And no… I’m not a cynic, just observant and honest (which means I’d never make it as a repug either) 😉 😆

You aught to know by now hipparchia dear that only the good people pay for the sins of the evil ones. 🙂

This country is no more violent than it ever was, outside of a few large cities, but the police have become paranoid.

though to be fair, it’s probably all the paramilitary training [and equipment] they’re getting these days. the automatic assumption that the other guy is out to kill you is more a feature than a bug on the battlefield; bart stations, not so much.

i dunno bryan, once was in alabama, the other in louisiana.

keeping the peace [i notice the term ‘peace officer’ doesn’t get used much these days] and de-escalation are lost arts. i’ve been through an abbreviated verion of gerbil voodoo training, and yeah, it seems to be used mostly as a going-through-the-motions excuse to ramp up to full force as quickly as possible.

hipparchia´s last blog post..

My solution was to use the state form, and then break things out in the internal code to produce the Fed report. This involve sitting down with the damn Penal Law of NY and plugging crimes into the Federal slots.

You’re right about cops today being unwilling to make contact with the public. They have switched from the metal fence to plexiglass in the patrol cars, and other forms of separation. Hell, I have seen a cop use any of the standard “come along” holds in so long that they must not teach them anymore. If you are not going to make contact, you are not going to control the situation.

I see no evidence of the standard practice of stepping up to the level of force required, they immediately jump to the top of the pyramid, but then I was always more in favor of keeping the peace than enforcing laws, because we had/have a lot of stupid laws on the books.

Regarding the cops, what amazes me today is that so many of today’s cops are so obviously scared. They don’t reach for their tasers because they’re sadists. They reach for their tasers because they’re scared shitless of the civilians they’re supposed to be dealing with.

I swear, the old meat-headed paddies of my youth might have been sometimes brutal and not at all concerned with the niceties of the law when it came to dishing out justice as they saw it, but at least they weren’t scared shitless of the public they were supposed to be serving and protecting. Which meant that they could come into a situation without automatically escalating it, and resolve things like fights and such without having to taser everybody involved and haul them off in a paddy wagon in flexicuffs. Those old-timers had stones that clanged. Today’s ball-less wonders…. you even give them a mean look, and ZAPP! “Your honor, the suspect scared me!” Err… marshmallows, dudes. Marshmallows, I said. Ain’t nothin’ clangin’ there, that’s for sure.

– Badtux the Cop Shop Penguin

Badtux´s last blog post..I believe in parent’s rights!

Naturally the software does not match the forms that are being entered, so there is no flow to the work, and the paper must be retained and available by law.

I wrote a system [CICS – Cobol for a 360] at my department, and we didn’t have a major problem, but few departments have anyone with any actual experience on the job to write an RFP, much less write the code. Most departments get stuck with the cookie-cutter crap put out by a vendor that doesn’t seem to work effectively for anyone.

The level of paranoia today about getting touched by civilians is amazing, Hipparchia. I would suggest you try it again, especially down here. At least you don’t get as much pollution of the crime scenes as people wear gloves for fear of aids.

Hmmm… Unless you are a Democrat that is. Repugs can get away with murder apparently, or torture… or anything they like.

I may have caused the Police some grief (though it wasn’t my fault they went way too far), but My superiors at DIO made my life hell for awhile after! They did their own thorough internal investigation of course, and while they found that I hadn’t committed any crime, I’d been stupid and if I ever did anything like that ever again, I’d be expunged! (They have no sense of humor either and don’t suffer fools at all well… at least, fools that make it obvious to anyone they are a fool!) 😆 *shrug* I still believe I was completely within my rights and had a moral obligation to peruse the course I’d chosen. Still, the *way* I did it was probably not the best. I was still young and a tad naive about the *way things are done* back then. My boss told me that the next time I get a suicidal urge to *do the right thing* to check with him first or he’d hang me out to dry. Nice to get support from one’s superiors, isn’t it? 😉