I’m a school bus driver and I regularly get infuriated by people who drive past me when I have my red flashers on and stop sign out, wishing there was a cop around. Only once so far have I gotten my wish … and unfortunately it was the cop driving past me at 40 mph just as some of my kids were about to cross the road. I looked down and saw him with his phone in his right hand and his left hand on the wheel, not paying the slightest attention to what was in front of him.
I’m lucky he didn’t run over any kids, because I probably would have gotten shot.
One of my favorite justiceporn vids was a woman that habitually drove around a stopped schoolbus (on the freaking sidewalk) on her commute. Cop was waiting for her one day and she got roflstomped by the judge on those charges.
I’ve absolutely driven past a cop who was playing WoW on his laptop while sitting in traffic.
They’ve got SCMODS.
Needs a new cigarette lighter.
Are you the police?
No ma’am. We’re musicians.
Shit
What?
Rollers
No
Yep
Shit
I don’t want to be the guy defending cops, but there is usually more than one officer in a squad car. There is no rule against a passenger being distracted.
Where I live it’s strictly one cop per car unless they’re training. That’s why they pull people over in packs.
That’s something I never got about cops in the US. Everywhere in Europe, there are always two cops per car, at least in the places I have been.
It’s to create the illusion that there’s more cops than there really are. Same reason behind take home cars.
My city of about 300k people has about 30 cops patrolling at any given time.
San Jose, California has some wild numbers perhaps like that.
Would you take more if you could? Assuming no reform, just more of the same.
I think higher numbers would lead to reform on its own. When you’re scraping by at the bare minimum, a lot of stuff gets overlooked just to maintain numbers.
More cops would make it a lot easier to have better standards, and raise the average competency level.
Easier to terrorize minorities if you spread out.
Fewer witnesses.
In Europe, it’s exactly because they want witnesses, cops’ words don’t carry more weight than yours by default, so if they ticket you, they want at least two testimonies on their side.
Okay, but in the US they don’t want to risk two cops messing up their witness testimony. Better to just have one, because a cop’s word is law anyway.
That sounds like even their leaders assume they’re horribly stupid…
I haven’t seen that before. I guess they really are just using a laptop and driving at the same time.
Or they sit at green lights because they are too into their laptop to notice the light change
I don’t want to be the guy defending cops, but
Has never been the start of a good and relevant point.
I don’t want to be the guy defending Hitler or Jeffery Dahmer, but
Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, but at least it’s an ethos
-Walther Sobchek
In my area it’s always one cop, and they are driving and using their laptop that sits on the passenger side
You’re thinking of cop shows from the '70s and '80s, not reality.
No, I am thinking of what I have seen in real life. In my area there is almost always 2 cops per vehicle. I was unaware this was not standard.
What is your area? I’ve lived in about 20 US states, in cities and rural areas, and it’s always been 1 cop per vehicle.
I did more research and I found out it actually isn’t standard where I live now, I am misremembering probably because I haven’t had many interactions with police here. This is a somewhat standard practice in major cities though which would explain why I was familiar with it. I will admit copaganda probably reinforced that though, most media I’ve seen does depict 2 officers. But whatever, I’m always happy to learn a new reason to hate cops.
I have never seen this.
