I have had about a sombrero full.
After a day of anchoring the news, I sometimes
like to read the comments section in the
local newspaper. Usually amusing and enlightening
and the punctuation is often like what I leave
behind for the afternoon staff.
Today’s comments were from a whole herd
of second-guessers about police tactics and the
theft of an officers firearms from his car. As I
have stated before, my opinions come from
forty years of cop-beat reporting. My emotions
come from having two people I cherish involved
in law enforcement.
First about the officer’s stolen guns. Before
everybody starts slamming this guy (and I don’t
know him)..think about what might have happened.
Lots of officers carry SWAT equipment in their car
trunks. Some cruiser trunks have mounts for long
guns in thelid, there are companies that make
trunk inserts that can be used as storage lockers.
There are even overhead racks for inside a police
cruiser.
It is not “little old” Pigeon Forge, either.
An officer nearly got killed, and a suspect did die
in a gunfight not too many years ago. When
heavy firepower is needed, it’s too late to ask
somebody at the cop shop to fetch it for you.
And I can imagine there will be internal discipline
procedures pursued if there was any negligence.
The lawyers would have had a field day if someone
died at the hands of a government owned weapon
stolen because of negligence. Just the thought of
a lawsuit like that makes some of their legs start
bouncing up and down.
Now for the second squad of second guessers.
I am not sure how the Long John Silvers was
held up in Alcoa, but at the latest one in Knoxville,
the armed robber herded everyone into a bathroom
and forced an employee to open the safe. My
guess is whoever did it knew how the receipts from
the weekend were handled…just judging by the day of
the week they ocurred.
I know of far too many holdups where people at fast
food places were herded in one place, then
systematically murdered.
And you bet your bippy I would have some of
those big nasty looking guns and people who could
use them when I went looking for the man I thought
did it. And from the reports- the suspect was
apparently identified by victims. So, better to have
the suspect dee dee his pants and drop his gun in abject
terror, than to be able to get off a pot shot.
He can always get new pants. Replacement parts
for human flesh, his or otherwise, are hard to find.
Before you hit the “angry comment” button, please
know that I am well aware that there are officers
who do not need to be law officers. Hell, for that
matter it might shock you to learn there are even
radio anchors who don’t need to be on-the-air.
(Present company excluded, of course.)
I have been shoved around myself and I didn’t
like it a bit. But I used information, like time,
place, car tag numbers, descriptions of officers,
and made sure the dispute was heard by the right
people- internal affairs. They are in the phone book.
If you feel your civil rights were violated, call the
FBI or Justice Department’s Office Of Civil Rights,
or a lawyer. There are so many departments with
tape recorders and cameras in cruisers that
enforcement of proper procedures is often a
matter of “lets look at the tape”.
Just don’t lump all law officers into one pile of
goon-squad troglydites. Because they aren’t.
Most of them are daddys and mamas, or even
grandparents.
But the streets can be mean, and lots of people
are itching to show how big a tough-ass they can be.
You don’t know if the officer who stops you for
a busted light just got off another traffic stop
where he had to wrestle a fighting drunk to
the ground, or disarm a hostile driver in a road-rage
incident. Or see an abused child. Or arrest
a child abuser.
And one more thing in my sombrero.
Yessiree. I get stopped. I get tickets. Especially
in those unpleasant meetings where I stopped about
one foot beyond the rear bumper of the car directly
in front of me. But being polite, keeping the interior
lights on, and telling the officer when I was about to
reach for my registration has more than once kept me
from being ordered out of the car, and possibly got
me a warning rather than a ticket.
It’s like a Georgia State Trooper, Jim Albertson, once
told me. He stopped a person and was about to
just warn them to slow it down. The driver angrily
asked “Just what is your name?” in an attempt to
intimidate themselves out of trouble. Jim told me
he leaned into the window of the car, smiled, and said
“you wait right here, and I’ll bring you a piece of
paper with my name on it.”
Be nice. It’s what I always told my own children to
do.
But you can still be a doo-doo if you want to.
Even put it in writing.
But be a big enough doo-doo, and you will
likely see the back seat of a cruiser. And unless
you are an elf or an Umpa-Loompa, they are
very cramped.
Now. My sombrero feels better.
