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You’re Not Listening To Me
I’m getting tired of all the so called experts on policing. Whether it’s David French, Radley Balko, or any number of Woke mayors, prosecutors, college professors, the ACLU, and the rest of the usual suspects. I don’t remember any of them wrestling around with me at 0200 hours helping me make an arrest of a suspect that had committed crimes ranging from assaults, vehicular homicide, or any other form of homicide, and robberies.
Some want police officers that are Golden Retrievers and not Belgian Malinois. There are times when you have to be both. I get that videos of arrests that result in violence are disturbing. In a very real way that is good that enough people find it disturbing. I was compassionate when I could be, and I could fight when I had to fight.
One afternoon, I had to become the Belgian Malinois. An information call went out for East Precinct officers from Radio about an individual that would stop his car in front of someone’s front yard. He would get out of the car and walk towards the children, and their parents and display a knife an threatened to stab them. He did this at about three to four different homes.
I found him drifting around the neighborhood in his car. The car matched the description, and he matched the description. I turned on the lights and he pulled over to the curb. When I got up to the driver’s windows Officer Friendly (that’s me) didn’t pretend he was pulled over for a traffic violation. I told him exactly why I stopped him. I asked him if he had a knife in the car. He started to reach under the seat. I pulled my pistol from the holster and pushed the barrel into his left ear. I told him, “You’re not listening to me. I asked you if you had a knife. I didn’t ask you to show it to me.”
I got him out of the car, handcuffed him, searched him, and placed him in the back seat of the car. I found a Bowie knife under the driver’s seat. I called Radio and asked them to have the complainants meet me at their homes. They identified him and identified his knife that I had placed in the trunk of the police car.
I will not apologize for being the Belgian Malinois when I had to be.
Published in Policing
And is the current societal attitude/treatment of cops likely to get us less or more of those types?
Yes, we’re past a point where we can think about reforms. You don’t reform when thugs have a knife at our throats.
Years ago I read an article by a former cop. He put it bluntly and said that 1 in 6 cops is just plain evil. Three in 6 are willing to go along with the 1 in 6 to preserve their jobs and pensions. One in 6 will try to do the right thing and be beaten down by the system One in 6 won’t put up with the system and will leave the force. Of course he put himself in the last group. I have no idea if he was right.
Interesting thought experiment regarding the Chauvin/Floyd incident. What is the probability of getting four bad/incompetent cops at the same incident given a random pick of members of the force and he assumption that 80% of cops are good/competent? Hint: it isn’t high.
I think the Floyd arrest is a good example of your numbers. One was evil (if the allegations are true) and the others were just going along.
George Orwell wrote that pacifists can’t accept the statement, “Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.”, despite it being “grossly obvious.”“Notes on Nationalism”
From this we get the quote, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf,” which was a paraphrase of Orwell, not a direct quote.
Whatever. It’s still right.
Orwell also commented on Kipling’s Tommy, which has a similar sentiment, “making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep”.
Yes, but which ones? It’s like how I swear some people get their only knowledge of law from Night Court reruns.
We should have more capital punishment not less.
Then when the commies get into power, they can’t let them out.
But they’d still vote…
Instapundit, who was against the “militarized police” says he is rethinking his position now.
A little armed insurrection can make a lot of people rethink their positions.
Hopefully.
True
Armed insurrection is a time for the police to assist the National Guard.
So, GSDs and DPs have had family-friendly attributes bred into the bloodlines.
I know only about GSD bloodlines, so I’ll address that. There are “family-friendly” bloodlines. There are working dog bloodlines. Within the working dog bloodlines, there’s a branch called “handler hard.” If you’ve ever seen a military or LE K9 officer pick a working dog up by the scruff of its neck and its tail, and slam it into the ground, that’s a handler hard. To that particular type of dog, being body slammed equals someone saying “No.” They are mission focused furry bullets.
Malinois were beginning to gain in popularity as working dogs in the US just before 9/11. Afterward, the demand for them exploded.
First, their bloodlines were almost exclusively “working dog,” so less time trying to figure out what you’re working with (That’s changing as vets that worked with Mals, and their down-range reputations have increased demand for them as family dogs).
Then, they are (generally) lighter than GSDs with the same amount of power. Lighter means they can jump higher. Lighter means they eat less. Lighter means they are faster.
They are notoriously high energy, though. If I worked out my GSDs for 30-45 minutes, and gave them a good (multi-mile) walk, they could come home and chill. You’ve got to do a lot more to get a Mal to be able to settle itself down.
I’m a GSD guy to the core, but I don’t begrudge the Mals their popularity.
One of my neighbors has an East German Shepherd. It’s a very serious looking animal.
I do not remember who I was listening to, but on the radio today I heard a discussion about police batons/billy clubs. The conversation was about how taking away the baton/billy clubs has left police officers with few options other than guns.
So, all of you commenters who have the experience, what about this? Any truth in it?
I try very, very hard to live my life so that I need as little interaction with law enforcement as possible. It just seems a good way to avoid troubles.
I disagree with just about everything here. The police have not become more militarized. It appears that way to some, but there are situations where “military” looking equipment and tactics must be used. I keep hearing how the police have “tanks.” Every picture of a “tank” is an armored – up, wheeled vehicle. Those vehicles and their armor are necessary for a couple types of situations. One is when an armed person is in something like a building, possibly with hostages, and the decision is to go in. That situation has become too common. The other is things like raids on drug houses. Some of them have been turned into de facto forts, with reinforced steel doors, heavy barred windows, block walls surrounding the house, etc. Stuff like this has become necessary because the bad guys have developed strategies and tactics that require them, Feel free to walk up and knock on the door of such a place, and let them know that they have to come out with their hands up, because you have a warrant for their arrest.
Not enough space to move on to the next issues. Maybe tomorrow.
Wearing military looking equipment and armored vehicles (I know better than to call them tanks) is the very definition of being militarized. We are so used to it that it doesn’t seem that way anymore.
Drug prohibition has done more to encourage organized crime than alcohol prohibition did. If drugs were legal, there would be no need to have armored vehicles. We can’t keep drugs out of society. We can’t keep drugs out of jail. Prohibiting drugs only causes crime waves that requires armored vehicles.
“Militarization” of police is a rational response to the increased violence and volatility of criminals, especially in areas where drug cartels operate. When simply serving a warrant for drug possession is liable to result in deadly attacks on police with automatic weapons body armor and armored vehicles are reasonable.
True.
And service of a no knock warrent just to let you search someplace you cannot get a search warrant is not good police work. Pick them up when they go to the store.
Huh?
A no-knock warrant is a search warrant.
It further needs to stipulate why the police don’t want to knock first.
No, it is a warrant to seize a person. Searching is a side benefit.
Unless someone is holed up, there is no reason to execute a warrant on them this way as it is the most dangerous for all involved.
Pick him up on the street.
And as for the military police storming the compound? That is how you get snipers killing people through windows, and setting fire to cultists and burning children alive
Or kill a harmeless 90 year old woman because you got the wrong house. Or prosocute a man for killing a cop when he thought he had a home invasion. Just don’t do them. I will never support them.
No-knock warrants make absolutely no sense to me either – for these very reasons. It’s just too dangerous for those on both the police and the ones being searched.
So as long as perps stay holed up the police can’t arrest them?
Now, don’t go using logic here. 😁
Roderic,
Ari is right. You know that logic and quoting relevant facts just isn’t playing fair. Here in Woke Wonderland if we say it’s so then it’s so and anybody who questions it is a fascist.
Regards,
Jim
Search warrants are frequently served simultaneously with others involved in the same case, especially in drug cases. You don’t want anyone kicking off a chain of phone calls allowing evidence to be destroyed or suspects to make themselves scarce.
No, they get regular search warrants.
Look, if you’re looking for easy answers, you’re going to have to keep looking because I don’t have any. On the one hand, you may never be able to get some perps – for whatever reason, maybe they destroyed the evidence before they opened the door or maybe they never leave and never answer the door. I don’t know. On the other hand, you have the distinct possibility of breaking into the wrong house and/or having innocent people (police or residents) being shot because the homeowner thinks thugs are breaking in and decides to defend himself. It seems to me the chances of that last scenario are extremely high in some places, given all the rioting and looting that’s been going on.
So what should we do? Honestly, I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all decision. I strongly lean against no-knock warrants because I don’t like the idea of innocent people being terrified and/or killed when they didn’t have to be. But I won’t deny the fact that there may be some extreme situations where one might be called for. On the whole, though, they don’t make sense to me. They’re just too risky for everyone.
How a warrant is served depends upon the crime that has, or is still being committed. The vast majority of warrants are for Failure To Appear (FTA). Non-violent offenders will sometimes turn themselves in after being contacted by their attorney.
There are reasons to take a door off the hinges to execute a warrant on a violent felon at 0300 hours. You don’t want to get into a gunfight in a supermarket parking lot, when kiddies are getting on, or off the school bus in the line of fire. Nor when people are on their driveway’s coming home from work, or going to work.
That is not logic.
I did not say you cannoy go to his house.
Knock.