Wake up! This is how these people think

So this is what was asked from an "expert" cop online and this is the answer that was given... please read on to understand the mentality of these people working in the system against all of us.

Careers: Police - Law Enforcement - News/Issues - AllExperts.com

here is the full page in details

Question:
I'm interested in becoming a police officer in Texas. But, I want to know how other police officers deal with moral issues about the laws they disagree with personally. Are there even such officers around or do all officers blindly enforce the law regardless of their personal views? Is such a blind enforcement a requirement to be a LEO?

Example: Discriminating laws regarding blacks had to be enforced by officers prior to civil rights movement if they were to enforce all applicable laws without using their personal judgment or discretion.

I'm more interested to know how the officers' own discretion or judgment is allowed to work in LE system regarding such laws & issues. Of course the massively racists laws don't exist anymore, I only used it as a distinguishable example.

Thank you for your time and efforts.

Answer:
You have hit on the age old question of following orders and laws even though you may not agree with them. Laws are voted on and passed by our governing bodies, if police officers were able to pick and choose what laws we want to enforce, then you can probably imagine how bad that could get. You can not start not enforcing this law or that, because then you have to decide where to draw the line at other laws and being fair to all the people you are sworn to serve.

I am sworn to serve all the people, equally, and without putting my own personal feelings about the laws I enforce into the mix. If I let the guy with a little amount of pot go, then how much pot does he have to have to be arrested, if at all? What gives me the right to do that?

Police officers have discretion only when it comes to civil infractions, also known as traffic laws (most). We have some discretion then, but even that has to be used fairly. If you are going to be lenient on one person, then you should be lenient to all people in the same given situation right? You see the problem?

While police officers may have personal views on certain laws and subjects, when it comes to work, and enforcing those laws, we have to follow what our government has put down for us. If I disagree with a law, I can not say I will not enforce it, or I am violating my sworn duty to uphold the laws of the state and country.
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Now this is my argument, please feel free to share yours

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Laws are voted on and passed by our governing bodies

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Then how come when these very same governing bodies start working towards some sort of decriminalization or legalization, it is these very same LEOs who start fussing around and making a lot of noise that this is wrong and its going to lead to increase in crime and send a bad message ,etc etc? Why is that?

u cant shut up while the system is in accordance with your self-interest and whine/bitch when it's not. if u ought to be fair as you say yourself, u gotta shut up all the time and just obey what u r ordered, even if it is something thats going to slash your income or make your job more dangerous.

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if police officers were able to pick and choose what laws we want to enforce, then you can probably imagine how bad that could get. You can not start not enforcing this law or that, because then you have to decide where to draw the line at other laws and being fair to all the people you are sworn to serve.

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In fact, this is already happening in many places. It's called "racial profiling". You choose to scrutinize and needlessly suspect blacks far more than whites regarding enforcing all laws... or i should say not all but many officers do this deliberately and its even included in their education. result is we have far more blacks in prison than whites while we have 10x that white population out there. the line is very well drawn, a black person is more likely to be stopped and searched with any BS reason than the white folk; this applies to convictions as well. there are statistics on this.

and how bad could it get? really? if officers started letting off people with personal amount of marijuana (few grams- up to perhaps a zone or maybe 2) go without trouble? how bad would it get? would they go n smoke the reefer and go shoot up a restaurant in madness? I bet the only bad that would come out of it would be the police & legal not making the money on that one ticket/arrest, thats as bad as it could get.

a pound or a QP are reasonably not in criteria of personal use by common sense, so these same officers could still make a call on that and go for it.

What about serving the constituents who pay for your income with THEIR HARD EARNED MONEY IN TAXES? Should u not think about them? maybe the people in congress are really not our representatives... dont u think about that, as there are a ton of issues where these lawmakers side with lobbies than people, like the very current 700 billion dollar bailout plan? are u reduced to a robot by the system? perhaps a lot of these folks are robots.

I guess the underlying problem is this: Even the system cannot trust its own agents' common sense. Yeah i know such pick n choose strategy of all laws can have bad results in general, but why should the police stay silent against his own mind. why should the police just follow the orders and not have a movement to change some laws? do police believe not that one day they will be judged for their hypocritical decisions?

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If I let the guy with a little amount of pot go, then how much pot does he have to have to be arrested, if at all? What gives me the right to do that?

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So, I'm going to assume if any of these officers were doing their duty in 1940s and 1950s, they would still follow those shameful "laws" discriminating to blacks and minorities, would they not? he is clearly saying I'm sworn to give up my brain and use all in my power to enforce what I'm told to enforce, period. I bet in character you are no different than a professional assassin. It's just a different authority u listen to (government), which is proven not have been necessarily correct in many ways (again, the legal discrimination back in the old days)

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Police officers have discretion only when it comes to civil infractions

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and this is exactly why I applaud all those states, counties or cities that have passed ordinances to make marijuana violations the lowest priority and/or have made laws to MAKE law enforcers to issue a citation instead of arresting non-violent marijuana offenders. I know, none of this will make this a civil matter due to federal law, but its the first step in that direction.
also another reason for activists to push harder on state/local level than federal, feds hold way too much power and interest in this matter, but if u get 30 states who have such laws, what are the feds going to do in face of majority? If u have 20 more counties like santa cruz filing law suits against the federal system, u think the feds will be able to just keep doing what they do? not a chance... thats how civil rights movement was won, case by case... alertness increased and news was made and at some point it was nothing to be hidden from public's judgment anymore and became the movement we all know.

We need all of our cities to do this, maybe that can give the good cops a little room to listen to their conscious. Although I personally have encountered police officers who clearly knew i had weed on me and I was smoking, but did not give me hell at all; in fact one clearly saw the smoke and smelled it for sure while he came behind me in the parking lot that i was in. he was there only because a suspicious car was reported there which would be mine!
he really didnt even get out of his car although I was sure im going to jail... but i guess I had a lucky night.

We are dealing with a brutal robotic system, we don't need to worry about the time where Irobot (story of the movie named Irobot) becomes the reality. It already is the reality, the agents of the government don;t think for themslves, they just listen to what they are told to do. They are trained to ignore they concisions and their own common sense. and this is the government that's supposed to serve us the people. If this is going on at the lowest of the government's agents, then how brainwashed and robotic are those people @ the top? one could draw the analogy that those are the super computers/servers directing these robots...:mad:

I rest my case

I have often dreamed of being a small-town sheriff, smokin chronic all day and lettin the people live in peace :jointsmile:

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Originally Posted by CaptainDank

I have often dreamed of being a small-town sheriff, smokin chronic all day and lettin the people live in peace :jointsmile:

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its called random drug testing. spares no one by policy.

I know what u mean, it works in the fantasy world only though...

or maybe I'm wrong and these hypocrites do drugs themselves and cover each others asses when its needed... who is to verify that with the only info and stats being released by them, as the only "credible" source

Yeah I think a rational person could distinquish between valid laws and civil rights violations. If I was a cop(ha ha) my way of determining leniency would be, does the crime hurt anyone other than the perp?

I don't break laws, I dont give anyone a reason to arrest me, I conform and follow the system.

I smoke weed everyday. Not all cops are going to jail you, it just depends on how they look at things.

I actually like police for the most part, unless there complete insecure assholes.

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Originally Posted by flyingimam

its called random drug testing. spares no one by policy.

I know what u mean, it works in the fantasy world only though...

or maybe I'm wrong and these hypocrites do drugs themselves and cover each others asses when its needed... who is to verify that with the only info and stats being released by them, as the only "credible" source

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Its not quite so "fantasy world" as real world. Think about it this way, even though cops are considered more than your average citizen, in the sense that they are given certain powers, they are still considered citizens of the US to the real government. The people with the power are the ones not being tested, how often do you hear of lawmakers being tested? How often does Bill Gates get tested? What about the Supreme Court Justices? Mr. Bush? The ones that pass the laws are the ones that don't actually have to follow the laws, especially because of the powers of pardoning, and white collar prison vacation getaway ankle bracelet in a multimillion dollar house type of prosecution of those with that power, they dont worry about what laws they pass cause they dont have to follow them.

A very recent news piece on this very issue is the scandal involving lawmakers and lobbists. Not much was covered because the lobbying companies worked very good at covering it up, and also financial breakdown of the US/World economies kinda muddied the coverage. But still, big news. And drugs are suspected, yet no one knew about it until afterwards.

and about what the main post of the thread was about:

I agree with everything you say, except about the police officers upholding the laws part. What the cop said was true, and its the way cops need to be. As much as i dont agree with it, cops need to arrest everyone they catch doing a crime. While i do think it sucks that cops can arrest you for weed, so be it. I would rather have a system of true cops, than corrupt ones. I would rather it not be passed around that cops in so-and-so dont bust people, just because there was one cop that didnt arrest people, then everyone gets arrested because they dont think they can. That is why MJ law is so unfair, the lines as to who are on what side is so jagged that even cops dont prosecute on the laws, which means that it is a law which cannot be enforced, meaning it is useless to have it. But if it was always enforced then there would be less arrests because if you had it in possession you would be more careful because you know if a cop saw it you would be in trouble. And the truth about race and the law is a very sad, sad burden for our society to carry. You would think that after 80 years of slavery being over everything would be good, but no, its taken another 40 years after the largest change in our societal history concerning race, and its still not gone, will it take another 40 years, or 80 should i say from MLK Jr. to finally be rid of this plight. And there will always be some degree of it due to the actual differences people have, but hopefully soon the last remnents of it existing as an actual culture will disappear.

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Originally Posted by jimmy8778

I would rather have a system of true cops, than corrupt ones. I would rather it not be passed around that cops in so-and-so dont bust people, just because there was one cop that didnt arrest people, then everyone gets arrested because they dont think they can.

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theoretically i understand and agree with your point. dont get me wrong. but dude, just ask around. at least where i live, i have heard a good number of stories of cops being lenient and a lot more of cops being nazis

so in reality, this is already happening, pick n choose the laws that is...
now i dont know how that will link to corruption of cops or reputation of the area, im sure on daily basis people are getting arrested for mj violations around here, but i do know for the fact that there have been some exceptions to this trend in recent years...

it's just that i really think some cops do have a lil bit of their own will left and a lot of these people are excellent judges of character, they are trained to get the most out of you by just observing u... and by that virtue, some HAVE ALREADY taken the matters into their own hands for one reason or another and have turned a blind eye

i mean, come on, in houston highways almost nobody cares about speed limit and the instances of pull overs is just next to nothing compared to number of violations. I drive right @ speed limit cuz i have wired my brain for doing so since i used to ride dirty all the time... and i see everyone passing me! some slowly and some blazing!
this is pick n choose when u see a cop pull some1 who is going 80 over those that are going 73-5 when speed limit is 65... they turn a blind eye on the smaller violation but they get the worse one.. i have witnessed it many times

i dont understand how this cannot apply to something like mj all over the place? i mean it is already like that to some small extent, but u know what i mean?!

Yup all cops can kiss my ass....half a gram.... thats my new favorite line half a gram .... ur in my apt for two hours for half a gram??. Save a live dont spend as much time in my apt bc u dont want to be somewhere else saving someones life.... now bc of u everytime i get pulled over or w.e im gonna have a negative attitude towards u from the start Fuk the po! lol I will also be hesitant to ever call u for help from now on I kno ur readin this so fuk u po go away totally agree flyingimam nazis their little eraser heads that on a power trip

I suppose what struck me about this post is how personally it's taken by the author. "They're all out to get us and that makes them all assholes" is the what I'm reading into flyingmam discussion so please correct me if I have that wrong. The anger against the folks "just doing their job" almost strikes me as inappropriate to the situation involved. These are the rules of our game. You knew that going in. Work on changing them.....legally. But hating all the police for doing their jobs (good OR bad) just doesn't seem like a very useful way to approach our cause to make mmj (or even recreational mj) legal.

There are tons of cops that smoke and do other drugs and arrest people for doing the same exact thing. I have a few friends with cops in their family. One of my friends dad is a cop and his wife smokes weed everyday. The other friend, her uncle is a cop and he does weed and coke. So maybe they do cover each other or find some way to get around it. Either way it is a bunch of bull. Most cops I have met seem to think they are held above the rest of the crowd in terms of laws. I mean how many times have you seen a police car switch it's lights on to get through a red light and immediately turn them off after they are though? I have seen it many times.....