Minor rant on police traffic stop

[matt819]

4:00 on Monday afternoon (end of July 4th weekend). Small town in New England, state highway, town cop - my town. I'm heading west, cop facing east. Road not busy in either direction, but there is some traffic.

As I pass the cop, he turns his lights on and does a U-turn but does not speed up or close the distance with me. I don't know whether he's after me or has been called out for something. It dawns on me that he wants me to stop and I slow down after a bit and wait for there to be a little more room on the side of the road, so it's safe for both of us, then I stop.

He stops, takes his sweet time - about 5 minutes - and then approaches me on the passenger side. He asks why I didn't stop, why I was going 53 in a 40 mph zone, and did I know I had a headlight out.

I explained as I observed above. He didn't give a damn. I told him I thought it was a 50 mph zone and he storms - that's the only word I can use to describe it - back to his car. Another 5-7 minutes pass and he returns and asks me to get out of the car, which I do. He repeats his questions. I gesture to the road and explain, again, that I wanted to stop safely. He tells me to stop waving my hands in his face - I wasn't - and that he thought I was going to run. He then reiterated that I was speeding. It turns out he stopped me about 100 yards short of the speed change. The long and short of it is that he gave me a warning - including the headlight, which I wasn't required to have on anyway at 4 in the afternoon. I wouldn't have minded any of it but for two things. He did not at any point acknowledge that he recognized me - He's been to my house (I called about a dead bird when there were threats of bird diseases), and I see him at town meeting and at the town offices periodically, and I was less than a mile from my house, and, of course, he had the address on my license. Next, he was nasty, seemingly for the sake of being nasty. If he stopped me because of concern for my safety - which he claimed - that didn't come across. And he refused to acknowledge my concern for his safety - and mine - by stopping when it was safe to do so.

What I think pissed me off more than anything else was the sense of superiority rather than one, not of subservience, but of service to the community. Basically, he was a dick, and I've been fuming about it for several days.

Now, for all you pro-police sorts out there, I'm not anti-police. I'm glad they're there. They perform a valuable service, and one for which I am grateful. But I do know the difference between "serve and protect" and "dickhead." I've been stopped previously for both warnings and tickets, and I was treated with professionalism, respect, and just enough humanity to make me comfortable. This guy certainly didn't step over the line, but he sure did piss me off.

Rant over. All's well that ends well. And a stitch in times saves 9.

[jp11]

1. 'Serve and protect' doesn't include you or me it is about the law and the system

we may fall under the umbrella of them doing their jobs and benefit from that but we are not the primary focus.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Are you saying that's how it is or how it ought to be?

[jp11]

14. That's how it is.

[NHLrocks]

3. I am going to school to be a police officer.

And I'm currently interning for the city police in my hometown.
All I really want to say is that some officers are just like that and some just got done dealing with an asshole.
It all depends on when you talk to them and what has happened to them on their shift.

[tkmorris]

6. It shouldn't depend on that at all

Look, we all have assholes to deal with. It happens in every line of work. And when it does most of us have to deal with the next person as if none of it happened. If you let it get to you in retail you are fired. If you let it get to you in an office setting, you'll get fired. Policework should be no different in this regard, in fact the standards should be correspondingly HIGHER, because the trust the public places in them grants them a much higher potential to abuse that position. Members of the police force should be absolutely unshakable in their devotion to public service, and beyond reproach in their moral character.

Unfortunately this is not the case.

[LostinVA]

13. They are public servants and there is no excuse for what you just wrote

Those if us who are also public servants, and intercat with the public, don't get to act like dicks. Or, if we do, we have to pay the piper. Cops doing it is so much worse, and you know it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Son I did EMS for ten years

and treating my customers depending on my call pattern would be enough to fire myself.

I got family who retired from law enforcement, and this is unacceptable.

I will tell you what I used to tell my kids...

Treat each person as if they are your mother, but be weary in case they want to kill you.

[Canuckistanian]

17. Soemone with the power to arrest you shouldn't behave like that

It a matter of professionalism. We all have to deal with assholes.

It's the true professional who knows how to deal with people and rises above the abuses of others. You NEVER let one bad customer influence your behavior to another.

This is more than just good advice for cops. They can ruin whole lives with sudden, impulsive actions.

[1monster]

20. No excuse. In every job I've had, I have had to deal with real jerks, some who

made me literally tremble with the viciousness of their behavior.

And I had to act with professionalism with a smile toward the next person I dealt with.

If a police officer cannot rein in his/her peevishness or his anger, then he/she has no business being a police officer.

[tkmorris]

4. All too common these days

I do wonder though, since you say he must have recognized you. Do you think he was acting this way towards for some personal reason, or do you think this is just in general how he carries out his duties?

[bemildred]

5. He was very unprofessional.

It's all too common. Cops have a legal monopoly on force and that entails a responsibility to act like grownups ALL THE TIME.

[asdjrocky]

7. You didn't pull over the very second he hit the lights.

Authority is everything to cops.

[RamboLiberal]

9. Depends on the cop

If I'm getting pulled over I will slow down put my flashers on if I feel it is an unsafe place to stop.

I hate as a driver when I come upon some idiot driver and cop who are pulled over on the road for a ticket in a way that could cause a crash.

One time I got the flashers behind me on a long bridge. I didn't pull over till I got on the ramp. The cop didn't even question it and in fact gave me a break and let me out of the ticket. (Stop sign in a podunk town where I would've never expected one - on a main street for a dead end alley - ticket trap). I think my german shepherd type dog wagging her tail in the back seat at the nice officer is why he let me off and that I was patronizing the local vet in the town.

[KurtNYC]

10. +1

the safe thing to do is pull over and don't piss them off

[RamboLiberal]

8. Sometimes you get the good ones and sometimes you get the pissy ones

If he has a superior it might be worth complaining about depending on the attitude of the chief.

I had a chance to meet my town's police chief at a townhall last month. He actually apologized if any of his guys have a bad attitude and explained why they might at times. And asked us to let him know so he could talk to the officer.

I've had a few pissy encounters but most have been polite. Even the one time I got a little pissed at the cop.

[Tesha]

11. Your cop reports to somebody. Find out who, and have a nice polite chat with them.

Chief of police, mayor, police commissioner, somebody is in charge.

Discuss the incident with them, but be polite and well-controlled.

Tesha

[SunnySong]

12. Have a beer with the Chief of Police... seriously.

I had to complain about a cop who was both an asshole and a liar. I explained to the chief what a liability he clearly was a few months later he was let go on a disability due to PTSD from Iraq... and I am not kidding when I say the chief appreciated a calm informational heads up.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Several things

1.- Here in Cali doing what you did is actually accepted. Ok, this is a larger city... but it's been in the courts, and the courts have found that yes you have a right to find a safe place to stop. I am giving this as a header since I would not be shocked if your state has similar matters, and you might be able to find that out in a legal library. Use that as part of your complaint as it were.

2.- Not justifying this guy, but he might have been pissed that this was the fourth of July or had a bad day. No, not professional but take this post, clean it up, (edit it for clarity) and file a complaint with the department.

3.- What he gave you was a fix it ticket, for the headlight... do take care of that one.

4.- Yours is a small town... perhaps making an appointment with the Chief, as others have told you, is a good idea. Reality is, they can't fix what they don't know is broken. And in the US, in general, it is easier to do that.

[City of Mills]

18. "Small town in New England, state highway, town cop"

There you go. Wouldn't be NH by any chance? I find small town NH cops to be total pricks (in general). It's like they don't have any real crime and they need to exert their power over anything they can. I live over the border in MA and have family in NH, and I drive like a nun. In one town in particular, I stop for a full three seconds at every stop sign, because I once got pulled over for 'rolling through' in a rural area. The cop also mistook my cologne for alcohol on my breath(?). I live in a large city and the cops have never hassled me, and in fact they are friendly and personable.

[matt819]

24. Bingo

To other posters - thanks for listening. By the way, this was the chief.

Yes, this is NH. And you're right. My child is a student at a NH college and was stopped by a cop in a nearby small town. The parking sticker was a giveaway as to my child's status. To make a long story short, he went to court to contest the ticket. Who was there? Almost all other students.

Not all are pricks, though, and I'm happy to admit that. When I first moved here and hadn't yet registered my car in the state, I was stopped by a cop in another town (small, but not as small as mine). He told me he'd stopped me because I had an expired out of state registration. I told him, truthfully, that I had an appointment the next day to have the car inspected, after which I would register it. He asked me where, and I told him. He then went to confirm the appointment. Came back with a pleasant smile and sent me on my way. As I wrote before, I'm fine with safety and security, serve and protect. But you can do that without being a dick.

[Odin2005]

19. Asshole on a power trip.

[NHLrocks]

21. we are only getting one side of the story. I would need to hear the officer first before

I make any more judgments.

[matt819]

25. Fair enough

There is no question that he would have described the incident differently. What a shock. We are in a he said/she said black/white world now. No nuance. It's like reading posts on Huffington Post or even here at DU. I have my views, which are damn near intractable, and the other side has its views, which are equally intractable. Or, regarding this stop, I have my version of events, the cop had his. I was almost hoping I'd get a ticket, so I could contest it and request the dashboard camera to support my view of events.

As I said, though, it's a minor rant. I didn't get a ticket. No one died. Life goes on. I was just pissed.

[MrScorpio]

22. Yep, you never know when an interaction with a cop will become nasty

And quite a few times, you don't have to do anything bad at all.

[MajorChode]

23. I had a very similar incident that happened to me

The situation was basically the same except I had been pulled over for speeding on the highway when I had my cruise control set exactly to the speed limit, so I knew the officer was in error. He basically kept quizing me on my speed and he became progressively agitated when I wouldn't admit to speeding. The discussion got more and more heated until I was pretty sure I was going to jail. The end result was he wrote me a warning (I believe because he figured out he might have been in error).

I filed a formal complaint with the chief of police. The only response I received was that they would handle the situation with appropriate measures(whatever that means). The bottom line is there is no reason why you shouldn't expect good service from a public official. Providing feedback to their management helps to insure that happens.