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Readers,

I apologize for my short hiatus in providing all of you with liberating, mind expanding (although regrettably hallucinogen free), empowering insight about the law, cops, society, and the world in it’s current state.

*For the record, I have never consumed a hallucinogenic substance…my insight in this area is derived solely from Joe Rogan podcasts, Wikipedia, the film “Yellow Submarine”, and the entire Grateful Dead discography.*

As the fabric of American law enforcement continues to unravel on a daily basis, I am forced to divide my time between contacting like-minded cop friends across the country, non-cop friends of mine who are continually experiencing abuse from various government entities, personal matters, and the catastrophe occuring within my own department. With that said…we continue to press on…to the end goals of personal liberty and true societal openness.

Now that all of THAT is out of the way, we can explore today’s topic: What to expect from your local men and women in blue during 2012. It’s a little late for a “Happy New Year” entry…however, it is never too late to look into what the current year holds in store for the residents of the fragile little beacon of baseball, mom, and apple pie that we all affectionately call the United States of America.

2011 saw more cops killed than any other year in many of our lifetimes. Judging by some of the default pictures of my followers, many of you are as young or younger than I. 2011 was a year that saw 177 cops in a variety of situations (from traffic stops to warrants to domestic disputes to shoot outs) succumb to the icy touch of death. This sharp increase has also happened in the midst of monumental budget cuts in the billions of dollars across the country. Cops today are doing more for less…scratch that…FEWER cops today are doing more for less. Lets not forget the layoffs and downsizing that traditionally accompanies budget cuts. What does this mean for YOU?

1. Prepare for more of the worst. More cop-directed violence = more brazen violent criminals. That’s a no-brainer of a correlation. However, that means that (as a general rule) those criminals will begin to feel a sense of empowerment; a sense of immunity, if you will. Although the violence against police is increasing, that doesn’t mean that the violence against all of YOU will necessarily increase (althought it very well might). It simply means that the criminal is going to disregard the law with more boldness. Expect more break-ins (burglaries), vandalism, robberies (especially strong arm robberies…if you don’t know what that is, google it), and theft. Some of those can be categorized as “violent crimes” and some might not be. All of them, however, have something to do with PROPERTY. In other words, depriving you of the usage of something that is yours. Other than a sociopath or a sexual deviant, a typical street level criminal wants your stuff more than anything else.

2. Take a number. That fender bender that your insurance company is forcing you to report with the local police department WILL consume several hours of your life. Pesky teenagers spray painting the fence again? Pack a lunch. Residential burglary? Identity Theft? A fist fight with no serious injuries? An armed robbery during which nobody was hurt? All of these are examples of “routine calls”. Cops are regularly trained to never treat any call as routine, however some calls will be dispatched as a lights and sirens call (code, emergency, priority, etc.) and many will not, depending on the information that the 911 dispatcher receives. Unless someone’s life is hanging by a thread, the police will be forced to take their time to arrive due to hiring freezes, layoffs, restructuring, and other manpower shortages.

3. Morale. “I hate the cops anyway, who CARES about their morale????” True, but the fact that cops are caring less and less about how they do their job WILL eventually impact you in a negative way. This means EVEN sloppier, crappier, and less involved service than you’ve been receiving in years past. The adage “you get what you pay for” holds quite true in the realm of law enforcement. Police officers who work for “boutique departments” (police departments that patrol small, very wealthy municipalities) are kept on a VERY tight leash by supervisors and are subjected to the Spanish Inquisition at the whiff of the slightest complaint. As a general rule, those places will get better police service. The flip side of that is that the cops in those department tend to be traffic enforcement Nazis (at the behest of their police chief, who answers to their mayor, who answers to their city council, who answers to the primary voting bloc in most of those cities which is typically made up of wealthy retirees who, as a general rule, drive slowly and hate loud music). Speed traps, anti-party ordinances, and armed guarding of the local Elk’s lodge are common in jurisdictions like these…but the cops are usually better educated, more respectful and professional, better trained, and (generally) more competent. If that city happens to put a premium on physical fitness, the cops will also be in tip-top shape. They will, as a general rule, earn more money and enjoy better benefits than those of surrounding jurisdictions. Cut an officer’s pay and you’re cutting his or her motivation to do his or her job in a professional, effective manner. That unfortunately means that you will get sub-par police service.

There are a multitude of other effects, but I feel that these three are the most blatant. Perhaps I’ll do a part two for this blog soon. I understand that you all know that I am a cop, and that you might think that I’m somewhat biased in this area. Yes, I’m a cop…but I’m a resident of the jurisdiction in which I live. I can’t be home all of the time, and if I’m at work (or working extended hours), I want a capable, professional, upbeat police force protecting my home and my family. I do this for a living, and I recognize the value of that.

I will reiterate the fact that I vehemently despise a staggering multitude of my co-workers. Many cops are fat, disgusting, rude, unpleasant, unprofessional, abusive, stupid, incompetent, and full of themselves. I hate those cops. They’re not worth minimum wage, if you ask me. Stringent hiring standards are paramount, but CONTINUING performance standards are just as important. Those are regrettably absent from the majority of police departments across the United States. Regardless of what my ideal for a utopian police department is, the fact that we live within our current reality persistantly rings true. Take what you have and make the best of it.

An even smaller, but much more stubborn group of you might think “To hell with cops in general…I have my own guns, a large family, and enough ammunition to invade Iran. I can take care of myself.” Very well. I’m not even going to entertain that with comment. For the rest of us who don’t walk around town with a couple of bandoliers strapped across our torsos, and who don’t reload our own ammo, we will inevitably come into contact with the police in a cop-citizen capacity at some point (off-duty cops included).

If you are a voter, ask yourself what kind of police department you would want and vote accordingly. If you are a legislator or some other person in a position of political authority, ask your constituents what kind of police department they want, do your best to lay out their options (and the pros and cons of each choice) and vote accordingly. I’m not saying that any one choice is better than the other. I’m simply cautioning all of you to choose wisely because the reprecussions of a choice like this reach farther than you might care to think. This is not a public works department, a sanitation department, or a parks and recreation department. This is the police department. The only people in this country who have explicit legal authority to remove your freedom. Once again, choose wisely.

Be safe,

Ofc. Outrage

Sources: http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/2011-law-enforcement-fatalities.html

Note: To my knowledge there has not been any empirical data gathered with regards to the full amount of municipal, county, and state budget cuts to police departments. If any of you find any data like this, please forward it to me. By my own tallies over a billion dollars were cut from police departments across the country in 2011.

Lesson 2: How To Win Against Bad Cops

“Officer, what am I being charged with?” you ask.

WHAP! A thud on the plexiglass spit shield answers your question. The officer hastily drives you to the local jail while obeying a minimum of traffic laws. You are booked, photographed, searched, and forced to turn in all of your property. An hour and a half ago, you were celebrating the fact that you nailed that job interview and received a tentative offer of employment pending a background check. Now, that seems like a distant memory as your unblemished record receives it’s de-virginization.

Do not panic!

Welcome to the second lesson of how to win against bad cops. Today, we will be exploring the post-arrest process and how to rectify the situation that I mentioned above (and others like it).

Every police department that I know of requires at least one document to be filled out when someone is arrested. This is called the Probable Cause Affidavit. It has a variety of other names (P.C. Form, Arrest Affidavit, Arrest Form, etc.) as well. The Probable Cause affidavit contains four  very important ingredients.

1. Your personal information

2. The criminal charge(s) that you are facing

3. A narrative section that lists the legal elements of the charge(s)…these are the occurences that, when combined, constitute a criminal act

4. The case number

Again, this is a generalization and an amalgamation of various forms from various departments. However, every single P.C. Affidavit that I have ever seen or heard of contains those four key ingredients.

Probable Cause = Sufficient reason based upon known facts to believe a crime has been committed or that certain property is connected with a crime.

In police circles, the generally accepted explanation for probable cause is the following test: Is it more likely than not that a crime has been committed?

If the answer is yes, then BAM…you have probable cause and you can make the arrest.

However, in a court of law, the  test is much more stringent. The test in court is referred to as proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt = part of jury instructions in all criminal trials, in which the jurors are told that they can only find the defendant guilty if they are convinced “beyond a reason- able doubt” of his or her guilt. Sometimes referred to as “to a moral certainty,” the phrase is fraught with uncertainty as to meaning, but try: “you better be damned sure.”

If you happen to be one of those “math people” you can think of it like this…P.C. = 51% or more. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt = no less than 100%.

That last 49% of leeway is your playground.

For a case to be resolved by conviction a.k.a. for you to be found guilty a.k.a. for your record to be affected, everything needs to go off without a hitch. In other words, The cop, the cop’s supervisor, the district attorney, his or her boss, and anyone else involved CANNOT mess up in any way shape or form. If they do, the case is almost always dismissed. If the case is not dismissed, you can file for an appeal. 

Make a note of all four of those ingredients that I mentioned. Your personal information links you to that case number. The case number links you to that charge (or those charges). The narrative gives veracity to the charges. If there are any inconsistencies or discrepancies, exploit them.

My first suggestion: dissect the P.C. Affidavit. Use your attorney and go over the affidavit with a fine toothed comb. Sometimes you will find a missing element in the narrative, or a lack of pertinent information. Your lawyer can guide you more effectively in this area.

My second suggestion: call the officer’s integrity into question. Use ANY discrepancies to your advantage and make the cop look like a liar.

*BUT WAIT*

“Officer Outrage, you’re a COP! Why are you writing against your own co-workers? Aren’t you guys supposed to have this unwritten code of brotherhood where you all have each other’s backs?”

I’m glad you asked. Yes and no. I do care very deeply about my co-workers and I wholeheartedly back them up on a regular basis. However, I do not lie on arrests and I don’t put up with it. It tarnishes my badge and the respect that it is supposed to command. I’m asking you guys to TRY to make every single cop who arrests you into a liar. Why? Because if he or she is telling the truth, then you won’t be able to. If that cop has integrity, this test won’t be a problem. If the cop is garbage, then he or she will be exposed as such and we’ll both win. You’ll have your case dropped and I’ll have one less bad apple to worry about on my end.

My third suggestion: find and read case law. This is your lawyer’s job, but what if you get the rookie, wet-behind-the-ears public defender who’s law school diploma still has the graduation ribbon on it? Uh oh…time to take an active role in your own defense. Look up prior decisions on cases similar to yours. If they were decided in favor of the defense, bring them to your attorney’s attention. If the trial starts to go south, those prior decisions just might be your saving grace. 

And what if the worst should happen? The gavel slams. Guilty.

There are still ways to seal and/or expunge your record. Check with your state’s laws/regulations about that and ask a civil attorney about what can be done in that area. You would be surprised how many prior convictions can be locked away in the recesses of legal forgottenness… Also, most jobs do not care about arrests…they’re looking at convictions. If you were arrested but not convicted, make sure that you mention that the charges were “unfounded”, “baseless”, or “unwarranted” on your job application. Those key words help to paint a picture of your innoncence. This is definitely a positive byproduct of the waning trust in law enforcement.

The Police’s Wild Card a.k.a. the police report.

Most arrests must be accompanied by an internal, departmental police report. This lists the events leading up to, during, and immediately following the arrest in greater detail than in the P.C. affidavit. If you just so happen to get your hands on this (talk to your lawyer about how to do this), compare it to the P.C. affidavit AND to the state statute(s) that you’re being charged with. The officer CANNOT fail to include an element on the P.C. and subsequently include it in the report. The P.C. MUST contain all elements of the crime. Keep that in mind. Every now and again, a cop will try to pull a fast one and slide that last element into the report. Call him/her on that! That’s shoddy police work and it’s usually indicative of deception. Note any other inconsistencies and exploit them to your benefit.

I hope that this helped you learn a little bit about how you can attack a bad arrest. I hope that this helps you gain at least a little bit of an upper hand against bad cops. If you committed a crime and the officer does his job with integrity and thoroughness, you might be out of gas. However, if there are more holes in the P.C. affidavit than there are in a slice of swiss cheese, use these suggestions to your advantage. There are other defenses specific to certain charges (especially drug charges). Seek legal counsel with regards to those. Empower yourself. Learn. Win.

Stay Safe,

Ofc. O.

Sources - http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1618

http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=59

…and what of Private Bradley Manning?

For those of you who do not know who Bradley Manning is and what his significance is, I invite you to Google his name along with WikiLeaks and peruse the plethora of articles at your leisure. As a law enforcement officer, and a member of the intelligence community (albeit at the lowest level), I would like to address what has happened to this young man.

Forget the security breach. Forget the insubordination. Forget the cross-dressing and homosexuality. Forget the troubled life. Forget the legal violations. When all of the dust settles and all of the smoke clears, there exists one quality that Bradley Manning undoubtedly embodies.

Courage.

The kid has balls. I don’t know very many people in their early 20s who have the guts to pocket a pack of gum and walk out of their local convenience store…much less extract gigabyte after gigabyte of classified U.S. government data and forward it to Julian Assange…not to mention the fact that he stores it on a CD labeled “Lady Gaga.”

Bradley Manning, they couldn’t read your poker face.

Guess what, Bradley…I think that you’re an American hero. Not one representative of the U.S. government has been able to identify one compromised mission due to Bradley Manning’s security breach. Nobody has been able to point to one dead servicemember and say that he or she died because of what Bradley Manning sent to WikiLeaks. Why? It’s because Bradley Manning is more American than George W. Bush or Barack Obama. He did what he did to let everyone know what CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC will not. He’d rather do down in a blaze of glory and blow the whistle on just how dirty the American military/political/governmental machine operates than play it safe like the vast majority of his co-workers. He never intended to cause harm to any of his fellow troops. We know this because he HASN’T caused any harm to his fellow troops!

I’m not saying that a non-whistleblowing servicemember is a coward or a blind follower…not at all! I know many great men and women who have worn a uniform and represented my country impeccably and have never blown the whistle on anything.

I’m simply making the point that it takes a tremendous amount of uncommon courage for Bradley Manning to do what he did. For those of you who call him a terrorist, traitor, etc…take a history lesson. Yesterday’s traitors are today’s heroes (according to our history books). In my opinion, Bradley Manning will be no different. He is an American hero of the rarest kind. The kind who would be willing to face a penalty of death for the sake of exposing and, in essence, fighting tyranny.

Bradley Manning is a beautiful thread in the fabric that America is made of. People like him will keep that fabric from unraveling.

P.S. I haven’t posted in a little while because I am in the process of preparing a podcast! If any of you have any kind of experience with podcasting and what I would need to do (especially in the areas of hosting the files, which format(s) are best, and how to set up the RSS feed, if necessary) please contact me via the Ask box or my yahoo.com e-mail located on my banner. Thank you!

Police brutality….WHY?

Ok…I know I just posted an entry…but for some reason, I feel compelled to briefly write about police brutality and where this idiotic behavior comes from. Let’s see how “brief” I’m able to keep this entry.

Let’s leave the typical dogpile-in-the-inner-city out of this entry (although I will indirectly address this phenomenon)…I’d like to specifically address “riot” situations, or as i’d like to call them “massive excuses for cops to get out of control”.

For those of you who are reading my blog for the first time, my bio/about me section says who I am. I live in this uniform for at least 40 hours a week, and I’ve been trained by some of the best (or worst, depending on your vantage point). With that said, let’s take a quick look at where police brutality originates.

Imagine that you are a cop. If you feel the need to look away from the screen and cringe for a few minutes, feel free to do so. Feel better? Ok, good… You patrol a neighborhood that has a few “problematic” areas for police…but for the most part, you keep your nose clean and your uniform unstained throughout your shift. You are a rookie (less than five years on the job) and you are an obedient, productive, and malleable officer. At the beginning of your shift, you meet your sergeant and squad members for roll call. Your sergeant informs you that you will not be patrolling your typical zone/area/district/precinct/whatever for the day. Instead, a riot is forming and you must respond along with several of your closest co-workers. You suit up with your department-issue riot gear and head out to the scene. You see a crowd of angry, vocal, and animated people. They apparently have a permit to demonstrate here (according to your supervisor) and do not seem to be breaking any laws (other than a possible breach of peace/disorderly conduct type law…but they have the permit, so they’re safe from that). You don’t really care that these people are doing what they’re doing. You’re somewhat indifferent. It’s outside of your patrol area and you don’t live anywhere close to this demonstration. However, you find yourself in the midst of it. The demonstrators are given an illegal order to disperse, and they lawfully refuse. After receiving pressure from local elected officials, the head honcho on scene orders you and the other officers to begin to march forward. Plastic shields, clubs, helmets…the whole nine yards…the protesters seem undaunted, but still nonviolent. As the gap begins to close between you and the protestors, the scene starts to become more real. You’re HERE now…these yelling people are getting closer, and your heart is starting to pump faster. You feel a trickle of adrenaline enter your blood stream and you slowly start to lose your peripheral vision. Your palms sweat as you consider the possible events of the next 90 seconds.

WHAP!!!!

You hear a loud crack to your left as you see one of your co-workers involved in an altercation with a protester. You hear the whoosh of a club behind your head, and your surroundings become soaked with the sounds of a Greco-Roman era battle. All of a sudden, you’re sucked in. You start hitting whatever and/or whoever is in front of you. The next minute is a blur. When you finally become aware of your surroundings again, you realize that you’re still hacking wildly at the crowd with your club. You notice a middle aged woman who reminds you of your high-school biology teacher.

THUD!!!!

Before your brain can make that connection, she gets one across the shoulder. Another protester raises his hands. You cannot process why he is raising his hands. You hit him across his open palm and he drops to the floor in pain.

After four minutes of this onslaught, the protesters are decimated. Those who remain are in need of various levels of medical care, and many of them are in handcuffs. The moans and groans sicken you. Your sergeant approaches you with a bottle of water, raises the plastic sheild on your helmet, and pats you on the back.

“Well, at least we got the brass off of our backs…”

Police officers are much like a herd of cattle. If one stampedes, the rest are forced to. This isn’t because we’re anti-individualistic. It’s because we are trained and conditioned to display a unified front in spite of personal or ideological differences of opinion. However, there is one area where cops will accept a divergent course of action.

Pride. If you insult a cop’s sense of pride, you’re done. Cops deal with crappy vehicles, incompetent supervisors, waning domestic relationships, etc… Sometimes, all that a cop has is his pride. I’m not saying it’s right, and i’m not asking for pity. I’m simply letting YOU know how many of us think. Sometimes the only way to break an officer out of that herd mentality is to either appeal to or attack his or her pride.

I’ll repeat that once more: “Sometimes the only way to break an officer out of that herd mentality is to either appeal to or attack his or her pride.”

USE that! Be innovative. Once you see that phalanx of plastic and rubber coming at you, it just might be too late…but it might not be. I’m not going to go as far as to suggest YOUR courses of action (that’s what that Ask button at the top of the page, and what my e-mail address on the banner is for), but I’m sure that those of us with brilliant, liberated minds can put them to use.

Police brutality stems from the unlikely intersection of the herd mentality and pride. There are very few cops who are truly sadistic. I know that many of you might disagree…but take it from someone who is on the inside…those guys are the exception, rather than the rule…and they usually work alone. 

I was luckily born without any kind of a herd instinct, and I’m more proud of the art that I create outside of work than of the duty that I perform from behind the badge. However, I take my job seriously, I’m still VERY proud of the duty that I perform from behind the badge, and I always strive to help people and to use my position to enlighten people in a unique way. I hope that I was at least able to shed some light on why some of my co-workers do some of the awful things that they do. 

I AM NOT DEFENDING THEM OR THEIR ACTIONS.

I am simply trying to let all of you know what goes through some of their minds when they do what they do. Rise above it. Use your brain. Innovate. Disrupt. Overcome. Emerge Victorious.

Until next time, stay safe.

P.S. Brass = upper level supervisor in police lingo = liaison between city hall (or county hall, State congress/house, etc.) and the rank and file officers.

Why it’s about you, too…

I like it when individuals empower themselves (in general). I’ve met a few people at work that have taken their futures into their own hands and have done something to improve their states of affairs. I have, unfortunately, met many who have not. If I had to characterize the attitude of the majority of my at-work contacts, it would be “convenient indifference”. In other words, it’s easy to do nothing…so that’s what most people do.

Today I’m going to talk about public budget cuts, and how this affects YOU as a free-thinking being in the midst of a cesspool of bureaucracy and imposed authority.

Police departments across the nation are experiencing a significant amount of financial difficulty. Some of it is legitimate, and some of it is artificially fabricated. This has led to a variety of knee-jerk reactions. I heard a story about a department up in New Jersey that fired 100 officers on a Friday. By Sunday afternoon, violent crime in the jurisdiction had almost tripled. All of the officers were promptly hired back by Monday afternoon. All of this supposedly happened several months ago. Violent crime is still up in that area, and the jurisdiction is pumping additional dollars into special details and extra shifts to combat the spike in crime. I do not have a way to cite this story, but it sounds very plausible (if it is indeed fabricated). I can certainly attest (first hand) to the fact that when police are pulled out of a dangerous area and promptly replaced, it takes much longer for crime to return to typical levels than it does for crime to spike in the first place.

Governments loathe people being free. The government, as a general rule, will always seek to regulate, enforce, curtail, oppress, censor or otherwise limit it’s citizentry. It is a default behavior…kind of like water pooling at the lowest available elevation. Countless examples of this, in varying degrees, are easily found throughout history. Why…because it keeps the ruling classes in charge. A combination of satiation, encouraged stupidity/misinformation, and opression are the keys to a fat and happy constituency who wouldn’t dare challenge those in charge.

In today’s day and age, this translates into a society replete with an ever-shrinking pool of corporate media sponsors, reality TV, free WiFi, fleeting constitutional protection of individual liberties, and a federal government that has made the circumvention of checks and balances it’s business-as-usual. What does this mean for you, as a consumer of local public services?

It means that the police are no longer the protected praetorian guard of the wealthiest 1%. In many places across America, the ever evolving powers-that-be have taken it upon themselves to blame cops, firefighters, and other public employees for the current economic downturn. This move to turn public employees into scapegoats has created a very dangerous rift between police and those who we serve…a rift that is widening daily.

This is happening because the general public is buying the crap that is being shoved down their throats. If CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC, or XYZ says that something is true, or (what is even MORE dangerous) if they all AGREE on something being true, then it MUST be true! Many people are saying that this crippling blow to my economic situation is the fault of these public servants…with their secure jobs, group benefits, and unions…screw them.

Luckily some of my friends within the Occupy movement see things a little differently. A group of Occupy protesters down in Atlanta, Georgia have helped to save an Iraq War veteran’s home from foreclosure (see link below). Does this mean that the Occupy movement has gone neo-conservative? Hell no. It means that those incorrigible troublemakers at Occupy Atlanta have identified the distinction between a public servant and the garbage that the public servant takes his or her orders from. There are more examples of this, but this one is the most recent.

My suggestion: Be incorrigible. Be a troublemaker. Piss off those who claim to have your best interest at heart. If you hate the police, fine. You have every right to. But hate us because YOU want to hate us. Don’t hate us because some mass media correspondent told you that we’ve screwed this economy up. Don’t hate us because some elected official came on TV and said that the police are all bad. Unfortunately for guys like me, there is no shortage of fuel for those guys to use to support their rhetoric. I beg you to NOT fall into that trap! Form your own opinions. Shun misinformation. Embrace truth.

Until next time, stay safe.

Sources:

My experience

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/occupy-atlanta-saves-iraq-veterans-home-from-foreclosure_n_1158097.html

Lesson 1: How To Win Against Bad Cops

I honestly do not consider myself to be an elitist. My department and others like it claim to be elitist institutions out of necessity. In other words, they must choose the cream of the crop in order to be the finest of whichever city, county, state, or other arbitrarily defined entity they protect. That, in short, is the origin of phrases like “New York’s Finest” or “Boston’s Finest”. However, when I look among the ranks of those I work with, I find it difficult to believe that these are truly the best people that my area could provide. 

As a nation, we are suffering from a dearth of public support for law enforcement. Those who, if surveyed, would consider themselves to be law abiding citizens are displaying a vehement disdain for those behind the badge. The career criminal element will always hate the police because we disrupt their livelihood. I don’t blame them. I am not particularly fond of those who disrupt my livelihood. The career criminal element and I are simply on different sides of the law, but we share the common bond of being humans on the same wet molten rock that we call the Earth. However, that is a topic for a future entry. For today, we will focus on why people like YOU hate the police and what YOU can do about it.

If you are a career criminal, then I hope that you are reading this on a stolen computer and using an unsecured WIFI network that you don’t pay for (or, even better, you’ve hacked into your neighbor’s WIFI and use it for free). If not, you’re slipping. This article is not specifically directed at you, but please keep reading because you can still benefit from it. For the rest of us who pay for what we have and use, think about why you hate the police. Unfortunately, for some of you, the reason comes to mind very quickly. That unfortunate night on the highway when your right foot weighed a couple of pounds more than it normally does, the day you thought you’d call the camera system’s bluff in the department store, the altercation in line at Wal Mart when you put the other shopper’s head into the impulse-buy candy rack…whatever it might have been. The cop shows up and he or she embodies one of four qualities. The officer was RUDE. The officer was INCOMPETENT. The officer was INEFFECTIVE. The officer was DISINTERESTED.

I read an article today about Deputy Justin Atwood in Larimer County, Colorado. He was assaulted by Donovan James Boggs during a traffic stop and needed help. Enter: Bryan Maglietta. Mr. Maglietta owns a mobile repair service and was working on a car battery while this was happening. Upon hearing the deputy ask for help, Mr. Maglietta rushed over to him and promptly provided assistance. A law enforcement officer and a business owning, tax paying member of the general public worked together to put a cop hater behind bars. Yaaaaaay, right? Wrong. There’s more. Mr. Maglietta knew that deputy already. Mr. Maglietta was incarcerated at the Larimer County Jail and would compulsorily cook meals for Deputy Atwood and the other members of his department. In the article, Mr. Maglietta stated that he was impressed by Deputy Atwood’s courtesy toward the other inmates. “I’ve seen him several times since I was released.  He is always courteous.  He doesn’t treat you like a criminal.” stated Mr. Maglietta.

Deputy Justin Atwood is TRULY one of Larimer County’s finest. Deputy Atwood cares about what he does for a living. He’s a good cop. He is not the type of officer that you would need to worry about.

It does not take much to spot a crappy officer. I was on a call with one about an hour ago. She reminded me of a small child playing cops and robbers. With Down’s Syndrome. And after consuming enough caffeine to power the state of Nebraska. She is a crappy officer and she was rude to decent, law abiding people right in front of me for no reason. I had to leave to handle another call, so I did not get a chance to speak my mind. I instantly lost respect for her, though. I invite you to do the same.

Also remember that most crappy cops are also dumb cops. You can easily learn the law more thoroughly than they do. Learn. Educate yourself. Learning the law is like reading the cliff notes on how to live hassle-free. Cops are not accustomed to meeting people who know the law better than we do. When we hear you use terms like “probable cause”, “lesser and included offense”, and “chain of custody”, we crap our pants. We then know that we have to mind our Ps and Qs. The old adage “knowledge is power” will keep you free and keep bad cops at bay. 

Educate yourself…it’s OUR only hope.

Sources:

My experience as a sworn law enforcement officer

http://lawenforcementtoday.com/2011/12/17/former-inmate-provides-back-up-to-larimer-county-colorado-deputy/