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The Good Cop Get Donut; The Bad Cop Get No Donut
Polls are very popular on Ricochet. One of my favorites was “Which ten albums would you take with you if you were to be stranded on a deserted island?” or something like that. My first thought was to ask where the electricity is coming from to power the CD player?
So in light of the Bad Cop, No Donut essays I thought I would offer another poll: what laws are valid and need to be enforced, and-or what laws need not be enforced? When should an officer respond to a call for service and when should an officer decline a call for service?
I have some personal experience with these questions. One night, I pulled-over someone for making a left turn on a street that had a prominent “No Left Turn” sign posted at that intersection. The driver of the BMW was pretty snotty; BMW and Prius owners usually have attitudes (anecdotal evidence). I was informed by the driver I should be looking for burglars. I told him that the last burglar I caught told me I should be looking for people making illegal left turns (half true: I did catch one the week before, but he said no such thing).
The driver demanded the phone number to the mayors office, so — being a helpful police officer — I gave him the phone number. A week later a Sergeant said; “Watt, I need to talk to you for a moment. Do not give anyone the phone number to the mayors office.” Apparently the mayor did not want to hear from his constituents, at least not that one.
If you decide to participate in this poll you might want to read this New York Times piece on the Supreme Court decision in a Colorado case of whether police have an obligation to respond to calls for service:
Published in GeneralThe appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman’s pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.
…
The theory of the lawsuit Ms. Gonzales filed in federal district court in Denver was that Colorado law had given her an enforceable right to protection by instructing the police, on the court order, that “you shall arrest” or issue a warrant for the arrest of a violator. She argued that the order gave her a “property interest” within the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s due process guarantee, which prohibits the deprivation of property without due process.
But the majority on Monday saw little difference between the earlier case and this one, Castle Rock v. Gonzales, No. 04-278. Ms. Gonzales did not have a “property interest” in enforcing the restraining order, Justice Scalia said, adding that “such a right would not, of course, resemble any traditional conception of property.”
Although the protective order did mandate an arrest, or an arrest warrant, in so many words, Justice Scalia said, “a well-established tradition of police discretion has long coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes.”
Was it on Burnside? Because as everybody knows:
Here’s something I’ve never been able to understand: I know people, including myself, who have received citations for such offenses as speeding, rolling through a stop sign, not wearing a seatbelt, using a phone while driving, making an illegal turn, carrying a load in an unsafe manner, driving with an expired emissions sticker, etc., etc. Some of these are more serious offenses; others less so. However, there are some offenders who don’t seem to ever receive any citations or suffer any consequences. I’m talking about owners of cars and motorcycles with straight pipes that producing roaring engine sounds far above the legal limit.
I used to live on an eighth-floor apartment in Manhattan, and every night motorcycles would roar up 3rd Avenue, keeping me awake. Think for a moment about the thousands upon thousands of residents whose sleep can be disturbed by a lone idiot on a crotch rocket. How does one know that these offenders get off scot-free? The proof is this: that they exist at all! Not only do they exist, but they announce with impunity their lawbreaking over a multi-block radius!
The way the system should work is this: (1) Officer hears load vehicle; (2) officer stops loud vehicle; (3) officer tests loud vehicle with decibel meter; (4) driver is deprived of the right to operate the motor vehicle until it passes a sound inspection.
It is obvious that the system doesn’t work. People would not pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for loud custom exhaust systems if it was well-known that there would be consequences. I’m not allowed to drive a vehicle that doesn’t pass an emissions inspection. Why should these inconsiderate, arrested-development jerks get to drive vehicles that don’t conform to sound statutes?
I hear your frustration; I used to live in a fourth floor apt on West End Avenue and had to have soundproof glass installed in my bedroom window so I could sleep. Frankly, though, this isn’t something with which we should bother busy police officers. Why not put the onus on the manufacturers to produce vehicles incompatible with straight pipes?
After all, I’m forced to wear a seat belt in my car whether I want to or not and the manufacturers have now made it impossible to disable that annoying audio reminder. (My regular mechanic told me he would risk receiving a fine for even attempting to do what he has done to my cars for years.)
When I was a kid, during the summer I’d sleep right next to the open window (we didn’t have air conditioning). Often enough I’d hear a motorcycle vibrating in the distance and I’d listen until it faded away off into some romantic connection to lived life itself. Those were pleasant, restful nights.
That sounds horrible. I would prefer not to extend that into other areas of life if at all possible.
I’m guessing you don’t know much about engines. This is pretty well impossible. Seatbelt alarms are different, they’re wired into the car’s ECU and data lines. However, exhaust manifolds are a part that bolts right to the engine block. No matter how you shape the exhaust ports on the heads, anyone could just fabricate a new metal piece to bolt in and run that right out the back.
Also, noise levels from exhausts are tricky things. It’s amazing how loud you can be while still under the legal limit. The problem is amplified, as it were, if you live in a crowded city as the taller buildings trap the sound, but out in suburban areas that same exhaust is no issue at all.
You’re not wrong of course but I resent that car owners are over-regulated and the Easy Riders are not! :)
This is true. I remember being in a pretty built up section of some Californian city when a whole group of guys on Harleys pulled up. The noise was deafening due to the buildings around. Now about noise in theory you could probably sense back-pressure and shut the engine off, but then again that could probably be circumvented pretty easily.
Right you are; I am hardly an engineer but was merely letting off a little steam about noise pollution both on the streets and inside my car.
Let’s have a chat about lawn blowers next. :)
There’s also the nuisance factor. A seatbelt alarm won’t prevent you from starting a vehicle or operating it (this was tried briefly from 74-76, but the howls of plebes forced it to be undone due to sensor failures and mass revolt). Thus the sensor is merely an annoyance.
Any law forbidding tampering with this or that on a vehicle would run the same problems if it also threatened to disable a vehicle. Right now the motor vehicle laws may forbid certain practices, but the vehicles won’t interdict you, that’s the job of law enforcement. Otherwise you put the auto makers in a liability bind – suppose your exhaust system sensor has a failure while you are going to work? Now you’re stuck because of some sensor a bureaucrat mandated.
I am not so sure. There are already ignition interlock devices and there is talk of cameras that will sense BAC, distracted driving, and drowsy driving and either warn you or safe the car and shut it down. All it will take is a few more years of technological advance and another transportation secretary like LaHood and we will probably be there.
Or on a brighter note by 2025 it may be that you get into the car, the car note your BAC, and the car will say “go to sleep buddy” and drive you home.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Noise is a constant complaint in the bar district where I work, which is sandwiched between two residential neighborhoods. Some time ago, the City got a decibel meter for our unit to help address this. The problem is, in order to get an accurate reading that would stand up in court, the meter had to evaluate a consistent level of sound for about ten seconds. This proved to be surprisingly difficult even for a bar with loud music.
With vehicles it’s even worse. Most excessive engine noise comes when the engine is revved (this is especially true with motorcycles). So merely pulling a vehicle over and using a decibel meter on the base engine noise wouldn’t be effective, unless the decibel threshold in the law were set harshly low. You would need to monitor about ten seconds of engine revving. Perhaps one of the Rico-lawyers would know more, but it seems to me that pulling someone over and requiring them to rev their engine for ten seconds so it could be monitored for noise violations invokes some due process issues.
While I’m sure that some nanny state like California or New York will attempt to force things like BAC sensors (and there have been legislators already trying to mandate such things), I would expect the effort to backfire rather quickly as the costs escalate the things inevitably fail.
We use decibel meters at work to monitor some equipment – check to see if employees have to wear ear protection, etc. The variation in readings is immense and varies with distance, angle of the meter to the equipment, other background noise, etc.
It was on NW 21st, or NW 23rd, the trendy area where the hipsters and yuppies shop.
Ahhhh you were dealing with THAT kind of Portlander. Makes perfect sense.
In the interest of full disclosure I could be not so Officer Friendly. I personally liked excessive noise from a revved engine. Sometimes I would sit at an intersection where I could see both sets of traffic lights cycle from from green to yellow and then to red. I made sure the lights were cycling correctly and then I’d be ready to work. Nothing beats seeing a light go to yellow and then hearing an engine rev from a car that was three blocks from the light. The kind of car that had a tailpipe as big as a coffee can. The sound you would hear was like someone had kicked over a beehive. I’d watch them blast through the red light, pull them over, and then hear; Officer I couldn’t stop in time and didn’t want to slide through the intersection. My reply was; Do you think you could have stopped in time if you weren’t exceeding the speed limit? Silence and then a citation.
Yeah, the one where some grumpy neighbor calls the cops to complain about me shooting off fireworks at 9 pm on Saturday night, July 5th…. Me and about 2,000 others….
Wait, that was you?! ;)
Cops can develop a very weird sense of humor, it is a coping mechanism as well as a result of seeing some very absurd behavior. Tragedy and mayhem also plays a part in sarcasm. I was no different. The following essay comes from a blog called “Cop Thoughts”. He makes no apologies but offers an explanation for his sense humor which I have summarized.
Is it wrong to call about this? There are a lot of loud noises in my not great neighborhood. I try to debunk them as something else, but I have called I believe twice in the last 8 years concerning noises that sounded a lot like gunshots.
It is not wrong to call about this. If you have called twice in eight years you are not overreacting. The humor in the post is like inside baseball. People will call 9-1-1 saying there is a fight. What they are really calling about is a loud party. There is no fight, but they believe they will get a faster response if they report a fight or gunshots.
Ok, guilty as charged.
Doug; Would you and your wife consider moving to SW Florida? Appears as if you have a handle on the situation down here.
Just a small personal note. My wife’s dad came from North Dakota. Her relatives on her mom’s side farmed in Minnesota and Nebraska. We were teasing each other tonight while preparing dinner and she finally said; “Aw geese Doug.” She sounded just like Margie in the movie Fargo. We both laughed. Fargo is one of my favorite movies. It is a morality play. Small town female cop overcomes evil. The end of the movie is perfect. Margie lectures a stone cold killer as he sits in the back seat of her car. Great movie.