I feel pain for all of you working under these constraints. It got progressively worse from the 80's through the early 2000's when I decided to get off the train, but I can't even imagine working under the conditions that have become so pervasive today which you all face.
Be careful and be safe.
So to add to this for those not in LE who don’t understand this stuff. My first shooting was a carjacker. Two known local gang memebwra stole a truck at 2:00 AM by shoving a pistol in the truck owners face and taking the truck while wearing nylon stockings over their faces. I found them within minutes and while following them waiting for back up, they put the truck in reverse and rammed me looking for an airbag deployment. I ended up shooting the driver and the passenger surrendered by dropping his gun after I shot the driver and had him lit up with a flashlight alongside the side of the fore end of the shotgun. I requested that night to have them charged under the then new federal carjacking statute. That didn’t happen. The driver took a three year prison deal on a plea bargain for “Grand Theft”. No gun stuff, carjacking, nothing related to a violent crime and no gang enhancements. He did less then half the time and was paroled. On paper, this violent gang member only has a record reflecting a TV theft from an open, unlocked garage as opposed to a gun armed under age felon gang member. Thankfully, he pissed off the guys in his gang who executed him on a lawn near his apartment years later. THIS is what is wrong with the system and gun control laws. We are not removing the problem from society, and we are not targeting those violent criminals who are the ones actually committing gun crimes.Originally Posted by lwt16
Last edited by Dagga Boy; 10-12-2017 at 11:07 AM.
Just a Hairy Special Snowflake supply clerk with no field experience, shooting an Asymetric carbine as a Try Hard. Snarky and easily butt hurt. Favorite animal is the Cape Buffalo....likely indicative of a personality disorder.
"If I had a grandpa, he would look like Delbert Belton".
The meds help.........lol.
The job was never a good paying gig, there really never was much respect from the public, and it was always dangerous.
But man o man........was it a BLAST coming to work way back when.
I can remember (and I'm about to date myself agewise) coming to work and grabbing up a "hot sheet" right off the monster copier we had at my first agency. It listed all the stolen cars from most recent on down. I or my partner would fold that bad boy in half and stick it to the passenger airbag cover with the top 5 tags highlighted.
Once the calls died down (2ish) we would go hunting. Woe be unto you if you were driving one of those boxy Caprice classics that were so easy to steal by cracking the column. If you had one of those little triangle windows busted out on the rear doors, your tail was getting blue lighted.
9 times out of 10 the driver would floor it and we let the games begin. Car chase, foot chase, K9 bite, fighting........almost always led to receiving stolen 1st charges, dope, guns.......
Good friggin times. I'd come home just happy as a clam......just giddy and couldn't wait to go back in.
I was fair to middling catching wanted people....but for some reason, stolen cars would pass me all the time.....both the driver and passenger either pretending that I didn't exist or giving me the "deer in the headlights" look.
Absolute blast!
Sergeants and Lieutenants would come help chase folks, help you repair minor damage to fleet vehicles on the sly, just an all around good time.
Really miss those days.
Part of it is definitely where you live...The DA only wants to prosecute "the worst of the worst", the former DA was more concerned with keeping up with her conflict of interest with her kid when he got arrested...We have a guy that we wanted on 4-5 burglaries, he has a warrant, a considerable meth problem, and we have lost tens of thousands of dollars to this guy in the last 12-14 months or so...He is prohibited from our buildings, which means that walking in during daylight and shoplifting a pack of gum means that he can be charged with burglary...We have video showing him violating conditions of release by being in a couple of our buildings...And when you pull him up on the state courts website ALL of his felony arrests are "decline to prosecute" by the State.
Another part is the Courts Bonding System. The voters didn't like the fact the under the State Constitution really did not permit people to be held without bond...Well, it did, and always had, based on extenuating circumstances. Now that the voters have said that they want bad guys that are threats to the community to be held without bond, the courts have made two decisions. The first is that for someone to be considered a "threat to the community" a judge has to convene a hearing within a few days (I don't recall how many, but I am pretty sure it is less than the time we have to get a case to Grand Jury, that is 10 days from the initial arraignment) where the prosecutor has to have provided discovery and present evidence that the person is a threat to the community. The amendment allows the courts to release without bond anyone who is not shown to be a threat to the community or a flight risk. The second decision is that the state constitution requires the courts to set bail that can be afforded by the defendant, and requires that anyone not shown to be a flight risk or threat be released without bond. When I started you did not get released from custody on your own recognizance without a valid photo ID (to include your AFIS scan done at jail intake) to verify your identity, and a valid, local address to ensure you showed up to court. Now after three or four days in jail homeless guys are being released on $8.00 bail (or so my last legal update with the big local agency you are closest too said), because it is what they can afford. No valid ID, no local address, and court dates are frequently 2-4 months out. The jail is at record low capacity. A violent domestic arrestee that I had this week was out 8 or so hours without bond after I booked him. The SO barely had time to serve the Emergency Restraining Order on him.
The City cops, last I checked, would only pursue a stolen if it was a violent felony vehicle...I have heard that the SO is thinking about letting their guys PIT more sooner to get more cars stopped with less risk, but the new mobile tracking system that they just showed on the news last week is likely going to keep that from happening. To be fair, the new system looks like the cat's rear end for recovering the stolen property type stolen cars, and if an option is must better than PITing a non-violent stolen. Air support is used if available on all pursuits in the county, but the city helicopter's call sign for the last couple of years has been mocked as "Ground 1" (instead of Air 1) and for the last few weeks I have not heard Air 1 on the air, and Metro 1 (BCSO's bird) was handling most of the air support calls I have heard. We are a long way from having 24/7 air support around here.
Our community is less tolerant of the risk of stopping someone for "only a property crime". In 18 years I have been in four or five pursuits that I can remember off the top of my head. Supervisors will call them in a heartbeat. I heard one LT try to call off a foot pursuit. Just a couple of months ago a stolen car fled in the Southeast and the officer was ordered to terminate the chase and return to the station to meet with the Sgt. (meeting with the supervisor after they call the chase off tends to keep people from "following" the fleeing vehicle, without chasing it and seems to work most of the time). The car chose to flee away from the officer toward the station, near the officer's most direct route. While enroute to the station the alert officer noted about one block away the stolen was stopped with two people walking away from it. He called it in with descriptions and was immediately chastised by the SGT over the air, and the Dispatcher had to dispatch other units to the recover the stolen and attempt to locate the people described walking away from the car, while the officer returned to the station.
And, like LWT (I think said, not able to check now) while the warrantless entry exceptions exist you must be right. So much so, that on hostage barricades, SWAT deploys with detectives to write a search warrant before a deliberate plan is executed in all most all situations. Hasty plans are another story. I am not SWAT, and I don't work for the surrounding agencies that have SWAT, but I have heard this on radio chatter (we scan surrounding agencies) and from former/retired SWAT guys. I keep telling my dispatcher that cops get to be successful cops when presented with unique circumstances by recalling something similar, and applying what worked before, or avoiding what didn't work before. It is frequently an improv performance, and like many improvs experience creates a pool of responses to choose from. The problem is Case Law does not just apply to your experience, but my screw up can fundamentally change how you are expected to do your job for the rest of your career. Even if a cop doesn't screw up, they can still be successfully sued or suppressed, and precedent can be set. Ask any other cop anywhere what an HGN does for their DWI arrest, and they can tell you, but in NM we have been able use the HGN during our investigation (it is the most accurate field sobriety test we have, without a portable breath tester), and are allowed to use the results of our HGN in our custody decision, but we are not permitted to testify to the results of that test, nor the specific clues we are trained to look for in that test (but general, non-nystagmis related observation is fine). This decision (I think, without checking) is roughly 20 years old.
Sorry, this post is about 12 times longer than I intended it to be, because I have had a hell of a week, shorthanded, high call volume, no coffee breaks, no timely relief, and it is my Friday and I am wore out. I tend to get diarrhea of the keyboard when I am this tired.
pat
Last edited by UNM1136; 10-19-2017 at 05:28 AM. Reason: should not type when I am this tired.
Thanks Pat,
All the responses are understandable, but it it is still very frustrating. We have set such a bad precedence in this town and hog tied our justice system to the point that those wanting to live outside of the law know how to do it indefinitely with out any real repercussions.
I was talking to Tom yesterday about this and I think he made a good point about human nature always pushing the limit for what is acceptable and normal. Not getting the little crime under control immediately leads to a city that is soon out of control because the limit has been reached so many times and now more dangerous or violent crime is the norm.
I'll do shorthanded (have for 18 years now), a high call volume, no relief in sight..........
But I'll be danged if I'm doing it without coffee. That's cruel and unusual punishment!!!
An update to this story...
Some officers were poking around making their presence know yesterday. I got to get a little more of the low down.
Originally we were told that the people were chased into the hood and bailed. I was under the impression that it was a pursuit by car. Turns out that the call started with a traffic stop. The car came back stolen and ran. The officer was told not to pursue, but our friendly local ghetto bird was up and picked up the vehicle and followed it to the house and saw three people bail and go into the house.
Apparently this is why they were reluctant to get them because they couldn't "ID" the people even though they know who they are and where they were.
I have said it three or four times. I get it... but damn.
Sorry for my ignorance. Can you tell me what HGN is?
Horizontal gaze nystagmus. It's one of the tests to determine if someone is driving under the influence.
Last edited by PearTree; 10-19-2017 at 09:05 AM.
and/or brain trauma...
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