Siegtrmpt

Cops have to listen to peoples crap and get treated rudely all the time. I wonder what people thing they have to gain from it? I got pulled over late one Saturday night heading home from a gig for doing 60 in a 35. One of those places where a divided highway just outside of town slows to enter the town. In short, it's easy to go fast there and I was doing 60. When I pulled over I turned on the interior lights, rolled down the window and had my licence and paperwork out. He asked if I knew how fast I was going and I told him when I saw his lights I looked down and saw it. I told him it's been a long night and I guess I got a case of get-home-itis. After running the numbers he came back and said he was mainly out looking for drunk drivers and appreciated my manners. No ticket, just slow down and be careful going home. That was pretty lucky but a little respect and honesty saved my butt that night. I'm quite sure a smart alec remark or some bs story would have rightfully earned me a 25 over the limit speeding ticket along with steeper insurance rates and a substantial fine.

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Bill S.- NY Bach 6, 38 Mt. Vernon 43 Bach "C" cornet, NY Bach trombone 6vii Monette mouthpieces

Eclipsehornplayer

To basically para-phrase what 40cal was saying....

In my former dept. we had such directives as to what force to use and when...

Basically we were not allowed to escalate past the threat we were facing depending on circumstances...

In the late 1980's when I was just getting started in law enforcement back home in Michigan me and my partner got called to a bar fight at a bar known for such things..

Long, long, story short we arrived on scene and the two guys were going at it in the parking lot.

We announced ourselves as police officers and tryed first to disperse the crowd then to break up the fight.

This is a dangerous situation; I'm sure 40cal would agree.

I got the crowd back and then me and my partner; again announcing we were police officers tried to pry these to knuckle heads apart.

I got one guy who seemed just happy to be out of the fight.. I rolled him over and cuffed him; he was cooperative and somewhat appreceative.

The other guy was fighting my partner hard! After securing my perp I went to my partners aid.

The perp he was dealing with broke out of the hold my partner had on him which was not hard for the perp my partner was a much smaller person.

The perp came out with a knife!

By department guidelines any number of things could have happend here.

Here's what did happen.

I knew my partner was something to behold with a PR-24 baton. I kept the perps attention focused on me while staying far enough away that if he were to swing at me in a striking motion I could easily avoid him.

This kept the perps eyes on me and my partner was easily able to difuse this situation with a strike to the hand with the PR-24 followed by a strike to the ribs and then a takedown we both executed.

Now I believe that we handled this pretty well.

Sadly believe it or not his attorney later won him a relatively small settlement as he sued the department for his pain and suffering and unnecessary use of force. He had suffered a broken bone in his wrist and a cracked rib. We did call for EMS once he was in custody. I was stunned when we lost!

Since there was two of us and one of him we did not have to strke him with a fiberglass stick. Forget he was fixing to carve his name into one of us with a buck knife!

We often thought we'd have been better off if my partner had just shot the perp.

I for one am glad we did not, but it's shameful when you go out of your way to place someone in to custody in a non-leathl way and this is the end result.

I guess I wrote all this to say that the possibilities are endless you just don't know what's going to happen.

There's nothing routine about police work. The most boring and mundane call can easily become mass chaos and worse at the drop of a hat..

You just simply try to use your best judgement and follow proceedure as best you can..

Now I admit there are some Knuckle heads who are cops but by in large the bulk of law enforcement officers are decent persons doing a hard, and thankless job most of the time.

I err on the side of law enforcement every time until the facts show otherwise.

But that's just me!

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