' Instead of enjoying Father's Day with his daughter, Nick Struck spent the day thinking about the little girl he held in his arms, moments after she lost her dad in a car accident. The Brighton, Colorado, police officer was called into action Thursday when he arrived at the scene of a car accident, which left one man dead and a woman and four children injured. One of the children, a hysterical 2-year-old girl, was handed off to Struck by another first-responder in hopes of calming her down. "My first thought was that this could've been my daughter, who is also 2 years old," Officer Struck told TODAY.com. So he handled the situation accordingly. "Whenever my daughter falls down or gets hurt, I scoop her up and start singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' and by the time we get to 'up above,' she stops crying and starts singing along," Struck said. .... MORE AT http://www.today.com/parents/heroic...r-father-dies-t27926?cid=par-huffpost-gravity _________________________________________________________ Sometimes the police do nice things, so thought I would give this guy a shout out. I also saw an officer changing the tire on a SUV along the side of the highway while two women, one with a baby looked on. Kind of unusual as they usually make you call a wrecker if you cannot do it yourself.
He did a really good thing, he should be congratulated. Lots of cops do really good things. And the same cops - not referring to this officer - do things that range from a bit bad, to bad, to bloody stupid, to bloody well outrageous to criminal. It's the way of things. Anyway, he did good and deserves praise. So does the cop changing the tyre.
I think it's good for cops to remember most citizens are good people, and citizens to remember most cops are good people but I think when either behaves badly they should be punished for such behavior ... and that does not mean be given paid holidays, that is not a punishment .
to protect & serve This should be more than a convenient motto - it should be a form of daily practice.
If only all people. But I think that's an unrealistic hope. Cops are human, some will have bad days. Some will be bad men. Tipping our hats and offering encouragement to the ones that do right by society might help produce a few more good ones or encourage the good ones we have to stick around longer.
Since cops are given so much authority, such great latitude to use force, and have so little oversight, cops should not be permitted to have "bad days". Because of their power, cops must be held to a higher standard. A bad day for a secretary is some spilled coffee and late paperwork. A bad day for a cop is the death or disability of an innocent person, a life ruined, a family destroyed.
Cops should be held to a high standard, and are. But if you expect perfection, you're going to be disappointed. ... and no, not every mistake ends up with a death. You've been watching too many movies.
I did not say every mistake a cop makes ends in death, but death, disability, or a ruined life. If a cop gets pissed at an innocent person, arrests that person on a trumped up charge such as "resisting" or "assaulting a cop", that persons life is damaged forever. Even if the charges are dropped and the victim totally exonerated, the charges will still show up on internet searches and background checks and often that is enough to mean not being hired, not getting a security clearance, not getting a promotion, even getting fired/dismissed. That's beyond the personal trauma of being completely innocent and still getting abused by a cop, having to go to jail until first presence before a judge for bail, posting bail, having to get a lawyer, and the worry over your future - and it is trauma to the victim and his/her family, people that go through that are never the same, they never trust cops or the "justice" system again. I don't expect perfection out of cops, but I definitely expect cops to strongly police themselves and to have a zero tolerance policy for all abuse of their position. I expect cops to be the most critical of other cops because they should be held to a very high standard. But they don't police themselves, the go to great lengths to cover for each other, even to the point of lying and harassing witnesses.
Yes, there are plenty of good cops. Here is the flip side which seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Charnesia Corley, a 21-year-old black woman, said officers with the Harris County Sheriff's Department on June 21 held her down at a store parking lot and searched her vagina for pot without consent. "I feel like they sexually assaulted me," Corley told ABC 13's Kevin Quinn. "I really do. I feel disgusted, downgraded, humiliated." The sheriff's office said it stopped Corley for allegedly running a stop sign, and initiated the search — with consent, the department claims — after smelling marijuana. Deputies ultimately found 0.02 ounces of pot, which is barely enough for the average joint.
If that happened it is felony sexual assault (rape). There is no legal provision that a police officer may rape a woman if she has marijuana.
the solution to evil cops: if there are any principled conservatives on this forum they will heartily agree
So here is the deal, Cops are given great power, they are given great latitude to use force because we ask them to rush to situations others are running from. Too much over sight causes the smart person to see the peril and decide not to go into the line of business. Too little and those with a lack of moral values take over. It is a very tough position to balance. Beyond laws, rules and regulations controlling LEOs actions there is also no shortage of lawyers more than happy to take cases of misuse of power or more succinctly civil rights violations willing to sue the department and the individual officers. I think there are adequate safe guards in place to protect against most abuses but nothing will be perfect. Military ROE are another perfect example of what happens when you try to over control the actions of our soldiers from a cubicle in the pentagon or the Oval Office.
Conservatives have been in control of the USA since Reagan stole the White Wash House in 1980. None of them have ever attempted to arm the citizenry against police and government brutalism. In fact your hero Reagan signed the Mulford Act ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act ) and supported the Brady bill.
True, its difficult to create laws and rules to regulate cops behavior. The solution is to hire people who can think quickly and understand the role of the police, train them, and have an environment in which the attitude is to protect and serve. And when a cop is abusive, incompetent, or commits a criminal act, he should be punished. Its critical that cops should not tolerate cops who abuse their position.
Well my questions would be, what kind of people do you think they hire and what kind of training do you think they receive now, also how many cops do you think tolerate other bad cops? Just trying to understand why you made make your assertions.
My assertions are based on the cases in which cops clearly either abuse their authority or make an egregious mistake, and receive the full protection of their police department and are not punished. There are many such cases, but 2 examples I often use are: 1 - the killing of 7 year old Aiyana Jones on 26 May 2010 (Detroit), in a no-knock SWAT raid in which a cop burst in the front door and "accidentally" shot the sleeping Jones in the head. The cops rallied around the shooter and created a story to shift blame on the childs grandmother first claiming the grandmother grabbed the cops arm, then changing to say the grandmother "brushed the cop", even though the grandmother was sleeping on the other side of the room when the cops burst in. The shooter was not convicted of anything. 2 - the murder of John Crawford who was shopping in Walmart on 5 August 2014, who was falsely reported by a 911 caller as threatening people with a rifle. Crawford was buying a BB gun. Cops found him talking on his cell phone, the BB gun was pointed down, the cops yelled at Crawford and immediately shot him. It was all caught on video. The investigating DA stated Crawford had done nothing wrong, had broken no law. The killer cop was never charged or convicted of anything. In these 2 cases, cops deliberately killed 2 innocent non-threatening people, and suffered no consequences. If a non-cop had been in the exact same circumstances, that person would have been convicted of multiple crimes. If cops were serious about upholding the law, then abuses and accidents would be treated according to the law. Because the cop "thought" he was in danger is not an excuse. In fact, cops should want to hold themselves to a higher standard as a way of demonstrating their respect for the community and honoring the high trust and power placed in their hands.
