I Will Take My Uniform Off and Stand with Freedom Before I...

[Sarge470]

Fortunately, I don't work for NOPD. You might find someone who does at a Louisiana gun owners forum though. During my time there after Katrina, I heard the horror stories about their antics and couldn't wait to get the heck out of there. They have a different way of looking at the job than anything I've ever experienced.

 

[Sainte]

It was cops from all over the country confiscating guns, not just NOPD. Please don't confuse that with me defending NOPD, that is definitely one keystone cop organization
!

 

[Sainte]

As well as ATF, DEA, ICE and others.

A small deep part of me wants to believe it was a test of resistance against weapon confiscation.

 

[hornadylnl]

That's your take on it and you're entitled to it. The courts have determined that police officers actually do have a rightful claim to their jobs, so a department has to do things by the numbers in order to deprive someone of that right. When I was a patrolman, I wanted the slugs gone because I didn't feel like carrying them, didn't want to be associated with their stupid behavior, and didn't feel physically safe working with them. As a sergeant, I became responsible for the performance of others, and I had to add that to the list of reasons I wanted substandard officers terminated. The penalty for supervisors who fail to adequately supervise their officers is actually greater than poor performance is for patrolmen at my agency, so those guys with stripes have to understand that they're risking a lot by overlooking poor performance or misconduct. With a system of progressive discipline, subsequent offenses can have a compounding effect, so that unpaid suspension time stacks up in a hurry for guys who just don't get it. The true measure of a good leader/supervisor is not in his/her ability to supervise the ideal employee, but to improve the performance of all employees (especially those who under-perform) to the level where they all meet their obligations and serve the organization well. I don't get to choose who works for me, but I'm still responsible for what they do on the job in both an administrative and a legal sense, so you can bet I'm gonna address anything I see that doesn't measure up.

The point of all my questions is this. Where does Joe Citizen who lives and works in LA fit into all of this? Who's looking out for them? It appears no one.

Here's the basic time line of this Dorner fiasco.

LAPD and at least one poster here goes on a propaganda campaign to paint Dorner as a total **** up to deny any credibility to Dorner's allegations of crooked cops in LAPD. So I then ask the question that if Dorner is such a **** up, why did it take 4 years to fire him?

I'm then told it's because of the union. So I then ask why good cops pay dues to support the bad cops and how such a small minority of bad apples control the direction of the union. I'm then met with reforms.

I have no doubt that Dorner was a nutjob. But do I believe he was as inept as LAPD is now trying to paint him? No. LAPD wants to eat their cake and have it too. They're trying to put this all on Dorner and in so doing, they're painting themselves into a corner. Either he cut the mustard and there's some merit to his claims or LAPD supervision is so inept that they can't get rid of a nutjob in less than 4 years. I find it hard to believe that Dorner can be such a nutjob and a **** up that he can pass all the LEO and military evals and maintain a job for that many years. We have many officers denouncing Dorner but you can guarantee that they'll mail in that dues check to support the likes of Dorner as a trade off for protecting themselves. Officers want these reforms you speak of to protect their jobs and in so doing, they're protecting the bad cops.

My only concern in this is as a citizen. Out of this whole cluster ****, what is going to be done to ensure the rights of the citizens? Those shot and shot at will get a big pay day courtesy of the tax payers while nothing comes out of the department's pocket. The shooters will be investigated by their own. IF, I said IF the shooters are even charged, it will be determined that they acted in good faith. They'll collect their paid vacation checks and be put back out on the street with the power to reign more terror on Joe Citizen in the future. The whole department will have to take some more training.

Then the next abuse comes along. Wash, rinse, repeat.

 

[Sarge470]

Trust me, I know...I took vacation time to run the teams that patrolled all the Hilton properties, and my people had some unpleasant run-ins with some of them. As I recall, some of the NOPD guys were apprehended by National Guardsmen in the act of breaking into a jewelry store while I was down there. Folks downtown were talking about it like crazy, and then I realized that the place really was a toilet in general.

 

[Sainte]

Well, I'd offer that just as in the case of that terrorist Nadal Hassan, race had a huge part in any evals. I'm sure as a black officer in the navy, Dorner enjoyed a certain amount of protection from this as well. I see it more and more often. Heck, 6-8 years ago gays were very open and flamboyant in the military and we still couldn't discipline them.

 

[reesez]

That is exactly what we need!

 

[Sarge470]

So as I understand it, your repeated posts are an indictment of ALL police unions and the management of ALL police agencies? That's generalization on a scale that no rational person could overlook. Am I correct in assuming that since I pay dues to the FOP (which is not the same union that represents LAPD) that I'm guilty by association and therefore a "bad cop?" I'm curious to know how you define a bad cop...is that something you could clear up for me? This should be entertaining, if nothing else.

 

[Sainte]

Trust me, I know...I took vacation time to run the teams that patrolled all the Hilton properties, and my people had some unpleasant run-ins with some of them. As I recall, some of the NOPD guys were apprehended by National Guardsmen in the act of breaking into a jewelry store while I was down there. Folks downtown were talking about it like crazy, and then I realized that the place really was a toilet in general.

Oh I agree 100%! I watched some of my family's stores get looted on canal st. If you see the footage with the black piano with the looters on it, that's the store.

Those animals were showing up to the shelters with big screens, PS3s and what have you.....

 

[Sarge470]

Oh I agree 100%! I watched some of my family's stores get looted on canal st. If you see the footage with the black piano with the looters on it, that's the store.

Those animals were showing up to the shelters with big screens, PS3s and what have you.....

I was shocked at the damages I did see in one of the hotels, where the looters,(who were allegedly starving) threw the food from the coolers on the floor, then stole everything that wasn't nailed down; if they didn't steal it, they destroyed it. From what I saw, it was less about survival than stealing and vandalizing just because they could...it was a glimpse of what I expect would happen if society crumbled completely, and it's not something the average person wants to contemplate.

 

[hornadylnl]

So as I understand it, your repeated posts are an indictment of ALL police unions and the management of ALL police agencies? That's generalization on a scale that no rational person could overlook. Am I correct in assuming that since I pay dues to the FOP (which is not the same union that represents LAPD) that I'm guilty by association and therefore a "bad cop?" I'm curious to know how you define a bad cop...is that something you could clear up for me? This should be entertaining, if nothing else.

I'm not saying you're a bad cop at all. I keep asking what can be done to get rid of the bad cops and I get nothing but excuses. It seems that all involved are powerless to stop it. I gave an example of my mother's involvement in her teachers union. Nobody loathed bad teachers more than her but she'd be right there representing them because it meant that she was protected.

I think the number of bad cops are miniscule. I still fail to see how such a miniscule number manages to run the show.

 

[Mark 1911]

He sure hit the nail on the head using the term "thugs" to describe the behavior of so many federal officials in our day. It is so good to hear a ranking police officer stand on the side of Americans. +1,000 !!

 

[Sainte]

I was shocked at the damages I did see in one of the hotels, where the looters,(who were allegedly starving) threw the food from the coolers on the floor, then stole everything that wasn't nailed down; if they didn't steal it, they destroyed it. From what I saw, it was less about survival than stealing and vandalizing just because they could...it was a glimpse of what I expect would happen if society crumbled completely, and it's not something the average person wants to contemplate.

Two kinds of ppl that stick around for hurricanes, those cant/won't leave in order to protect their homes and, looters.

The first wave of looters went a across the bridge to the westbank and broke into the mall, burned it down. Second wave intercepted and turned back by the cops, NAACP came in and claimed racism....

 

[Liberty1911]

I'm not saying you're a bad cop at all. I keep asking what can be done to get rid of the bad cops and I get nothing but excuses. It seems that all involved are powerless to stop it. I gave an example of my mother's involvement in her teachers union. Nobody loathed bad teachers more than her but she'd be right there representing them because it meant that she was protected.

I think the number of bad cops are miniscule. I still fail to see how such a miniscule number manages to run the show.

Not arguing with your premise, but it seems like there's really nothing that can be done except disband the unions altogether.

Taking your mom's example, what could have been done there? It sounds like once you're caught in the system, it self perpetuates, and there's nothing you can do to stop it short of dismantling the system.

 

[Sarge470]

I'm not saying you're a bad cop at all. I keep asking what can be done to get rid of the bad cops and I get nothing but excuses. It seems that all involved are powerless to stop it. I gave an example of my mother's involvement in her teachers union. Nobody loathed bad teachers more than her but she'd be right there representing them because it meant that she was protected.

I think the number of bad cops are miniscule. I still fail to see how such a miniscule number manages to run the show.

If it was a simple problem, the problem would have been corrected by now, but it's NOT a simple task. It's complex as Hell, and a legal minefield as well, so much so that the business of teaching labor law to agency heads and middle managers has become big business. Don't forget that for every screw-up that manages to get himself into the news, there are at least a hundred who showed up on time, did their jobs as well as they possibly could, and went home without incident. You should remember that the news media has absolutely no interest in the guys who don't screw up, but they'll bang the drum on the bad officer until the cows come home...sensationalism drives the news media (I was a reporter and news director in the radio business back in the 80s before I got a belly full of the idiocy and superficiality of the whole industry), and unless you can find stories that grab people's attention, you're going to be out of a job in a hurry. Same thing goes for Hollyweird...no one is going to watch a show about cops who don't have a drinking problem, several girlfriends on the side, and don't have a shootout every week, so they don't write about the OVERWHELMING number of honest, hardworking officers who just want to do a job they can take some pride in. What you read in the news media and see on TV is not representative of what policing is really like for over 99% of the people doing it every day. Hell, even the most realistic cop show on TV (COPS) has to shoot for at least a week to find enough material to make about 22 minutes of content; the rest of it is unbelievably boring to viewers, because no one got shot. It gives people a skewed look at police work, and it really isn't anything like what you see on the tube.

 

[hornadylnl]

Not arguing with your premise, but it seems like there's really nothing that can be done except disband the unions altogether.

Taking your mom's example, what could have been done there? It sounds like once you're caught in the system, it self perpetuates, and there's nothing you can do to stop it short of dismantling the system.

But I'm not hearing any good cops calling for the dismantling of the system. All I'm hearing is that they're willing to support it should they ever end up in the hot seat and need to access the legal defense fund.

How does the FOP side with the president on gun control if the overwhelming majority of it's members support the second amendment? The lunatics have taken over the asylum and I don't see any attempts at taking it back.

 

[hornadylnl]

If it was a simple problem, the problem would have been corrected by now, but it's NOT a simple task. It's complex as Hell, and a legal minefield as well, so much so that the business of teaching labor law to agency heads and middle managers has become big business. Don't forget that for every screw-up that manages to get himself into the news, there are at least a hundred who showed up on time, did their jobs as well as they possibly could, and went home without incident. You should remember that the news media has absolutely no interest in the guys who don't screw up, but they'll bang the drum on the bad officer until the cows come home...sensationalism drives the news media (I was a reporter and news director in the radio business back in the 80s before I got a belly full of the idiocy and superficiality of the whole industry), and unless you can find stories that grab people's attention, you're going to be out of a job in a hurry. Same thing goes for Hollyweird...no one is going to watch a show about cops who don't have a drinking problem, several girlfriends on the side, and don't have a shootout every week, so they don't write about the OVERWHELMING number of honest, hardworking officers who just want to do a job they can take some pride in. What you read in the news media and see on TV is not representative of what policing is really like for over 99% of the people doing it every day. Hell, even the most realistic cop show on TV (COPS) has to shoot for at least a week to find enough material to make about 22 minutes of content; the rest of it is unbelievably boring to viewers, because no one got shot. It gives people a skewed look at police work, and it really isn't anything like what you see on the tube.

I have no doubt that it's hard. But we're talking about American Citizens' lives and liberty here. 3 people damn near died because of incompetent cops and the union will circle the wagons and use money collected from all good LAPD cops to fund the incompetent cops' defense with nary a wimper from those good cops.

I don't give a flying **** if they have to crawl over broken glass to hell and back to fix this broken system. They're their to serve their communities. Oops doesn't cut it when you shoot 40 rounds at 2 innocents. What is being done to prevent this in the future?

 

[Bunnykid68]

Not arguing with your premise, but it seems like there's really nothing that can be done except disband the unions altogether.

Taking your mom's example, what could have been done there? It sounds like once you're caught in the system, it self perpetuates, and there's nothing you can do to stop it short of dismantling the system.

Or one could always speak out against the union and then find out just how easy it is to get fired.

 

[hornadylnl]

Or one could always speak out against the union and then find out just how easy it is to get fired.

My mom hated the non members much more so than the bad teachers. Because she had to represent them even though they weren't members.

 

[Sarge470]

But I'm not hearing any good cops calling for the dismantling of the system. All I'm hearing is that they're willing to support it should they ever end up in the hot seat and need to access the legal defense fund.

How does the FOP side with the president on gun control if the overwhelming majority of it's members support the second amendment? The lunatics have taken over the asylum and I don't see any attempts at taking it back.

Legal defense is a right that everyone enjoys, not just cops. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to go out and arrest a wealthy or politically connected individual on valid charges with good probable cause, is possible that I might have to worry about repercussions from those in positions of power, or should I just avoid the possibility by ignoring the violation altogether? The due process provisions aren't there to protect "bad" cops; it's there to protect good cops from bad management and the whims of politicians (many of whom are absolutely clueless about my job). We don't have to like it, but the same mechanism that protects good cops also ensures that even bad cops get the protections afforded to them under law. If the unions don't make the effort, they can be (and have been) sued for failure to provide an equal level of protection for all members. The courts have been pretty active in reinstating cops who have been fired, many of whom got back pay and punitive damages from the department, so I'd rather take a little longer and get it right the first time through. Does the delay drive me nuts? Yup, it sure does. I understand that it's just the way it is though, and unless someone redesigns the entire judicial and political systems in this country, I'm just gonna have to buck up & deal with it the best I can.