"Either you buy these, or I take your car"

[Dagga Boy]

What's a citrus or floral crime?

Worked a massive program citing the folks who stand on the side of the freeways selling flowers or fruit. This was our version of selling single cigarettes. Most of the "offenders" were illiterate illegal aliens who were dropped at the locations with a bunch of fruit or flowers to sell. Gigantic waste of resources for writing citations to people with fake names and not likely to ever go to court, and of course the big deal was seizing all their fruit or flowers.

Meanwhile.....my team was making almost exclusively felony arrests, got tons of guns, shot bad guys, and solved some heavyweight violent felonies....which is why we got absorbed as our numbers and arrest quality was off the charts. It was obvious the federal money was more important than actually making the world a safer place. I never worked it, but we did the same thing with seatbelt tickets. Federally funded officers on overtime would go out and do nothing but wrote seatbelt tickets. Nice idea, but pathetic when we were backed up on serious calls for service and crimes in progress and you got a bunch of people out doing nothing but writing seatbelt tickets.

[BehindBlueI's]

Worked a massive program citing the folks who stand on the side of the freeways selling flowers or fruit. This was our version of selling single cigarettes. Most of the "offenders" were illiterate illegal aliens who were dropped at the locations with a bunch of fruit or flowers to sell. Gigantic waste of resources for writing citations to people with fake names and not likely to ever go to court, and of course the big deal was seizing all their fruit or flowers.

Meanwhile.....my team was making almost exclusively felony arrests, got tons of guns, shot bad guys, and solved some heavyweight violent felonies....which is why we got absorbed as our numbers and arrest quality was off the charts. It was obvious the federal money was more important than actually making the world a safer place. I never worked it, but we did the same thing with seatbelt tickets. Federally funded officers on overtime would go out and do nothing but wrote seatbelt tickets. Nice idea, but pathetic when we were backed up on serious calls for service and crimes in progress and you got a bunch of people out doing nothing but writing seatbelt tickets.

Ah.

We had NHTSA grants as well. You had to do so many seat belt checkpoints but there was also high fatal crash intersection, work zone, school zone, and DUI grants. I worked DUI and work zone quite a bit. I can count on one hand how many seat belt tickets I've written in my career, and there were all too people in lieu of a moving violation. Somebody like a city bus driver where points on their license was going to hurt them more than the average Joe but they'd done something too stupid to just ignore. Anyway, I always figured it was a free cop on the street. If I wasn't working the work zone I'd be at home, so there was no loss to take the OT. DUI was even better, take a drunk for a district guy and he was back in service ready to do his thing while you processed the DUI. I don't know what it's like in TX but I'd guess it's similar. DUI is freaking mounds of paperwork, way more than any other type of arrest.

Beat officers were responsible for panhandlers in the intersections. I had pretty good luck explaining to them the first time I would warn them. The second time I'd cite them. The 3rd time I'd watch until they stopped a car and arrest them for obstructing traffic. I had very few people get to the 3rd time. We both new citing them was useless as they weren't going to show up to environmental court and the $40 fine was civil, so nothing was going to happen. Lock one up for obstructing traffic though, word got around, and when they saw you were 'that cop' they at least moved off your beat.

Eh, drifted off topic, sorry.

Anyway, yeah, I've given and received discretion as well. Just not bought or sold it.

[Alpha Sierra]

Selling things on duty to the public should be against policy, period. I say to the public because if you want to sell to your fellow cops at roll call or run a snack fund in the detective's office, that's fine.

You want to hock tickets, do it on your own time. There's simply too much potential for both corruption and the appearance of corruption. Even if he didn't extort them, a traffic stop is not the place to be shilling a product, and having someone detained longer than legally required so you can do your sales pitch is problematic as well.

This.

I cannot believe that some people here think the sort of thing being discussed is OK at all, no matter the circumstance, or what happened "before the video started rolling"

[Dagga Boy]

Just FYI, I worked in Southern California, I just left for Texas when I retired.

Your point on the problem vendors is just like any problem in a beat. Vendors, prostitutes, vacant houses, and other assorted nuisances should be handled by a good beat cop (almost an oxymoron) and it was part of taking pride in how you handled your beat. My issues with many of these programs is they are directed from elsewhere and often do not address local problems well. I have no problems doing things to reduce traffic fatalities. I guarantee that local traffic cops have a very good idea how to do it and I would rather see them given given better resources than how the federal grant programs are done. Same with the COPS stuff, which is what great beat cops do. We have just lost the art of being a great beat cop through screwed up priorities and our new high tech means of evaluation of what patrol guys do.

[voodoo_man]

Just FYI, I worked in Southern California, I just left for Texas when I retired.

Your point on the problem vendors is just like any problem in a beat. Vendors, prostitutes, vacant houses, and other assorted nuisances should be handled by a good beat cop (almost an oxymoron) and it was part of taking pride in how you handled your beat. My issues with many of these programs is they are directed from elsewhere and often do not address local problems well. I have no problems doing things to reduce traffic fatalities. I guarantee that local traffic cops have a very good idea how to do it and I would rather see them given given better resources than how the federal grant programs are done. Same with the COPS stuff, which is what great beat cops do. We have just lost the art of being a great beat cop through screwed up priorities and our new high tech means of evaluation of what patrol guys do.

"Beat" "Sector" "Area" integrity has gone by the wayside.

When I got on we were responsible for our sectors. We handled everything in/on/around them, it was our job to take care of that area and that area took care of us if we needed something done. Now a days, its just folklore. We can't even remotely do anything like that and the last time I was assigned to patrol and we had sectors or a small enough area I was in every single day was before obama took office....

[Hambo]

This.

I cannot believe that some people here think the sort of thing being discussed is OK at all, no matter the circumstance, or what happened "before the video started rolling"

Having been on the receiving end of uninsured/unregistered drivers I can say there would be no mercy in me for them. So my video would have me hooking the minivan while the single mom and kids cry by the roadside. How's that look?

I agree that selling tickets on duty is wrong, but it's the chiefs who ignore/encourage/mandate the practice that are at fault.

[JAD]

Selling tickets doesn't seem like any big deal to me.

Phrasing it coercively seems pretty dumb to me.

This exchange:
""What's up with the faggot ass wipers?" he asks."Breast cancer, man -- my grandma went through it," the driver responds.
Zagursky says the pink wipers make the driver look like a "fruitcake" and suggests he support breast cancer in a different way. "

Should have gotten him fired. There's no need for that in a public employee.

[Alpha Sierra]

I agree that selling tickets on duty is wrong, but it's the chiefs who ignore/encourage/mandate the practice that are at fault.

While you'll get no argument from me about bosses mandating this kind of crap, let me ask you this....which is most likely:

1. Bosses told cop in video to threaten quid pro quo to sell tickets

2. Cop came up with improper quid pro quo offer all on his own

I'm gonna go with #2. He's probably the same guy who will offer "discretion" to some good looking chick in exchange for a hummer.

[Dagga Boy]

"Beat" "Sector" "Area" integrity has gone by the wayside.

When I got on we were responsible for our sectors. We handled everything in/on/around them, it was our job to take care of that area and that area took care of us if we needed something done. Now a days, its just folklore. We can't even remotely do anything like that and the last time I was assigned to patrol and we had sectors or a small enough area I was in every single day was before obama took office....

Seems to be universal. The officer who ruled his beat with pride is a long gone. American cities would be far better off if that was the priority. I remember the days when there were guys in major cities who worked the same area in a metropolitan city for decades. They knew every bad guy...and their parents from when they were problems too. They knew all the merchants, every drunk and addict, etc. Detectives could always come to the neighborhood encyclopedia cop for help with cases. Many of these guys were revered for their ability to apply the iron fist and the velvet glove with learned skill. They knew the "feel" of the neighborhood and when something was "off". They knew who belonged and who didn't. Now we have books about "Left of Bang", yet the purest experts are often reviled now as lazy slugs who are not promotable. Everybody wants to be SWAT or some special cupcake. The idea of working the same area for decades is not considered a honorable and respected ability. I listen to all this b.s. Spewed by "experts" on community oriented policing when police management and policy makers killed what was the greatest community police officer with all sorts of demands for "numbers" to enter into computers rather than results earned through interaction. America's loss of HUMINT intelligence is not only happening with the military and intelligence community, but in the streets of our cities as well. If you work a beat correctly, the reward is low "productivity". This is not looked at as "good" by current evaluation methods. This is the crux of a ton of problems and fails to use a good business model of how to assess "success". The standard that I think most taxpayers would like as what they REALLY want is that when they dial 911, how fast is somebody there. This was my standard when working a beat, but was not what a vast majority of supervisors evaluated me on. Happy "customers"' will mean unhappy bosses using this model.

[BehindBlueI's]

Seems to be universal. The officer who ruled his beat with pride is a long gone. American cities would be far better off if that was the priority.

At least here, the death knell was "do more with less". We went 5 years without hiring. Beats became zones to hide manpower shortages, each officer had a larger area to work and instead of having 1 or 2 cops per beat they merged 3-4 beats into a zone and 2-3 cops worked the whole area. Nobody knows anybody now because they are too busy going run to run to rattle doorknobs or talk with people. I was on a district channel yesterday working a person shot and nearly every dispatched run was "any 2 cars to start for..." meaning that no one in the zone or adjacent zone was in service. You can't build relationships like that, and it burns the cops out.

I loved being a beat cop. I loved being able to identify a problem and to solve it. The new way of doing things ruined a lot of it. The media ruined more of it. I'm glad I went inside when I did. Probably should have done it a few years sooner, really. We still don't have the resources we need, but at least I can triage and work the extra hours to work the ones I can work.