Why should they stop someone walking down the street? Unless they have a legitimate reason to suspect that individual has committed a crime, they shouldn't be stopping people randomly walking down the street. This is precisely what people are upset about.
We definitely need police to pull over DUIs and to stop people who are endangering others. What we don't need is police to pull over people for minor traffic infractions, or a broken turn signal as a premise to look for more serious crimes. Those things should be handled like speeding camera tickets. Those of you who espouse smaller government should be in favor of a philosophy of policing that involves less intrusion into your lives.
I'm at fault for not being clear enough.
Not stopping people for minor traffic offenses, I'm fine with whatever the public comes up with, and will enforce that. If you don't want laws enforced, repeal them. As to pulling people over with tag lights out, rolling stops, etc..just to make a bigger case. Surprise, I totally agree that it's not necessary. When I was in patrol, I would not let my guys do it.
Here are some reasons from this week in my jurisdiction that you might want to stop some walking at 0300 in the morning:
1. The guy who walked away from his car that had no insurance and fake tags, and who was probably drunk. ( strong odor of alcohol from the corpse, we are waiting on toxicology.) He made it about 600 ft walking away from that broken down car, wearing all black sweatsuit before he was hit by one car, and then a second car after his body landed in the on coming lane of traffic. I wish one of our road units had been there to stop him and see if he needed HELP as he walked down the road. That's one stop I wish we had made, I'm sure his family and the two people who hit him wished he had of been stopped.
2. The guy who was walking through an apartment building complex with a huge back pack. An apartment complex that has had continual problems with this offense. We made contact, and asked him if he lived in the complex, and was he ok. He takes off, and throws the back pack, which we recovered. Over 20 cars had been entered in that lot, and several guns recovered. He is a convicted felon, and has served two short sentences for armed robbery. I'm sure that had it turned into a use of force issue it would fall under the heading of another person stopped for walking and minding his own business. On a side note, if people could stop leaving their cars unlocked with guns inside, that would be great.
I could go on, but you either get the picture or you don't.
Less intrusion into people's live by LE, I am in support of. Here are a few ways that we could start:
1. A person has a problem with their neighbor because they looked at them funny, don't cut their grass, cut it too early on Sunday, etc... They want something done, so they call 911. In most places, even though none of that is against the law, we get sent. Long conversations are had, much bitiching ensues as we explain we have no standing to get involved. We leave with another happy citizen who knows the law, knows what we should have done, and tells everyone till the end of time that we suck and did nothing. I'm fine with stopping that today.
2. Every call we get to " trouble with a business " The long took too long, the food was late, the tires that were advertised are not in stock, the cell phone contract is invalid, on and on I could go. Let's stop that too.
3. Someone is sick and needs an ambulance. We get sent to all of those, because, if you did not know, EMS won't go to scenes that are not safe. The scene magically becomes safe when we are there.
4. Mental illness and people in crisis. Every police will tell you that we are the worse possible solution to most people that are on the verge of committing suicide or suffering from some sort of dissociative break. Guess what; in 99% of the county, there are no mental health crisis teams to respond to those folks. We get that call, and get to deal with someone with issues, and in many cases are scared of us anyway. It turns out ok the majority of the time, but when it does not, in the court of public opinion that's just us taking every opportunity to shoot someone.
I could go on, but let me get to the topic of using deadly force. In my 30 years, 100% of the people that I have known that had to take a life suffered ill effects from the process. Some work through it, but some never get close to the life they had before. I would hope that no one slips through and gets into LE wants to shoot anyone. If they do, they need to get gone, they are not what we need.
I'll end with this, we as a whole suck at communicating with people and explaining what happened and why. In my example above, if backpack man was a resident and getting ready to ruck march for 3 hours prior to going to work, and he gets stopped he thinks it's because he is black, white, gay, trans, whatever. If we take 1 min, literally 1 min, to explain that there have been thefts in the area, and we know that in many cases offenders wear oversize backpacks to stash their goods, he walks away glad we are out there and feeling safer. We suck at that and need to improve, which would help solve some of the bigger issues we face.
