somebody jumps in front of your car, points a gun at it and begins screaming orders, my suspicion is that most citizens will pay more attention to the gun and the screaming than the fact that the word "police" might be among the many they use, or the shiny piece of metal hanging around their neck. If that officer were in uniform it's much more likely they'd notice that hey, this person's a police officer! You know as well as I do, the geese don't respond predictably to being confronted by emergency services. On go the lights and sirens, and cars will swerve *in front* of you because they don't know where to go to let you through. On calls, people act in all kinds of strange behavior when uniforms and badges start showing up at their door. Besides, shiny pieces of metal aren't too hard to come by (there are tons of "police" stores that will sell badges for almost anything), and anybody can say that they're the police (not legally, of course, but that doesn't stop them from trying). But walking around in a PD uniform is not likely to go unnoticed for long, so if you see someone in uniform they're far more likely to be the real thing than if they just flip out a shield or say they're a cop. So in addition to the issue of confusion regarding identity, the use of UC's in mainline law enforcement work dramatically increases risk of impersonation (i.e. it's a lot easier to walk around with a shield under your shirt and whip it out when you want to play cop than it is to walk around all day in uniform). I think it's a problem (in general) that PD's are relying more heavily on UC's for jobs that really should be handled by uniforms. My understanding is that the old way was, UC observes something illegal (e.g. narcotics sale), calls in the plates and description, uniforms make a "traffic stop" of the vehicle, and collar the perp. (Of course, in an exigent circumstance, a UC would make the collar is something really bad is going down (e.g. assault or rape in progress.) Other than that, UC's generally don't make collars and generally don't interact with the public (except in sting operations and things of that sort, and even then the UC will act aggressively only if there is an imminent threat to safety, otherwise calling it in to uniforms.) (To draw a parallel case, emergency vehicles have lights and sirens and clear markings on them so that they can be detected from a distance and geese can make evasive maneuvers when the EV is still at a distance (and even then, they don't always do such a good job). Suppose we started responding in unmarked cars, no lights, no sirens. Just a regular car heading down the street, and all of a sudden he goes flying through a red light, the wrong way down a one-way, makes an illegal U-Turn - it would be accidents left and right! Having UC's respond and do the same things uniformed police officers do (but ordinary citizens do not) is no different!) Unfortunately, in the Kathryn Johnston case (the Atlanta shooting case of the 92-year old woman by UC officers serving a warrant based on erroneous information), the DA is looking to hang the officers for following their orders, while the policy of sending UC's to serve warrants and perform other law enforcement tasks best suited to uniforms remains is really the cause of such confusion. That's why I think this is such a real problem. |
|
(There are no responses to this message.)
|
|