Now ye're talking - to a US police officer

Gang,

We seem to have hit the end of the questions. I'll suggest we keep this open for a few more days, but if there is no more interest, it'll be time to put this to bed.

Stay safe out there,

Anything to add to this? Seems a bit mental
In 2019 to think you can do this and no fallout from it.

PR fail!!! This was in Galveston, TX (on the TX Gulf coast) from what I recall. Apparently this was/is a Galveston PD routine way for the mounted patrol to move prisioners but the optic is beyond painful, even if it wasn’t a minority. I mounted patrol officer I knew here told me they did this once in the very early days and they were told just get a paddy wagon and do it right. As someone points out on the board, he was compliant & under control and one account says he was a know repeat offender. But still, it may be right but you’ll get hammered in the press as we are seeing. I think it was just a bad idea in the 21st century to lead anyone by a rope with a horse. And I'm willing to bet, they are frantically rewriting their protocols and won't be doing this any more. Dopes!

Great insight into your job and what's involved in it. AGS always had a perception of either knowing someone to get you off a ticket or pull for a promotion. This has changed and it's a different police force now. Have you come across nepotism in your role?

Not to the extent I perceive from AGS. I’ve always heard of the culture of the getting “taken care of”. I think we had that too to one extent or another, especially in times past. A quick call & a ticket got lost or the officer never went to court. Like in AGS, that’s more or less gone now from what I can tell. With the prevalence of computers recording everything even traffic tickets, its hard to makes things “go away” as there is a permanent record which is very difficult to delete. Our promotions are handled by exams and interviews, so again, it’s hard to get around that by just knowing someone. I can’t speak for other agencies, and I’d be willing to bet some of the smaller ones may be more “traditional” shall we say. A mate who used to work for a small university PD told me a few tales of certain staff how had tickets torn up sort of thing, so it does happen. This was a force of 20 officers working directly for the university. Like a lot of these small agencies, they want all the good of having their own cops, but not the other side of the coin that goes with it.

If You were offered a position in 'Internal Affairs' would you take it up? As an add on to this, what’s the general opinion of officers in IA and how they’d be viewed by regular officers.

I wouldn’t be opposed to IA personally, although I sense from talking to them, it’s pretty dull. They investigate every complaint & gripe against us, a lot of which is just petty stuff, people annoyed because they got a ticket or don’t like how we handled a call. The of “I’ll show him, I’m filing a complaint” sort of thing. Our IA also reviews all use of force incidents, again, most of is within the rules. Where I work there isn’t a real issue with them, more of “it’s just an assignment no one really wants” sort of thing. My few interactions with them have been fine, professional, just doing their jobs. It’s a necessary part of policing and has to be done. Talking to officers from other agencies though, it seems to vary from place to place. My NYPD buddy tells me they have more of the old school “IA are rats” mentality which is a shame. When I hear that, I point to some of the scandals and ask “so, tell me why we don’t need IA & defend this guy taking bribes or whatever”, needless to say you get the “well that was different” response, yeah right. Again, there is a perception from the media that over sensationalizes this sort of thing, that every day cops are getting bags of money from the cartels and so on. as with most things, its much more mundane. A TV show about a portly, balding IA detective just watching traffic stop videos, writing reports and doing a few interviews probably wouldn't get past the script writing part. Are there corrupt cops, sure, we're in the people business, I just hope they get caught.

Well the mass shootings have certainly changed how we do business in many ways. When the Columbine School shooting the SOP was patrol contained the scene and waited for SWAT. This cost may students their lives sadly. Now we are trained to "stop the killing" by entering and attacking the shooter. The shooting an Dayton, Ohio was a great example. Patrol officers responded and had shot him in something like less than a minute which probably saved lives. Now it's not uncommon for patrol units to carry a rifle of some sort with extra magazines of ammo to counter the active shooter threat and we usually do an annual active shooter drill as part of training. We also all now are required to carry a tourniquet on our belt in the event we take a round.

As cops, we've always been reasonably vigilant due to the higher incident of gun crime in the US, but now we are more vigilant than even before. If I'm writing a report in my car, I'll always try and have another officer parked up beside me or I park in safe spot where I can keep an eye on things around me. At restaurants etc. we always sit with our backs to a wall and where we can see the doors, and we just have a heightened awareness there is a greater threat out there. All in a days work, right?