Subject: Fw: Police Harassment

Recently, a California website ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) where the topic was "Policing the Community," and one of the civilian email participants posed the following question: "I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?"

From the law enforcement side a cool cop with a sense of humor replied……
It’s not easy. In California we average one cop for every 2,000 people. About 60% of those cops are on patrol, where we do most of the harassing. One-fifth of that 60% are on duty at any given moment and are available for harassing people. So, one cop is responsible for harassing about 10,000 residents. When you toss in the commercial, business and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 20,000 or more people each day.

A ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and three-fourths of a second to eat a donut, then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. Most cops are not up to it, day in and day out. It’s just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow down those people whom we harass. They are as follows:

PHONE:
People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person who requires special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a useful clue. When we hear that we automatically go into the special harassment mode. We’re also ready with harassment when we get a call on a weeknight that tells us "The kids next door are having a loud party."

CARS:
We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars blasting music, cars with expired registration stickers, etc. It’s lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes, you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, are driving drunk, or they have an outstanding warrant.

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 after a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.

CODES:
When you can think of nothing else to do, there are books that give ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called "Codes:" Penal, Vehicle, Health and Safety, Business and Professional Codes to name just a few. They spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people. After you read the code, you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy smash a car window. Well, the code says that is not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It is a pretty cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well.

We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because the good citizens who pay the tab actually like the fact that we keep the streets safe for them. So, the next time you’re in my town and flip me the bird I’ll take it as a signal that you wish for me to take a little closer look at you. Then maybe I'll harass you, too.

Damn pigs!

Yep, the slimeballs were harassing poor Mrs. McBean just a few months back...