ballen0351
Sr. Grandmaster
I hate that real criminal line it drives me nuts.
Assaults on cops rise.
- Thread starter Bob Hubbard
- Start date
Archangel M
Senior Master
And before I get the "you cant be a robot and enforce immoral or unconstitutional laws" line...lets be honest.
99.9999% of the time the issue isn't one of us being a black helicopter trooper coming to get your gun (or your camera). It's one of not liking that traffic or parking ticket. Or because we didn't railroad that neighbor you don't like and call 911 on every chance you get. Or because my arresting you for shoplifting was because of your race and not because I was called by a stores loss prevention office who has you on film stealing.
99.9999% of the time the issue isn't one of us being a black helicopter trooper coming to get your gun (or your camera). It's one of not liking that traffic or parking ticket. Or because we didn't railroad that neighbor you don't like and call 911 on every chance you get. Or because my arresting you for shoplifting was because of your race and not because I was called by a stores loss prevention office who has you on film stealing.
Empty Hands
Senior Master
So what's more reliable? Your personal experiences in a small part of the country interacting with a small part of the population? Your subjective experience with news reports? The numbers are what we have, and while I do know about some of the number fixing schemes, the numbers are more reliable than what came before them. How else can you claim with any authority that crimes have risen now due to the recession? Where is your evidence?
OKay. it was late and my word choice didn't get my point across. What I meant was that people do not see the police as being 'for' them anymore.
The sense that 'You' (the police) are not on 'Our' (the public) side has been around for quite a time in the lower echelons of our society - after all, that's where a lot of criminality historically resided. The problem is that it is climbing up the 'social scale'.
Even now, here in England, as I've said before, I am still much happier to see the police out and about - deserved or not, it makes me feel safer if I can see an officer nearby. That attiude used to be a lot more widespread than it is now.
In part this is down to such things as the heavy-handed use of the police to quell protest - our velvet glove has worn a little thin over the iron fist since the '80's
. Another part of it tho' is that we see that our police are not fulfilling their role of giving us an overall safer place for honest people to prosper; that loss of 'faith' leads to 'us' being less forgiving.Anyhow - got to fly as the Officer in the House calls me to the dinner table
.ballen0351
Sr. Grandmaster
Your right it may just be this area and not nation wide but I can tell you our call volume has gone up in the 10 years ive done this job not gone down. The # of thefts, frauds, robbery, burglary calls have seemed to be more frequent. Crimes at a national level may be falling per the numbers I can say I dont see it as related to actual calls since every year we end up with more calls then the year past yet the way we catagorize the calls has shown a decrease in crime. I will say violent crime has seemed to be going down which is good but petty thefts, and shoplifting seem to me to be rising we just dont take reports for them so they are not put into the crime report numbers. Plus alot of stores no longer even call us where they have shoplifters they deal with it internally and normally find it cheaper to just get the items back and ban the person then to have the person arrested and have to pay to have employees come to court.
ballen0351
Sr. Grandmaster
Another part of it tho' is that we see that our police are not fulfilling their role of giving us an overall safer place for honest people to prosper; that loss of 'faith' leads to 'us' being less forgiving.
Anyhow - got to fly as the Officer in the House calls me to the dinner table
People do need to undersand that we cant do it alone. We cant make your neighborhood safer if your not willing to help. You see things in your area and demand action you have 1 area to worry about we have 10 and each one has someone demanding we clean it up. We just cant be everywhere at once. Here in the State with the big "Stop Snitching" movement makes our job that much harder. Then when we do lock up a bad guy and the judicial system releases him or gives him a slap on the wrist and hes back out soon that hurts us several ways.
1st it makes the bad guy get the attitude that you cant touch me im above the law
2nd it gives him street cred with his people on the street because he want did a little time and didnt snitch
3rd it makes the good people less likely to help because they know nothing will happen to the bad guy.
sgtmac_46
Senior Master
The statistic are about all anyone has to go on. There is no rational way to extrapolate those 'unreported' crimes. You just simply can't do it.
Moreover, the reality suggests that the issue is far more in the other direction.....i.e. statistics indicating that crime is WORSE than it actually is.......some crimes are notoriously erroneously reported.........crimes like homicide, for example, either happened or they didn't........other crimes, such as fradulent stealing reports for insurance claims, erroneous sexual assault reports made by alleged victims seeking retribution against the alleged suspect for some other slight, erroneous assault claims.
And for every agency like Baltimore and St. Louis who is under pressure to show that their crime rate is lower than it is because of bad publicity, there are 30 agencies trying to 'pad' their crime rates to get increasingly limited Federal funds, which are alloted partially according to need indicated by UCR reporting.
sgtmac_46
Senior Master
Certain crimes very likely may rise as the economy effects those........things like petty theft. Odd circumstances drive major fluctuations in specific crimes. For example, China buying up huge supplies and driving the excessive market price of copper there a couple years back drove the number of worksite thefts and major copper thefts through the roof for several months!
Every joe dirtbag and his brother was hitting build sites and storage facilities for copper.
I don't disagree with anything you said there, good sir :nods:.
We. well some of us, do understand as much an outsider can, the difficulties the police endure trying to get an impossible job done. Please don't think that anything posted here is 'having a go' at any particular officer doing his best under bad circumstances. We, or at least I, am talking about perceptions and principles of policing, rather than the nuts-and-bolts, actually doing the unforgiving job, side of things. Over here in England, however, there is an institutional 'problem' that I'll note later.
As to the reporting issue, I've noted before that reporting of crime has, in my experience gone down. I've been burgled twice, had a car stolen, had one attempted burgularly and one attempted car theft. Out of that catalogue, I reported one, the first burgulary, to the police. The response and outcome was so unstellar that I've never bothered since - no point if the Force can't help me and makes me, the victim, feel like I'm wasting their time.
That's the problem I referred to earlier, how the police make the victims feel like an irritant rather than someone to be helped. I know my stuff isn't the Crown Jewels but having my car stolen means I am a lot of months savings out of pocket. Being told to fill in some forms and we'll look for it as we go (sub-text if we can be bothered) really hurts the Police's stature amongst those they're supposed to serve.
Supra Vijai
Black Belt
100% with Sukerkin on this one... I've had my car broken into a few times while I park it at the station to go to work, it's at the point where I mainly now walk to the station and catch the train to be sure the car's safe at home. Each time I've called to report it, I've been told I could go to a police station if I really wanted or wait a few hours and they may send officers over to inspect. After driving to the police station, I've had to give a report through an intercom, the officer has never even come out the back office and given a case number and that's it. Also my work premises got broken into, had a few things stolen including large screen TV's etc. Called the police who came down about an hour later, they looked around, said someone would be in touch to come get prints and I never heard back from them. Tried calling back to the station a couple of days later and was told it wasn't "big enough" for them do send a unit out and to claim insurance. Kinda shakes one's faith....
I'm not saying all cops are like this or that you guys aren't busy enough etc but realistically, every person calling to report a crime is ringing because to them it's a serious crime, as the victim, they can't afford the emotional detachment in a lot of cases to class it as a "petty crime" or otherwise.
I've been known to respond with something along the lines of "I'd like to... but people who can't obey the traffic laws keep getting in my way."
Archangel M
Senior Master
This topic reminds me of an article on a cop blog I read.
http://tgace.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/cop-musings/
This is just the end of it. The rest is pretty good too.
http://tgace.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/cop-musings/
This is just the end of it. The rest is pretty good too.
sgtmac_46
Senior Master
It's interesting that i've rarely worked car breakins where the thieves actually needed to break anything to get in. I've had a couple of those, but 99% of the time the car is unlocked and the items stolen were simply left in the car in plain sight.
A couple years back I had a poor unfortunate gal who had left the Christmas money, approximately $400.00 worth, in the center console, in her unlocked car, parked in front of the residence. Some mope walking through the area jiggled the lock, discovered it open, perused through, and absconded with the Christmas funds.
Lock the doors, folks! An ounce of prevention is worth multiple futile manhours trying to track down the cash after the thief has already spent it on booze, burgers and crack......which he probably did before the crime was even discovered.
A couple years back I had a poor unfortunate gal who had left the Christmas money, approximately $400.00 worth, in the center console, in her unlocked car, parked in front of the residence. Some mope walking through the area jiggled the lock, discovered it open, perused through, and absconded with the Christmas funds.
Lock the doors, folks! An ounce of prevention is worth multiple futile manhours trying to track down the cash after the thief has already spent it on booze, burgers and crack......which he probably did before the crime was even discovered.
Supra Vijai
Black Belt
In my case, the car was locked and nothing was in plain sight... No cash or anything like that the first couple of times, seemed to be a break in with the hopes of finding something, the last time though, car was still locked and nothing was in plain sight but I had my MA gear in the back as we had class that night. All my training weapons, my belt, my kick pads/target pads etc. I parked in the shopping centre to go into the post office to collect some packages and by the time I got back, everything was gone. They left my gi though and chose instead of take an old membership card to our school which had expired 2 years ago. During the report, I got totally grilled as to what I was doing with weapons in the first place - even though they were all wooden and/or padded - and that seemed to be where the focus went.
sgtmac_46
Senior Master
Sometimes, as in your case, you just get unlucky. Most of the time, though, it's a product of bad decisions.
I'd rather tell folks how to avoid becoming a victim in the first place than have to try and close the barn door after the horse has fled the state. Making things more difficult for thieves is a key part of self defense, as we're far more likely to become the victim of theft in our lives than of violent assault.
A variety of things can effect a thief's decision from locking doors to where one chooses to park. Some locations give better access to a thief than others, for example, where one parks in a parking lot. Parking in a dark corner away from street lights will create a more tempting opportunity for a thief.
One should try to think like a thief........when parking their car or doing some other activity, think about how easy it would be to access your property, and then purposely make that act more difficult.
ballen0351
Sr. Grandmaster
I hear that alot people just dont bother even calling the police anymore. Ive gone to burglary calls and the homeowner tells me this is the 3rd or 4th time in 6 months but they have not reported it before.
As for the last part about making the victim feel like an irritant I can see that even I have found myself being short with people cutting people off. I cant make an excuse for it I can only say that we should treat people better. I also cant speak for anyone else but myself but sometimes I forget that to the victim what happened to them is a big deal when to me its just the 4th burglary call of the day and its no big deal. I forget that an encounter with the police is not a normal thing its a big deal. thats why I like to talk to people like you and hear how the public sees us. I talk to cops all day most of my friends are cops even my wife was a cop so I lose touch with how others think. Alot of cops do get an us vs them attitude because most people are not glad to see us we meet people at the worst times of there lives and people are not always the nicest to us I get told weekly how to do my job, that "I pay your salary so do what I say", "why you messing with me go find a real criminal", "your messing with me because im black, hispanic, gay, white, a woman". Ive been spit on, punched, kicked, shot at, had guns and knives pulled on me, jumped by 3 people, all because of the uniform I wear. Ive had lawsuits filed against me, had people follow me home, had my house broken into, had a guy waiting for me at my house. There are cops gunned down trying to grab a cup of coffee not bothering a sole. So we tend to get a neg attitude toward others and its not right we a public servents but I think at least for me I forget that sometimes.
Again im not speaking for all police these are just my thoughts and views as I see things.
ballen0351
Sr. Grandmaster
Sadly thats how things have become at least where I work with officers out on furlough days and just the call volume we get everyday we dont have the man power to send a cop to every call. There are not enough officers on the street or hours in the day to get to them all.
Supra Vijai
Black Belt
Understandable, you're only human after all. All I was trying to say was that unfortunately, the after effects of budget cuts to your department, understaffing, long hours etc impact the average joe public and that doesn't help the whole feelings side of things. To any LEO's reading this, I for one have nothing against you guys, in fact I'd like to make a career of it when I finish my course (Criminology majoring in Forensics) but the situation aint the best at the moment.
Empty Hands
Senior Master
Heh, I had the opposite experience once. Someone took a crowbar to our window to get in when nothing was in the car, and they didn't take a thing.
Might have just been crazy or looking for trouble, it was in a transit lot and other random cars had the same thing happen.
Archangel M
Senior Master
Sometimes it's just vandalism. We get kids with pellet guns going on car window sprees every once and a while here.
