Bryan W. Alaspa 1BANG - now freeze!
July 30th 2009 13:35
OK, I am going to admit that I am speaking from a position of ignorance on this particular topic. Some of you might say that this has never stopped me before, so why should it worry me now? You would be right about that. The problem is that this one has to do with police officers and I really don’t hate the cops the way some people do.
However, the city seems to be in an uproar over some new procedure that is now in place for how police officers can engage and shoot at suspects who are fleeing a scene. This is in response to a death in the force earlier in the year, the exact circumstances of which I do not fully understand. I just know it involved a fleeing suspect and a dead officer.
This seems to be a perfect example of how the media love to run with stories these days without really explaining all of the details. From what I have seen, you would think that Chicago cops are now allowed to simply shoot you because you are driving away from them in the car. As if an entire battalion of police officers could just line up along one of the highways and start shooting and it would be perfectly within their rights to do so. Somehow I don’t think this is exactly the way things are.
I don’t think there are many jobs that are worse than being a cop. Sure, shoveling doo-doo in a stable or installing and removing portable toilets has to be up there and there is the always-bad “coal mining” but even those don’t hold a candle to being a cop. You deal with the worst in humanity on a daily basis. You never know if you are about to be shot at or shot dead. A family argument can escalate into something fatal. Far too many “simple” traffic stops end with a dead officer lying beside the road. Even when you are called, half the time the people who called you don’t really want you there once you get there.
The abuse the cops take is just unbearable. No wonder so many cops end up with health problems and the suicide rate among them is insanely high. No wonder so many appear angry and bitter. Sure, some of them are jerks, but if you are treated like the bad guy even when you are just trying to help people all the time, how can you not develop a few bad habits and a few cynical and dark ideas about humanity?
The decisions cops have to make take mere seconds. People seem to think that everything really does slow down into slow motion like the movies or television. Wouldn’t it be great if, when the cops showed up, they could really slow down time at least around the crooks doing the crimes? Then they could have all the time in the world to slowly make a decision about whether or not to fire back, and if the person has a gun, and then calmly dodge out of the way of the bullets as they travel slower than a tortoise. Sadly that does not happen and bullets fly faster than the speed of sound in some guns and you have fractions of a second to decide if you are about to die.
So, I cannot say that the cops here are now allowed to shoot at you in a car before they really know what’s happening. I don’t think so, but I think the media likes you think that’s the case. Nothing brings up ratings or gets people watching the news like a potential police scandal and nothing generates more news than protesting citizens.
However, the city seems to be in an uproar over some new procedure that is now in place for how police officers can engage and shoot at suspects who are fleeing a scene. This is in response to a death in the force earlier in the year, the exact circumstances of which I do not fully understand. I just know it involved a fleeing suspect and a dead officer.
This seems to be a perfect example of how the media love to run with stories these days without really explaining all of the details. From what I have seen, you would think that Chicago cops are now allowed to simply shoot you because you are driving away from them in the car. As if an entire battalion of police officers could just line up along one of the highways and start shooting and it would be perfectly within their rights to do so. Somehow I don’t think this is exactly the way things are.
I don’t think there are many jobs that are worse than being a cop. Sure, shoveling doo-doo in a stable or installing and removing portable toilets has to be up there and there is the always-bad “coal mining” but even those don’t hold a candle to being a cop. You deal with the worst in humanity on a daily basis. You never know if you are about to be shot at or shot dead. A family argument can escalate into something fatal. Far too many “simple” traffic stops end with a dead officer lying beside the road. Even when you are called, half the time the people who called you don’t really want you there once you get there.
The abuse the cops take is just unbearable. No wonder so many cops end up with health problems and the suicide rate among them is insanely high. No wonder so many appear angry and bitter. Sure, some of them are jerks, but if you are treated like the bad guy even when you are just trying to help people all the time, how can you not develop a few bad habits and a few cynical and dark ideas about humanity?
The decisions cops have to make take mere seconds. People seem to think that everything really does slow down into slow motion like the movies or television. Wouldn’t it be great if, when the cops showed up, they could really slow down time at least around the crooks doing the crimes? Then they could have all the time in the world to slowly make a decision about whether or not to fire back, and if the person has a gun, and then calmly dodge out of the way of the bullets as they travel slower than a tortoise. Sadly that does not happen and bullets fly faster than the speed of sound in some guns and you have fractions of a second to decide if you are about to die.
So, I cannot say that the cops here are now allowed to shoot at you in a car before they really know what’s happening. I don’t think so, but I think the media likes you think that’s the case. Nothing brings up ratings or gets people watching the news like a potential police scandal and nothing generates more news than protesting citizens.
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