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Tag: police patrol

  • Candid Camera and Why Waiters Make Good Cops

    There’s a story in the Baltimore Sun about a police officer that got suspended over his conduct as shown on a YouTube video.

    You can’t skate in the Inner Harbor (why, I’m not sure). You can’t bike either (I got busted once for biking through an empty Inner Harbor at 6:45AM on my way to the police academy). These kids were skateboarding and the cop goes off on one of the kids. Really, you shouldn’t call a police officer, “dude.” But on the video, the cop is being, well… a dick. I showed it to my class and my students think, well, the same.

    The reporter, Annie Linskey, called me and asked for my thoughts on the video. I told her my first reaction. But I also said I couldn’t be sure. At least not sure enough to go on record in the Baltimore Sun criticizing a Baltimore City police officer.

    We don’t know what happened before the video starts. Is it a school day? (probably not) Did the cop already tell the kids three times to stop skateboarding in the Inner Harbor? Did the kid flip off the cop right before the video starts? I think there are lots of possible situations that could justify the cop’s behavior. As a former cop, my first instinct is to give a cop the benefit of the doubt. Patrolling the Inner Harbor is a plum assignment and the officer had no previous complaints. So he’s probable a good officer.

    The truth is that cops, including myself, are all too willing to excuse other officers as to how they do they job. Though I would tell a cop in private how I think he or she could do better, I don’t think everything a cop does should be second guessed by people who don’t understand the nature of the job and the specific situation. In legal jargon, the totality of the circumstances.

    Different cops handle different situations differently. Some cops are better at being aggressive. Some are better at talking to people. Sometimes cops should be courteous. Sometimes cops shouldn’t be polite. Cops have to make quick decisions. Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re wrong. Sometimes they’re just having a bad day.

    Now let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the video shows the whole story. If that’s the case, then the officer handled the situation horribly. If your goal is to get three kids to stop skateboarding, there are much better ways to do it.

    To put it bluntly, how do you get cops to stop being dicks? It’s a serious question. And I’ve thought about it lots. I still don’t have a good answer. I think cops are rude simply because they can be. If you deal with the public at your job and you could be rude, would you? Nobody starts a job wanting to be rude. But if you’re dealing with a random selection of the public (or worse), it often ends up that way. Every wanted to really tell somebody off? Well, cops can. And some do.

    I often half-seriously propose that the six months of the police academy could be better spend waiting table is a fine-dining restaurant. I’ve waited a lot of tables in my life. And one thing you learn in a fancy restaurant working for tips is an important lesson for police (and everybody). In stressful situations where people are rude to you, good waiters learn how to be polite to people they hate.

    [Other skills from waiting useful for police: how to multitask, prioritize situations, stay calm under pressure, deal with idiots, work without sitting down, eat quickly, and bathroom breaks, and wash your hands a lot.]

    Still, sometimes a person does need a lesson. Sometimes an arrest isn’t appropriate. Or legal. So as good police, you’ve got to put on an act: yell, threaten, cajole, lecture. All these are part of the job. But it’s important to have an objective when you deal with a situation. Then you have to figure out the best method to achieve your goals. Yelling for the sake of yelling isn’t good policing. I rarely felt I had anything to prove as a police. I had a job to do.

    Cops tend to be scared of video cameras. Precisely because of videos such as this. How would you like it if you were suspended because of an incident at work seven months ago you may not even remember? But in the long run I think cameras will help police more than hurt police. It would be nice to have videos of criminals misbehaving. It would be nice to have videos backing up cops’ version of stories. It would be nice to see cops handling situations well.

    It’s good to police assuming you’re being watched. These days, you probably are. If videos make cops less rude, all the better. My problem with asshole cops isn’t so much that they’re being an asshole, it’s that being an asshole is usually bad policing. It escalates. It has no ultimate goal. And it’s dangerous. I don’t want to backup a cop who provoked a fight because he and some kid got all macho with each other. I don’t want my work defusing a domestic ruined because some cop shows up and feels (sometimes incorrectly) like he’s being dissed by some idiot.

    A police friend of mine saw the video and wrote this:

    I saw part of the video and I know the cop. He is your typical Italian to say the least. He is a pretty nice guy but I guess by the looks of it he had a bad day. You know that I always give the cop a very heavy benefit of the doubt, but the kid was skateboarding. I mean shit, find a drunk or something. Shit, I felt bad just watching the tape. Granted the kid smoked or huffed way to much earlier but still they were riding skateboards. To top it all off, it was at the Inner Harbor in daylight for god sakes!!! I will stop ranting now.

    So will I.

  • How not to get my ass kicked by the police

    Last night I was stopped by police. It was about 1AM on the coldest night of the year and I was biking back from work. I needed some groceries and passed an unfamiliar grocery store. I went up on the sidewalk to look inside, trying to decide if it was worth my while to buy some stuff or wait till I got back to a store with a familiar layout.

    I was stopped in front of the store, figuring this out, when po-po pulls up next to me. The passenger side window rolls down and a man asks, “Do you have ID?” “Sure,” I say almost happily. Given my cop background and professional interests, I actually kind of like being harassed by police. I’m good at talking to cops. Don’t play dumb. Don’t lie. Don’t act pissed off (even if you are). Don’t say, “don’t you have anything better to do?!”

    Does he think I’m looking for drugs in the projects across the street? Does he think my balaclava means I’m going to rob the store? Or is he just going to bust me for being on the sidewalk or not having a bell? I give him my work ID.

    He looks at my ID for a moment and says, “We stopped you for riding on the sidewalk. You know that’s not allowed?” It was 20 degrees out. At 1AM. In Queens. But I put on my sheepish face. “Yeah, I know it’s not allowed. But I just wanted to look in this store and figured you wouldn’t care because it’s ten below out. I’m sorry.” My tone was nice, conversational, even respectful. We actually exchanged some pleasantries and then they left. I continued to break bike laws all the way home.

  • He’s dead… cuff him

    The New York Times has an article by Al Baker, “Handcuffing the Wounded: Tactic Hits a Nerve.”

    I read that article with interest. Police don’t have the option to nothandcuff a suspect. I always thought that officers should have some (limited) discretion to not handcuff suspects. For instance, you’re patrolling, minding your own business, and a person comes up to you and says “I’m wanted, I’m here to turn myself in.” OK. You run his info and indeed, he’s 10-30 (In Baltimore, that means wanted or in custody).

    Let’s also say this person is wanted for a failure to appear in court for a non-violent crime. Why handcuff this guy in public? He’s turning himself in. It only serves to discourage others from doing the same.

    The part of the article that made the sense to me was the idea that after a shooting, there’s a lot to deal with, and you don’t even want to think about having a debate about whether or not to handcuff a suspect. Just do it and move on.

    I think the rules will change only if some doctors can show that handcuffing a suspect could threaten the life of a wounded suspect.

    There was one suspect I didn’t want to handcuff. I was just out of field training and Green, working the Artscape fair in Baltimore on three hours sleep. A young black man was playing the buckets. Buckets are easy to play poorly. But this guy was good. Loud and good.

    Some of the Artscape people complained. The paying vendors didn’t want the noise and were maybe jealous that he drew more people than they were. He wasn’t allowed to play in this area. People paid good money to set up shop.

    Two mounted cops said they weren’t going to tell him shit. My friend and partner wasn’t going to play bad cop either. The drummer had attracted a big crowd, who were enjoying his performance.

    I made the mistake of asking the sergeant what to do, hoping he would say leave him be. But he said to get him out of Artscape boundaries, so I had to do it. After his set, I approached him and, to the loud boos of the crowd, told him to pack up and leave the Artscape property. He couldn’t play in the area. I told him where to move and told him he didn’t have a choice. He agreed, I left.

    A few hours later I was with the same sergeant and the guy was playing again. Sarge said he was 10-30. “There’s the right way and the wrong way to handle these things,” he said. He didn’t put cuffs on him there, which was a smart move. Rather, buckets in hand, he was lead back to the police truck. I had to do the paperwork and write him a citation. I told him he was a good drummer. He was friendly and a little slow. Perhaps mildly retarded. He told me he was blessed. Maybe he was.

    He said made over $500 the day before. He could bang those buckets good.

    He was so compliant, even sweet, that I didn’t think to cuff him until one of the people in the truck said, “Is he 10-30? Then why isn’t he in h-a-n-d-c-u-f-f-s.” Oh yeah. It was a fair question. I was violating departmental regulation. I know there’s no guarantee that a sweet and compliant young man can’t turn violent. But I just didn’t think this guy needed to be cuffed. And though I still thought it unnecessary, I cuffed him.

    Things got worse. I couldn’t write him a citation because he had no ID. You can’t write a ticket if you don’t know how they are. So now he’s under arrest (technically detained to verify identity, but it’s the same thing). I thought he was 20, but it turned out he was only 17. So now there’s there extra hassle of juvenile paperwork.

    I had to count his money for inventory. He had about $170 on him. It was quite a sight later. Laid on the table, you’d think he was a big time drug dealer, except they were all one-dollar bills.

    I should have just let him go. It’s the only arrest I’ve ever regretted.