Apparently its cool to get hammered & attempt to steal a car while armed if you are a cop?
It’s bad enough that he was drinking while carrying a gun. But he also messed with someone delivering tamales. I hope the punishment is stern.
Cops should be held to some higher standard
^ Agree. Cops who break the law should automatically receive the maximum penalty for their offense (after a fair trail, of course) unless they can demonstrate mitigating circumstances.
car was hot, tamales were hot - what could go wrong ?
Until we have special prosecutors enhanced punishment wont even matter. Your local DA should not be involved in these cases as they can not be impartial. Not even sure a state body would be immune from being too involved, but it would certainly be better than local DAs.
Maybe he just wanted to take a nap in the car. No crime there.
So breaking and entering doesn’t apply to cops?
I agree. There should be special prosecutors setup at various levels of government to deal with cases involving law enforcement. We just need to be careful that the special prosecutors are truly impartial and not just cop haters. I have a tremendous amout of respect for good cops and would never want their job, but bad/corrupt cops are among the lowest of the low and should be dealt with much more harshly than average citizens, within the confines of the law.
Certainly, I am as critical of police abuses of power as anyone but I do appreciate the hard work and service of every dedicated officer that doesnt get involved in all that crap. Would not want the cop to get unfairly harsh treatment with a cop hater, but do not want them to be able to get away with whatever they want like the current system. The laws should apply to them, and they should be held to a higher standard.
So, an off-duty cop that gets caught with a small amount of pot should do jail time?
Or, an off-duty cop that gets busted for solicitation should head to lock-up?
No. They have an amazingly stressful and dangerous job (and one that’s becoming more thankless by the day). If an off-duty cop gets busted for a non-violent crime, I’m more apt to let him/her off the hook than throw the book at them.
Edit: I do agree with corruption being harshly punished.
^ No one should be busted for either of those things really though. I have no problem with a cop smoking weed off duty, as anyone should be able to.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it at least one time. What we need to is to keep the police force budget unchanged, cut the headcount in half. We can double salaries, benefits and training while hiring far more selectively from a superior pool of candidates. Police will have to focus on priority crimes and we can invest in more intelligent police strategy. Problems solved.
Maybe half isn’t hte right amount, maybe we cut it by a third. But you get the gist.
To be fair, he may have been really drunk and disoriented and just decided to sit in the car. It doesn’t appear he was intentionally harrasing anyone and he didn’t pull his gun (thankfully) or drive the car (ditto). I’m less inclined to be angry at the guy.
I think this has been in the pipeline for a while now and I know Los Angeles already has a program in place for certain types of crime like Car-jacking. They have people building predictive models to narrow down hourly intervals and days during which the model predicts higher prob. of a crime happening and step up presence in those areas.
Saves money and the drop-rate in crime was also pretty encouraging apparently.
We’ve seen that murder/manslaughter doesn’t always apply, so B&E is like a walk in the park.
We had a cop in our town borrow an assault rifle without authorization, put it in his trunk unsecured and have it stolen under highly suspicious circumstances. Now, this is Canada, this is a restricted weapon here, and this just doesn’t fly. Rifle was ultimately found in a gang house. Police investigation: charges not warranted. Reinstated. Keep in mind average Joe leaving an unsecured restricted firearm in his car to be stolen is a mandatory minimum jail term of two years here. Unbelievable. Two sets of laws in our country. One for us. One for them.
Glad to see something is the same in Canada and the US. I was on vacation a few months ago and met a Canadian corrections officer and he said that despite that, he is only allowed to carry his handgun to and from work, and while on duty.
That would be called racist in a heartbeat.
And I completely agree with you.
It would be considered racist if it were some ridiculous policy like allowing police officers to stop, frisk & generally harass people of color for no reason against their right to unreasonable search. Heck if we cut the police force & stopped going after kids for ridiculous crap like drug related non-violent crimes I would imagine police would have a more favorable view in those communities.
I like BS plan but it goes against the number 1 rule of government agencies which is always make it SEEM like you are understaffer & underfunded and need more of a allocation of the budget. Try getting that one by your state/local legislature, doesnt stand a chance. They’ll call you “weak on crime” and a cop hater.