Texas Cop Approaches Black Men For Doing Nothing Wrong, Threatens To Taser Them by Niki2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Actually, Brenda, Mal4 is right; you could HEAR both sides trying to rationalize their position and kinda back down at the same time. The kids were a bit snarky, but intelligent and trying to get him to be reasonable; he had his hackles up, but you could almost hear his inner battle not to take it too far.

Despite that, tho', the simple fact that it happened at all is shameful and the main problem. Logically, there's not a thing in the world wrong with several kid (sounded like no more then 3-4?) standing around playing with their videocam outside WalMart, they weren't doing anything whatsoever that should have required the attention of the cop--and he's not a security guard, he's a police man. And of course if it were a bunch of white kids, odds are he'd not have bothered them. Mind you, if it were a bunch of white GIRLS, he'd never have dreamed of bothering them, I'll bet.

The kids were a bit smartass, but I think that's understandable and they weren't overly provocative; I was actually quite grateful to hear them talking intelligently and trying to calm the cop. I'm grateful it didn't turn out worse.

But therein lies the problem: The cop's mentality to challenge them in the first place, and to escalate when his authority was questioned (refusing to show ID...like ID would mean ANYTHING, it was just a statement of authority). It never should have HAPPENED, much less "turned out worse".

There is unquestionably a problem with Texas, in my opinion and especially the mentality of some (many?) Texas cops which, of course, stems from above.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 5:11 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Putting on a uniform and strapping on a gun makes some people overlord d*ckheads. Undeniably. But from what I see, that type of person is more welcome in Texas than many other places...

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Monday, August 19, 2013 6:30 AM

BYTEMITE

At the risk of putting forward the unpopular sentiment, I'm kinda wondering what exactly would be so interesting to videotape at a Walmart. And whether that particular Walmart has had issues with thieves taking from cars in the parking lot in the past - which is a common problem in many places.

Context can sometimes explain even the most extreme of overreactions. The security guard was out of line though, definitely, and there is kind of an iffy element here that even if there had been theft previously, then the suspicion here would still seem to have a racial basis.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 8:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by G:
Now if you want to say putting on a uniform and strapping on a gun makes some people overlord d*ckheads, I'd be in complete agreement.

Aye... I think it's an authority complex dickhead thing instead of a race thing myself, not that race or racism doesn't occasionally play a part, regardless of even WHICH (look up "showing out" for example) race in question.

My answer to it is making the "protectors" DIRECTLY and IMMEDIATELY accountable to their protectees, instead of involving a "government" which can just shit all over them laughing all the while and depend on the superior force of it's jackboots to tell them to shut the fuck up up and OBEY, OR ELSE.

Me and mine, we don't have that option, by intention and design, and were we to ever have such superior force as to be able to issue that threat, I would IMMEDIATELY spin off sufficient forces as a subsidary and competitor to eliminate that threat, and in the very unlikely event just prior to that some jerk might do so, I would personally and physically break them so badly they'd be in the ICU for weeks and UNABLE to threaten any damn body, if I didn't do worse!!

We, collectively, have also applied this principle to our police forces, in that after a period of really malicious acting out, we started cutting their budget pretty hard, and then when they BLATANTLY threatened the community in response, doubled down on that budget cut!
And when they ramped up traffic enforcement to outright harrassment and stormed/busted/robbed a charity poker game for cancer survivors, we QUADRUPLED down on the budget cuts, and so far they've been the very epitome of politeness and professionallism, isn't that ironic ?

Of course, just as of recently they wanted to consolidate the Police/Fire/EMT budget into a single unit for "efficiency", thinking that maybe folks might be less willing to swing the budget axe that way, and we told em in no uncertain terms to go to hell you untrustworthy scum...
Just look at Detroit, where people DIE every day cause the EMTs and firefighters don't have enough money to even keep their equipment functional, and the moment folks pump more money into the "public safety" budget to fix that, the Detroit Police loot it for pizza parties at their 50 MILLION DOLLAR posh Casino HQ, and laugh in our faces while the city lies bankrupt and the only solution to crime at all is DIY.
http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/detroit-community-frustrated-with-pace-of
-rape-investigation
Mind you, the perp did this in broad daylight in front of a dozen plus witnesses and DPD can't be bothered, too busy sitting around watching movies in their posh Casino HQ and eating popcorn - but of COURSE if it was a multimillion dollar forfeiture case............

The truth of it is, you want something solved, investigated, or handled HERE, you don't call the damn cops, it's pointless, useless, in fact counterproductive as they may well send someone to beat/arrest YOU to shut you up.... you call US, and we'll do the job.
So, exactly WHY again are we financing motherfuckers who will not DO the job we pay rapacious taxes for and still have to HIRE OUTSIDE HELP to do when they laugh in our faces ?
Oh yea, those Govt guns in our face, demanding we do so, OR ELSE.

Sorry, where and when exactly was this dumb shit any kind of good idea to begin with ?
Cause I just don't see it.

-Frem

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Monday, August 19, 2013 12:08 PM

Can't say I approve of what the officer did.

And I immediately formed a negative opinion of the young men involved: the first 30 seconds of the tape tell me a lot, with "m****r f*****g Wal-Mart" and the tone of the laughter.

I'd surely like to hear more about the previous and subsequent records of both the young men and the officer involved.

This was first posted on You-Tube in Apr 2012. Obviously happened before that. Did these young men file a complaint? Was there an investigation? Seems this guy was a police officer, working a part-time job as Security guard? (The law and rules are different.) What did the PD decide? What did Wal-Mart Corp. do?

I don't know about Texas, but here in California, mall parking lots can be private property, even though they are a publicly used space. You can even find medallions in the blacktop near the driveways of shopping centers, stating that this is private property, access may be denied to any person at the request of the property owner. (Hey, that's one of Geezer's libertarian private property rights.) Security rules on private property, by private employees of the property owner, are different from laws regulating sworn on-duty police officers, aren't they, Frem?

I see a lot of these police misconduct or open carry harassment videos on You-Tube, I got on some kind of list because of something I searched. The abuse is often crystal clear, even if provoked. I wonder if anybody follows up-- There is the video of the incident. But what was the context? What happened immediately before and after the tape? What was the true intent of the person taping? Did that person file a complaint, or was this just an "embarrass the cops" stunt? Was the officer disciplined, retrained, exonerated? Did the PD retrain all of its personnel in the correct procedure and the actual law involved? Or rationalize the behavior and either imply or train its officers that that would be SOP?

There's a one-sided statement from the video tapers in the comments with the video on YouTube... Anybody know how this one shook out?

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Monday, August 19, 2013 12:35 PM

BYTEMITE

Worth investigating, NOBC.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 12:40 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

That they questioned the cop, and defied his 'commands', is what ticks off those types of thugs in uniforms.

Kinda like this dick...

Wal-Mart cop clearly was having a bad day. I mean, worse than usual. He is, after all, a cop working at Wal-Mart.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, August 19, 2013 12:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Security rules on private property, by private employees of the property owner, are different from laws regulating sworn on-duty police officers, aren't they, Frem?

Very.
Thing is there's different sets, almost a class system involved here.

General Contract Security has very limited authority and in fact depending on the locality might *NOT* have the authority to pitch someone off the property cause they're not the owner, just a subcontractor who doesn't necessarily have express approval to do so - which has been a sticking point at some of the apartment complexes around here and resulted in at least one Gaurd (not mine) having the crap beaten out of them as a result, although she gave a good account of herself despite serious mistakes from poor training...

Off-Duty police are a whole different world, cause they can invoke institutional authority, and use their blue suit mafia to have laws re-written or re-interpreted to justify anything they want, even acting directly and willfully against the interests of their employer, which was a SERIOUS problem in Detroit in the 1970s due to the aftermath of the "Police Riots" of 1968 which is one more reason Romney is despised so badly around here.
In short, after having witnessed outrageous abuses and misbehavior by the police, a LOT of folk got the notion of replacing them with private cops and security, which would be actually, yanno, ACCOUNTABLE for their behavior, and in response the Police Union drew up MI Public Law 330 of 1968 which essentially hemmed in private security to the point where you kinda *HAD* to be a cop, or ex-cop, to even do it - this has been relaxed to a degree by necessity over the years, and in practice these days is more like the whole "ACE Certified Mechanic" scam (They have one, but he sits around and drinks beer while his 18yr old flunkies recruited from jiffylube actually do the work), in that the cop/ex-cop runs the business, but the actual guards are barely competent nobodies shown a 40 minute video and pitched headlong into the deep end...

In the case of actual moonlighting off-duty cops, it raises a SERIOUS problem of ego-involvement, deliberate escalation and bullying of both customers and employer, since they're effectively immune to accountability and firing them will result in immediate retaliation.
Here's what I call "The Checklist" - look at ANY encounter with a police officer that goes south, and you will soon realize 90% of the time, the officer went right down this list.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/get_attacked.htm

Our methodology is a bit different than "dominate the peon/situation at all costs to feed your ego", and I fire, on the spot, ANYONE who plays that game.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/deescalation.htm
Of course, the Detroit PD loses out on the first goddamn point, sadly.

Quote:
Be consistent AND trustworthy.
This gives him a reason to listen and do something other than violence.

Look at the Maryanne Godboldo situation as a classic example, the negotiated stand-down was in return for her child being placed with relatives and not exposed to any of the ugliness of the matter, which was a fair thing to ask - but the DPD *immediately* went back on the deal, marching the kid right past her now-cuffed mother and shuffling her into a hellhole of facility in Northville where one of the staff immediately molested her...
Consider what implications THAT has on the longterm credibility of the DPD negotiating any future standoff situations ?

And there's a third aspect to it, which is where me and mine come in cause we're not, exactly, precisely, Contract Security... under 338.1051 technically we are "Persons not subject to this act" as we work directly for the owner of a property, on that property, and our compliance with the uniform and other requirements of PL330 are strictly voluntary, given that by definition we're something closer to a PMC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_military_company
The closest honest description would be that we're the private army of a backwater realty company, which is yeah, as humorous as it sounds.

This does however allow our supervisors to invoke Agent-of-the-Owner powers, which essentially means yes we *CAN* boot you off the property, and cannot be gainsayed by local law enforcement, even if the folks we're booting *ARE* that local law enforcement, provided they're not responding to a service call - we've.. erm, already "established" THAT part of the relationship, oh yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_agency

I dunno specifically about TexASS, but as a rule, this exact scenario is a large part of the reason nobody HERE wants off-duty cops as Gaurds, cause they can invoke nearly limitless authority and abuse it without accountability, which tends to bode ill for a business when one of them acts out in a fashion that escalates rather than neutralizes a developing "situation" and then you have a PR bungle of epic proportions.

-Frem

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Monday, August 19, 2013 1:19 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Can't say I approve of what the officer did.

And I immediately formed a negative opinion of the young men involved: the first 30 seconds of the tape tell me a lot, with "m****r f*****g Wal-Mart" and the tone of the laughter.

That was my first impression as well, but it became clear to me quickly that it was more of just how they talk than how must folks use the term. Aside form those comments, they seemed like decent kids, who reacted normally to a cop who clearly was freaking out. After they politely informed the cop they weren't filming HIM, it sounds like they assumed all was cool, and went on about their business. The cop, on the other hand, was clearly miffed that they were ignoring him, and as a authority figure in the community, he could NOT allow that to stand. So, simple Barney Fife that he is, he orders them to the show ID. They're like.. " Huh? Are you trippin' dude ? " , which only pisses the cop off more, as he feels his authority is being questioned , and then things start to spiral out of hand.

I thought I heard the cop mention, during the exchange, that he'd been hurt once before that day. Maybe he apprehended a shop lifter, or some such, I dunno. It was late, he was probably tired, and the last thing he wanted to deal w/ was a bunch of disrespectful punks ignoring him or his authority.

In a perfect world, this could be seen as a great case study in not only the do's and don'ts of policing, but in also how to deal w/ the cops.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Monday, August 19, 2013 1:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Worth investigating, NOBC.

I googled it.

All I could find was the reaction over the first couple of days, on partisan anti-police, anti-state or political sites, (some left, some right) and a statement by Houston PD that the officer was NOT an employee of Houston PD; that they knew who he was, but identifying him was the job of the agency he worked for; and that they had no official report of the incident, so they could not even comment as to the time or date of the incident.

I'd really like a whole bunch more, but I don't know where to look for it

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Monday, August 19, 2013 1:42 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 1:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

I thought I heard the cop mention, during the exchange, that he'd been hurt once before that day. Maybe he apprehended a shop lifter, or some such, I dunno. It was late, he was probably tired, and the last thing he wanted to deal w/ was a bunch of disrespectful punks ignoring him or his authority.

Saw a mention somewhere that he had, in fact, been in a fight with some black young men that same day. Also saw a reference to the fact that he might have thought that THESE blacks were videoing him to set him up or identify him for violent reprisals or were inciting them. I did not see a statement that HE claimed that.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 2:30 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Frem

If the security guard had approached the young men and said - we've been having problems with vandalism ... could I see some ID, please ...

How do you think that would have turned out?

The reason I ask is b/c one of my best friends at work is the security guard. She's an ex-cop, older than me, several inches shorter - and she will never ever even TRY the macho-shithead routine. But she has resolved every tense situation at work admirably. In fact, her demeanor is so normal and able to bring everything back to an everyday keel, that when she worked at the county hospital psych admission, they would call her to calm people down.

This isn't a gift, or a lucky accident of personality, and it's not that she doesn't get tense or afraid - she knows how to push buttons and can when needed. But at work it's a choice - as she has told me on more than one occasion, her goal is always to de-escalate.

So, could this guy have de-escalated the situation?

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Monday, August 19, 2013 3:46 PM

MAL4PREZ

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, could this guy have de-escalated the situation?

Seems to me that all he did was escalate.

The skate boarder video Rap posted was really whacked. What an asshole, bullying 14 year olds simply because they used the word "Dude". That guy needs therapy.

Police definitely should be trained to cool things down always as their first option. I have a major problem with this idea that just because a policemen tells me to do something I must obey it without question. Certainly there are circumstances where I would do whatever a cop says, but I remain a free and thinking human being, and I have a right to decide when "authority" is nothing but an abusive asshole hiding behind a badge he/she doesn't deserve.

Is what I think. :)

*---------------------------------------*
The French Revolution would have never happened if Marie Antoinette had just given every peasant an iPhone.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 4:13 PM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

As to what they were doing, what if they just had a new videocam and were playing with it? I think suspecting them of something untoward right off the bat is an interesting way to view it.

And yeah, if the cop had approached them differently, I think like any situation, it would have evolved differently.

"He is, after all, a cop working at Wal-Mart. " That made me smile, because when I initially went to copy the URL from YouTube, the first comment I saw was "Well, it IS a Wal-Mart cop..."

And I'm glad to hear he was a security guard, not official policeman.

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Monday, August 19, 2013 4:42 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:

I thought I heard the cop mention, during the exchange, that he'd been hurt once before that day. Maybe he apprehended a shop lifter, or some such, I dunno. It was late, he was probably tired, and the last thing he wanted to deal w/ was a bunch of disrespectful punks ignoring him or his authority.

Saw a mention somewhere that he had, in fact, been in a fight with some black young men that same day. Also saw a reference to the fact that he might have thought that THESE blacks were videoing him to set him up or identify him for violent reprisals or were inciting them. I did not see a statement that HE claimed that.

Older guy, security guard, who was already in a scuffle that day, ( regardless of who it was with ) does he get to go home and call it a day ? Heck no, he's got a shift to finish, at Wal-Mart, and then these kids show up, video taping the front and a parking lot. WTF ?

You can see how an older guy, probably not overly burdened with too much education, would view this as suspicious behavior.

Doesn't justify him being an a-hole, and drawing his tazer, though.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen

Resident USA Freedom Fundie

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

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Tuesday, August 20, 2013 7:03 AM

1KIKI

Quote:
Frem

If the security guard had approached the young men and said - we've been having problems with vandalism ... could I see some ID, please ...

How do you think that would have turned out?

That one's iffy, call it a maybe...

See, a security guard in truth has for the most part only the "authority" folks are willing to give them, and while they have "institutional" authority to a small degree in that they can in very specific scenarios act as the arm and voice of their employer, their "personal" authority rests on their appearance, conduct and demeanor - which is why I *insist* on a professional appearance and behavior at ALL times, and to assume their behavior is being recorded at every moment, cause how do you know someone isn't holding a cellphone camera up to the window ?
Best way to solve that problem is not DO shit you don't want on tape, yes ?

So approach is important, so is context and body language, an aggressive approach tends to put people on the defensive and start escalating a situation immediately, and starting with a demand for identification you may not even technically have a legal right to ask for isn't the best choice, although doing so politely mitigates this a bit.

My policy is "Start with hello."
Such a SIMPLE thing, isn't it ?

Quote:
The reason I ask is b/c one of my best friends at work is the security guard. She's an ex-cop, older than me, several inches shorter - and she will never ever even TRY the macho-shithead routine. But she has resolved every tense situation at work admirably. In fact, her demeanor is so normal and able to bring everything back to an everyday keel, that when she worked at the county hospital psych admission, they would call her to calm people down.

This isn't a gift, or a lucky accident of personality, and it's not that she doesn't get tense or afraid - she knows how to push buttons and can when needed. But at work it's a choice - as she has told me on more than one occasion, her goal is always to de-escalate.

Ayep, that's the kinda people I hire, those who can keep their cool, chill a situation instead of pouring gasoline on it, and have a laid back, nonthreatening presence... although we have one guy who LOOKS so totally scary (and is in fact embarassed by this) cause he's huge and works out cause he's a health nut, but he wouldn't hurt a fly.

Quote:
So, could this guy have de-escalated the situation?

I'd calmly walk up nearby and casually lean on something all nonthreatening-like and look in the direction they were filming and say "Howdy." - then watch their reaction, which goes to the flowchart method of resolution... USUALLY if you offer a polite greeting, and *JUST* that, most folk will just go ahead and explain what they're doing without prompting.

Now on a rare occasion you might get someone who goes defensive, to which my latest response is actually a bit of rather dark humor - "Easy there, I ain't no George Zimmerman..." which in this neighborhood actually works as a pretty good icebreaker, cause it expresses a lack of hostile intent and disparages conduct of that nature, which tends to reassure some nervous young person that they're probably not gonna get shot today, which is always helpful.

From a defensive response I usually go with the put-upon-professional routine and roll my eyes while telling them some nervous nellie wanted me to go have a look, and well here's me, right ?
At which point I TALK to them, weather, sports, local interest stuff, just-passing-time, while carefully observing their behavior, and if they get really nervous I might throw in that I am not a cop, I don't enforce the law (so they're not flaking out about having a dime bag of weed in their pocket, you know ?), I just protect the property, make sure all the lights are working so no one trips and sues us, yadda yadda...
Engage them personally, as a human being, you see ?(1)

Now, a uniformed security officer, by their very presence, even their existence, is an IMPLIED threat, no need to make an overt one, and even if they *are* up to no good they're not gonna DO anything when yer standing there watching them - most times they take the hint, make up some excuse and go, and that's all win for everybody.
Plus it saves on paperwork, and I HATE paperwork.

Even if every party involved knows EXACTLY what's really going on.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/shadow_dancing.htm

Quote:
A skilled counter-dancer will immediately recognize the significance of the other's maneuvering and proceed to do his own. Let's say there's a business that has been broken into several times. The perp isn't walking by looking for a chance to commit a crime (which he is). His story is going to be, he's just walking to the store. And if you ask him, he'll gladly tell you that. By the same token, you (the cop) aren't sitting there waiting for him either. You just parked there to do some paperwork, right? Now officially nothing happened. He kept walking and you kept on doing your paper works. But the reality is that a crime was prevented and everyone but the taxpayers knew it.

Now a neutral response, followed by pretending to ignore me just provokes my continuance of the slacker-cracker routine.. "Whatcha watchin, anyways?"
I play dumbass hillbilly pretty good, although nobody who lives here for any length of time really buys it, but then those folk know to leave well enough alone, too.
Once they realize I ain't gonna go AWAY, though, they either make excuses and leave, engage in conversation (often throwing in the towel on original intent in the process) or if they're actions were innocent, tell me what they were doing.

See, crime is a process, a formula - ABILITY, INTENT, OPPORTUNITY - without those, no crime occurs, and sometimes, especially with the impulse-driven, opportunity CREATES intent.
So once that third leg, Opportunity, gets punted out from under them, Intent falls by the wayside, you understand - so if I am standin around watching/talking to them, well, there goes opportunity.

The basic thing to understand in situation resolution is that it doesn't MATTER so much, most of it - the two primary points of that are "Where's the harm?" and "Why is this so important?" - if there's no harm to persons or property, why start something over it, if they haven't DONE anything to anyone/anything, why do you feel some all pressing need to involve yourself in the matter ?
In practice that means once you have eyes-on, you've neutralized opportunity, and thus done the job, which is the "win" condition.

Sure, sometimes things go south no matter what you do, which happens, although rarely...
But preventing it from getting there *IS* my job, and I am damn good at it.

-Frem

ETA:(1) - This is actually quite important, cause it moves you from the thorn-in-side mental category to "person" in their mind, especially if you show some humanity/humor instead of coming off like some just-following-orders robot rocket jock asshole, which is, sadly, EXACTLY how many cops approach a situation cause of piss poor training involving the concept of "controlling/dominating the situation" at all costs - this is a severe training failure and an institutional-grade problem.

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Tuesday, August 20, 2013 1:53 PM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Wouldn't it be nice if we could clone all cops/security guards to have this mentality? Imagine how much better not just relations between the population and the authority figures would be, but how many fewer incidents like this would occur? It's called being a RESPONSIBLE, intelligent authority figure, not just wanting to be an authority figure 'cuz it gives you power...

I know nothing about coming from an authority-figure position, but I'm not sure Kiki's suggestion is that far off, given the audio I heard (as in the kids not being real smart-asses and being fairly smart and reasonable). I think starting out "we've been having some problems..." or something like that might go a ways toward making the kids feel somewhat included, part of the community which has experienced something negative, kind of like saying "can you help me?" in an ass-backwards sort of way. I may not be putting this as clearly as I'd like, but I think you might understand what I'm saying.

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Wednesday, August 21, 2013 1:01 AM

Thanx, Frem. I ALWAYS appreciate your POV on these matters. You're out there DOING it, which qualifies you as a genuine expert, and you're not ACTUALLY a cop, so you don't have their bias, and see right thru them. Puts you in a pragmatic, middle of the road, "let's do what's important and what works" place that's very useful to hear from.

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Wednesday, August 21, 2013 3:08 AM

No prob NOBC - although I do tend to overstate the podunk aspect of this place a little, mainly a habit cause I prefer not to frighten new residentsm you see...

This place happens to be directly across the street from a neighborhood called West Willow, a little google-fu on that will give you the idea pretty quick - thing is, the local yahoos leave us alone cause the median income here is like $35K, there's nothin to freakin take worth the trouble, and CERTAINLY nothing worth crossing irons with me, in my very lair, in the dark...
What I find hilarious is how they make up scary cyborg stories so they don't have to admit being spooked by an old codger with a gimpy leg, and if it's just me and them out there okay yeah I might play to it a little, sure.

But the real troublesome types stay on their side of the road cause it's just not worth the hassle and will piss off their OTHER friends I turn a blind eye to cause it's outta my jurisdiction, which carries the additional benefit of those bastards warning off other potential problems as a second line of defense, so the only actual trouble we ever get is the lowest of the low, dumbest of dumb, young and foolish, the kind of kids who raid unlocked cars for tollchange, or smash a car window to grab a GPS some dimwit has left in plain sight, and most of THEM get spotted and spooked off before even that - none of them carry when they're creeping cause trespassing and lowgrade B&E is misdemeanor stuff, or can be plead down to it, but johnny law catches you packing heat and that's FELONY beef, plus what the hell in this backwater is worth a gunfight over ?

Rumors aside, I actually *prefer* the little cretins to hightail out of here thinking they dodged a bullet cause the guard is a dumb hillbilly, which never ceases to amuse the actual crooks who know damn well what really happened is me tossing the catch back in cause it was too damn small to bother with - not to mention one whiner going on about gettin run out of here is worth something to me cause all their whinging and exaggerations encourage others to stay the hell out of here.
Well, and no engagement means no damn paperwork, there's always that.

Plus I am the "devil you know", I care nothing for enforcement of the law, am rather sternly pro-legalisation and have no incentive or desire to get all snooty about it unless it becomes an unignorable problem - hadda have a lil chat with someone yesterday, not about what he was smokin, but the piss-poor quality of it as that shitty homegrown reeks like hell, thus pissing off his neighbors who bitch to the property manager who tells me and there you go, resulting in a rather hilarious obscure sideways vague-insinuation conversation consisting mainly of "smoke better shit and for gawds sake try to be discreet you idiot" in a lot more indirect wording.

Which at the end of the day means my presence is preferable to some loony wannabe like Zimmerman who's a fiasco waiting to happen, and in the uncommon case of any of the local yahoos visiting a resident, which does happen on occasion, they know how it goes, be discreet, keep the peace, and mi casa es su casa, hombre.

And that is the key, discretion, leaving well the hell enough ALONE...
But when you revoke that discretion, and go around throwing down "must arrest" and "duty to enforce" and "mandatory minimums", you take that HUMAN discretion OUT of the situation, that vital key that allows people to get along, and that is when things go south on a regular basis.

-Frem

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Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:45 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
As to what they were doing, what if they just had a new videocam and were playing with it? I think suspecting them of something untoward right off the bat is an interesting way to view it.

I'm a cynic. *Shrug* Someone describes someone as "innocent" and I automatically suspect ulterior motives.

Though just as important to be suspicious when they make a kid out to be a monster. There's some lovely and completely transparent stuff out there that cops and staff say about kids who run away from abusive juvie detention centers.

Damn, but it is interesting to hear anecdotes from Frem. I really hope someday for a semi-fictionalized auto-biography of some sort.

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Wednesday, August 21, 2013 11:13 AM