SlowlySinking
Master Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2002
- Messages
- 897
POLICE HARRASSMENT EXPLAINED<br /><br />This is allegedly taken from a "Community Policing" question-and-answer via e-mail forum in California some time ago..... BUT I DOUBT IT.<br /><br />THE QUESTION WAS: I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to harass people and get away with it? And where can you go for help other than a civil attorney. <br /><br />AND THE REPLY WAS: <br /><br />It's not easy, we hafta work at it. In California we average one cop for every 2000 people. About 60% of those cops are on patrol, which is where we do most of the harassing; the rest is with our neighbors. One-fifth of that 60% are on duty at any moment and available for harassing people. So, one on-duty cop is responsible to harass about 10,000 residents. <br /><br />When you toss in the commercial, business, and tourist locations that attract people from other area, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible to harass 20,000 or more people a day. See what I mean about it being a tough job.<br /><br />A ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds. This gives a cop one second each to harass a person, and 3/4 of a second to eat another donut AND then hurry to find a new person to harass. Now, this is not an easy task. Most cops are just not up to it day in and day out. It's just too tiring. <br /><br />What we do is utilize some tools to help us save time to narrow down those whom we harass. Some of the tools we use follows: <br /><br />PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that may cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase we like to hear. Then we come out and give special harassment to the wife beater. <br /><br />Another popular one on weekends is: "The kids next door are having a wild beer drinking, party." Wow, we love to hear that. Get the nightsticks.<br /><br />CARS: We have specially trained cops assigned just to harass people who drive. We love to harass the drivers of cars speeding through school zones, or cars with a few thousand watts of mind numbing, window shattering music, or cars with expired registration tabs, bald tires, and the like. <br /><br />It's lots of fun to pick them out of heavy traffic for nothing more obvious then running a red light and clipping a few pedestrians. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs or full-auto assault weapons in the car, or drunk and belligerent, or they have a couple of felony murder warrants out for their arrest. <br /><br />RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them with your cars bumper you can harass them for hours. <br /><br />CODES: When we can think of nothing else to harass people for we have training books that are full of good ideas for harassing folks. These are called Codes. You know, Penal, Vehicle, Health and Safety, Business and Professions... They spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people's heads. After you read the codebook, you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. <br /><br />Just last week I saw a guy smash a car window. Well, I wasn't sure so I checked the code and sure enough it says this is not allowed. That meant I get to harass this guy, wow, what a great system. Oh yes, it is a pretty cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well. <br /><br />I seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we can get away with it because the good citizens, those who pay the taxes, like us to keep the streets safe for them. <br /><br />So, next time you are in my town, give me a finger wave, or blow through a red signal, stop sign, or whatever, that will be an obvious sign that you wish for me to take a little closer look at you, and maybe find a reason to harass you. <br /><br />I'm looking forward to meeting you.<br /><br />Oh, yes, as for help may I suggest a few days in our comfortable, air conditioned jail. We offer free lodging, free food, lively entertainment, soap-on-a-rope, and the opportunity to meet some real neat colorful people. 
