BS. Police officers are public servants just as any other government employee, and should be held to the same standards of professionalism. The pro-police "thin blue line" propaganda and the anti-police BS as above amazingly have the same effect - they place the police outside the standards of professional accountability - and that is a REAL problem.
>Hey, the best pot I bought in the last twenty-five years was from the
>Monterey sheriffs! Ordinary people can't to do this, but I was a state
>park ranger at the time and they were lecturing us on drug busts...so it
>all worked out fine.
Some of the best weeds ... errr.. someone I know has even smoked came from Monterey and Santa Cruz. Nice places, good people, but caught in a time warp. I regained a sense of reality only by moving "back east."
>3. Cops have absolute discretion: they can let you go for grievous things,
>or haul you in for nothing. When dealing with a cop, you should be as
>still and polite as you possibly can. You can get away with yelling at
>them if you're white: my ex husband used to go ballistic whenever he
>dealth with a cop; this gave me a heart attack, but so far, he's gotten
>away with it. If you're not white, I seriously urge you not to try it.
>Minority cops are not necessarily "easier" on minorities than white cops;
>in fact, sometimes they are worse.
That is not what I learned in a criminology class back in grad school. The cops are more likely to mistreat people who do not behave according to conventional race stereotypes (e.g. a black person loudly demanding his rights is more likely to be seen as an "uppity n-word" and get a raw treatment than a black drunk, but the reverse can be true with a Caucasian person). My own observations tend to be consistent with it.
>4. In the event of a revolution, cops are the last to switch sides. You'll
>probably get the army on your side before you get the cops.
That is not an empirically verifiable statement. There have not been too many revolutions 9esp. left wing ones) in the developed countries. Revolutions are more characteristic of pre-modern, peasant societies. In such societies, the revolutionary tendencies of the army comes from two forces - the cannon fodder composed mainly of peasantry, whose revolutionary sympathies may be fueled by the raw treatment their class get from the landed gentry; and the reform-oriented officer cadre that dos not have any other venues to reform/modernize the entrenched feudal rule.
In other words, the revolutionary tendencies of the army have little to do with any alleged differences between the army and the police (although such differences are often subject of urban legends) - but with class structure.
>5. If you're robbed, attacked, or raped -- sure, call a cop. You'll need
>one to fill out a police report which is useful for insurance companies.
Yep. Other uses may involve getting funds for your community for crime prevention measures.
wojtek