This may run long, so bear with me.

Law Enforcement employees tend to come from two specific groups of people. The first group is going to consist of people who actually joined up to try to protect people and make things safer for them. They are idealists who may grow jaded over time; because realistically if your only input on what being a LEO is the internet and reality TV, you are not prepared for the type of mental assault you will endure day in and day out. I'm not talking about angry people, but stuff like drawing circles around little chunks of brains on the highway from a teenage girl that went through a windshield.

As an officer at any level (except maybe a small town), you are going to see the absolute worst side of humanity on a daily basis and you aren't on a tour of duty like the military. You don't get to 'rotate' home and put it behind you. This will wear on anybody who is not a sociopath, it will grind you down to a nub. You could see professional help for this, but I will go into that later.

The second type of person who goes into law enforcement is someone who likes authority, a sense of power over someone else, a bully. This person is in the job because it gives them power over others and the law will protect them because it is vaguely worded in SO many cases. This person will shrug off the effects that cripple the first type over time, because they feel in charge of every situation. After a while, if they don't tone it down, they will get caught. Thankfully the cell camera and the internet tends to be helping clean them out due to their own incapability to see they can't ALWAYS be in charge, but it will be a long road because this group is the BULK of the ones that join LE organizations.

Now why do these two groups tend to be the ones that you are going to run into on a consistent basis? The simple, hard answer is that we pay our front line LEO's very little compared to other services that risk their life or experience the mental grind. Your average patrol officer is going to pull a median salary of about 35k with comparable benefits to someone working in a office job. A firefighter is going to pull around 45k and scales up much quicker, not to mention their benefits are beyond good. EMT's make about the same as patrol officers, but their benefits are also very good and they don't have the same stressors. I know that ranges will vary and State LEO's are very well paid on average, but we are talking about the people you are going to encounter most often.

If you have to choose between a job where you are going to be considered a 'hero' or a job where everyone is going to be biased towards you being a 'villain, and the hero jobs pay better, which would you logically choose? Assuming of course that you are not sorted into one of the two groups I described, most are going to run away from serving in LE. In fact, this is why more of the 'bullies' tend towards LE and the 'idealists' don't. So you already have created a situation where the 'stormtrooper' mindset is going to prefer this job and haven't considered options to rectify it. The people you don't run into that much are going to be the people that took college and got pushed through the ranks quickly. If you didn't take college or just took an Associates Degree, you have to beat these people out. It is extremely hard to do that, even if you do your job much better than they did.

The final factor that runs into this is the mental issues I mentioned earlier. If you seek help from your employers for mental stress, they are going to handle it differently if you are a LEO. You are going to find out quickly that you are expendable. If you seek help and get classified as PTSD, you set a chain of events in motion that is inexorable. You will be rotated to a desk. You will see a Psychiatrist who will prescribe anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. This person will meet with you for around 15 minutes 3-4 times a week, ask you questions, and ask if the medication is helping. If you return to functional status in a month or two, you get put back on duty. If you don't, they put you on short term disability for up to one year. Your visits drop to once a week, then once a month. One year later, your employment is terminated. They hire a new recruit and start the cycle again about the same time that you start your short term disability. You get to try to salvage your career in anyway possible, hopefully you paid through the nose for long term disability, or you can try to find a smaller department that doesn't bother to dig too deep on background checks.

Other related fields like firefighters/emts comprehend PTSD and work with their people much harder. They have better benefits so you they can see outside therapists as much as needed. There is less stigma if you have a problem, because they understand. You go on the fritz as an LEO and you will overhear people who used to respect you call you weak or a pussy. Sadly this type of thing happens at all levels of LE, even as a State Trooper you are expendable.

In any case, the point to this essay is that the system is flawed and is going to drive out the good LEOs and save the bad ones to protect itself from litigation. Protect yourself at all times with video, be advised of the laws and loopholes in them that bad LEos will exploit, and don't force confrontation with a LEO if there is a loophole. If the man had stepped outside and talked calmly, the incident would not have escalated as it did. In this case he did not inform himself of the loopholes correctly and got tasered (which was improper, they didn't warn him correctly or anything), and the LEOs look like villains again.

There should be more transgender police people....and they should hire dwarfs as well, make a special unit with all teeny-coppers. Hire Asian women to replace all male uniformed patrol officers and then, after changes like these, maybe people will begin to trust the fiiiinnne members of our fiiiiine law enforcement communities in this great country.

I mostly feel sorry for most cops, mostly....

Yes you should be able to tell them to get a warrant. If they don't like it? They can stay outside the building or patrol that area until there is a fight again. Private property is MEANT to be that way.

Also I make it a point to not associate with people that would be beating on me and I think everyone should probably put that in their top 10 list.

I shouldn't have my rights infringed on because some woman who is getting beat doesn't have the common sense to leave when the police show up or scream for help again if she's "locked upstairs". Because you know why? If the woman is like that she'll just keep going back to him anyway. So the police showing up doesn't make a damn bit of difference anyway.

The police aren't counselors and they are not parents. People make dumb choices and they have to be held accountable for their actions at some point.

I guess first off, I should explain that I'm not in full support of these searches/stops, but again, if I were stopped and asked questions, I'd just give them my ID and be on my way. Which, actually I have been before (just not in this context).

Yes, but Identified and searched are two separate instances and rights are not forfeit for giving that information. They must still have probable cause to open, and search. By acting like the kid(s) in the video, would possibly give an officer suspicion that there may be something to hide, and therefore, probable cause (although that's a very very loose explanation/definition). Also the plain sight rules apply, and given that this is essentially an extension of the border searches, I wonder if the Border Search exception could apply (given that it's the DHS/Border patrol holding the stops).

Basically what I'm saying is that, while yes, the stops are annoying, this is what you get if you cry/whine about illegal immigrants. Also, like I said before, if the kid just said "here's my ID" he would've been back on the road in likely seconds rather than giving the officer an attitude.

Oh, and "moral" is subjective, your morals may differ than mine, or someone else, bringing morals into a law debate doesn't support your argument. And until the 1979 ruling is overturned regarding these checkpoints, they won't stop. It's just best to take another road if you don't want to be stopped in the checkpoint.

there's a key word in my explanation (which the definition is posted in another comment); Under exigent circumstances, meaning using the excuse of "oh.. we're just looking for someone" isn't considered under that label. Also, probable cause can be used in a search without a warrant (i.e. shots reported in a building etc..).

Secondly, the entire city of Boston was on lockdown under a Public Safety measure (no martial law was called at the time), but national guard was patrolling the search area and aiding local enforcement. Anyone found on the streets walking around was instantly stopped and carded for info.

Again, the searches were not unwarranted and they were not illegal. They only searched the houses in the search area, they proceeded with by the book maneuvers. No one was mishandled in the searches from what I see in that video or any other account.

Her aid?? Don't you mean *their* aid?

We don't need guns in this country. Just an army of grans, patrolling the streets. Take that, Guardian Angels!

Damn, somebody needs his shit pushed-up. Please officer friendly, commit a crime against a minority on patrol tomorrow on camera...You have new friends waiting to meet you!

Looks like it could be a Texas constable-We apologize, though NEWSFLASH!-An inordinate amount of douchebags join law enforcement organizations all over the world- (German cops suck donkjey-balls, too!)

We use these victim-of-child-abuse-type thugs with smaller brain-pans to keep order, y'know...

Here's hasn't aged well:

http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/styles/node-gallery-display/public/bardot.jpg

http://amradaronline.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/sinead-oconnor-shocking-transformation-01.jpg?w=400

How about Goldie Hawn or Melanie Griffiths?? Hell, skank-patrol has an open-APB on Lindsay Lohan??!

Milla has genes that are impervious to graceless aging.

Not a stretch at all:

http://www.news-press.com/article/20130117/NEWS0104/301170028/10-resource-officers-begin-patrol-Lee-County-elementary-schools

http://www.nasro.org/

They are armed guards.

@Yogi Way to miss the point. I wasn't comparing cars and guns, I was comparing laws regulating cars and guns. That's all I'm going to say to you. You've already told me in another discussion that you're going to refuse any evidence that doesn't agree with your narrow minded beliefs, so having a discussion with you is pointless.

@RedSky

1) I'm not implying that the US is more violent. I already pointed out that the US has lower violent crime rates than the US and UK despite the higher murder rate.


2) I'd say people in rural areas are most likely own guns for hunting and also self defense as there are no police patrols out in the country.

I also wouldn't blame the availability of guns to criminals on gun enthusiasts. Criminals generally don't legally buy their guns. One way to cut down on illegall gun sales is to charge the sellers as accomplices to the crimes committed with the weapons they sell illegally.


3) Maybe punishment was not the right word I should have chosen. My point is that to cut down on driving fatalities, the laws enacted didn't put any inconveniences on responsible drivers.

Your back of the envelope calculation isn't quite so clear cut. Sam Harris discusses this in his article.

It is also worth noting that relatively gun-free countries are not as peaceful as many think. Here are some recent crime data comparing the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Sweden. Although the U.S. has a higher rate of homicide, the problem of assaults in these other countries is much worse...

So, while the U.S. has many more murders, the U.K., Australia, and Sweden have much higher levels of assault. One might think that having a few more murders per 100,000 persons each year is still much worse than having many hundreds more assaults. Perhaps it is. (One could also argue, as several readers have, that differences in proportion are all we should care about.) But there should be no doubt that the term “assault” often conceals some extraordinary instances of physical and psychological suffering.

It's possible that the reason the US has lower assault, robbery and rape is that armed citizens are able to defend themselves from such crimes.

I'm seeing a lot of people saying the US should look to the UK and Australia on how to handle gun control. Both UK and Australia already had low murder and violent crime rates at the time of their "bans." After Australia's National Firearms Act and forced gun buyback, homicide fell by 9%, but assault went up 40% and rape went up 20%. In the years before the NFA, homicides had been on a steady decline, and a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found the NFA's impact on homicide was "relatively small."

After the UK's "gun ban" in 1997, gun crime actually increased [1] [2]. Gun crimes in 1997-1998 were 2,648. The Office for National Statistics shows that 5,507 firearm offenses were reported 2011-2012.


4) Yes cars do provide a benefit to society. Their regulation and restrictions are reasonable, and I already said I'm not opposed to any reasonable gun laws. But cars are the leading cause of accidental death each year. There are lots of things that can be done to make cars and drivers safer. Cars could be limited to 70 MPH. The national speed limit on highways is 70 MPH, why do you need a car capable of going faster? Cars can be fitted with a GPS and a "black box" that records your driving activities. Each year when you renew your inspection, the black box data is downloaded and analyzed. If it's discovered you've broken any traffic laws, you will be fined, and if it's determined you aren't a safe driver, your license is revoked. Prohibit personal sales of vehicles between individuals, because you can't know if the person your selling to is a safe driver or if their license is valid (see below about the "gun show exemption"). Sounds crazy, but those aren't nearly as bad as some of the things being proposed for new gun laws.

I doubt any of those would be acceptable to the majority of drivers, but it would make driving safer and save lives.

As for your suggestions "not yet tried."

- We already have rigorous background checks for purchasing firearms. They're done by the FBI's NICS, I don't know how it can be more rigorous.
- There is no "gun show exemption" or "loophole," that is more media buzzword BS. Private sale and transfer of anything (not just firearms) can not regulated by congress. It's another constitutional issue dealing with the regulation of commerce. It is still illegal for a person to sell a firearm to someone that they have reason to believe may not be legally able to own one. This is another issue that I'm not opposed to fixing though. It could be as simple as requiring the transaction to be witnessed by a licensed gun dealer and perform a background check.
- Assault weapons are already restricted. Real assault weapons that is, not what the media and lawmakers keep calling assault weapons. Once again I ask, why such fuss over the weapon type least used in crime? These "assault weapons" are expensive to acquire, and most criminals go for cheap, small caliber, concealable pistols and revolvers. [source] For more on what an assault weapon is and their use in crime, just head on over to this Wikipedia page.
- Restricting ammunition would be something that would effect responsible gun owners and likely have little effect on crime. Responsible gun owners are the ones that buy more ammo, go to gun ranges and practice.


5) You mean the steadily high murder rate that has been steadily declining for over two decades, by 50% since 1992? [source]

I thought suppressive fire is standard military training. As a soldier, you are in combat like maybe 1% of the time during an actual war. Firefights are usually short. Its mostly waiting and patrolling and sleeping and more waiting. even in high-intensity wars like vietnam or WW2. More recent wars are even slower. So during those minutes or hours of actual fighting, suppressive fire is key to victory. It keeps heads down until backup/artillery/airstrikes can be called in. My combat training in the army was like 80% suppressive fire. I was in recon, so we mostly had fire-while-retreating scenarios where alternate halfs of a team fires and retreats.

I just noticed every VS link I posted on FB has changed its thumbnail to the thumb from http://videosift.com/video/Fastest-way-to-cross-a-border-patrol-checkpoint, nr.1 video on the sift this week

>> ^artician:

...So sick of this country species...


Fixed that for you.

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