Double Standard much? A picture is worth a thousand words.

This is a great pic I found on Reddit today.

Here is an image of a police officer driving on the highway while talking on his cell phone and viewing Facebook on his police cruiser computer. I don't think being on the phone and driving is a big deal and I really don't care that he is using a police computer to surf Facebook while on the clock, but he does seem easily distracted. I can only imagine that if he was to roll past my car and I had an open computer on my dash while talking on my cell phone, I would be getting pulled over and written a ticket for being distracted, or something of the like. I have to think that having Facebook open would be rather distracting and I could understand being pulled over for it, accepting the responsibility of my poor driving decision.


Now, why am I posting this pic this? Because it brought to mind some concepts I wanted to discuss with the ATS public.I think it is a simple and basic representation of Authority versus Public. Yes, do as I say and not as I do. There is a double standard and it is abused.

NOTE: I think it is just human nature to take advantage of a situation you find yourself in. I don’t agree with it and I think we should all be aware enough to know right from wrong, abuse over moderation and to make the right choices unselfishly.

Following the path of least resistance is just natural and that includes perks we can find presented to ourselves. If that means not really looking for a job when you know you are gonna get an unemployment check next week or speeding and running stop signs because you are a cop and you know you can, we all do it.

Allow me to explain my perspective on Police Officers. I do not wish them ill will at all. I wish everyone one of them encounters friendly, respectful, law abiding citizens and at the end of the day they go home safe and well with a feeling that they made difference.

Now, in my own experience I have met nothing but crooked cops. My parents were very bad people that did very bad things like sell meth and guns. As you can imagine from a young age I dealt with police on a pretty regular basis.

Growing up my parents house was raided 3 times with no arrests made because my father was paying off the dispatcher at the local police station and always got tipped off. He had plenty of time to remove all the guns, drugs, and money from the house. One raid my second stepmother greeted the police at the door in a negligee and my dad on the couch enjoying a beer. They never found a single thing despite all the cops and dogs.

That exact same raid one of the detectives working the case dropped a roll of 35 mm film. This was 1983 so there were no digital cameras at the time. My Stepmother grabbed the roll of film and stashed it in the couch they had already searched. My father was an amateur photographer with his own darkroom so he developed it that night.

There were several pictures of the detective that dropped it and other officers.The pics looked like they were taken during a sting operation. They were an auto shop across the street from inside another business.

A series of two pictures showed the detective who dropped the film standing in front of the plate glass window that faced the auto shop they kept photographing.There was a table in front of the window (I am thinking it was one way glass from the outside), and a clock on the wall. On the table was a mirror with three lines of white powder and a razor blade. The time on the clock was 12:03.

The very next picture was the detective smiling, arms crossed across his chest and the clock was at 12:05. The mirror on the table was now empty of any lines of white powder, only a few noticeable traces remaining.

No, there was not a pic of the detective doing the lines of white powder but I am sure the pics would have been very embarrassing and controversial should the right people see them. The negatives and pictures were put away in a safe deposit box in case they could serve a purpose at a later time. So it appeared that my Dads house was raided for drug dealing by a detective that used the drugs my Dad was dealing, classic.

So we have a crooked dispatcher and a crooked detective so far. I had other experiences with law enforcement that was shady so to me this was not an isolated incident. All around me I saw criminals, with a badge or without, they were all criminals, everywhere I went.

In summary I first wanted to share this picture because of it’s comical value. Then as I was thinking I felt that it really did express the double standard quite well. I wanted to share my experience as background to my point of view and ask the rest of ATS the following.

1. What is your experience with police? Do you feel we are treated with a double standard or is that the experience of a minority of citizens and just media hype or the experience of the masses? Please respond only with first hand experiences and let’s be respectful here while we share. I don’t want a hate on cops thread, just truth.

2. Do we have any officers on line who can say they don’t abuse the double standard or is this juts the way it is?

What say ye’, ATS?

reply to post by sdocpublishing


Unfortunately, there's nothing in the pic that indicates the car is moving; actually, the fact that it's a grainy pic from presumably a cell phone, yet we can see the clear outlines of something orange behind the car hood, shows that it was most likely not moving, otherwise that orange thing would be a blurry blob. And maybe he's on his lunch break? There's just no certain context for this pic.

reply to post by 00nunya00


The person who posted the photo to reddit states in his post that the pic was taken while driving on the highway. I can only take his word for it.
HERE

Classic.

He doesn't look to be driving though. And that doesn't look like a highway. He looks more like he's parked in some rest area or super market.

Tsk Tsk to the officer.

Busted.

If he cropped the photo he needs to undo it, because we can't tell if hes parked or driving.

from what i understand police use facebook as an investigative tool
ether way double standerd? ALWAYS lol kidding sort of

Originally posted by Manhater
He doesn't look to be driving though. And that doesn't look like a highway. He looks more like he's parked in some rest area or super market.

Yes it does, and especially as he has no hands on the wheel, so he is parked....

Just a chance for a anti cop rant by the look of it!

Well one arm looks to be playing on facebook, and the other arm looks to be talking to the girl on the phone from facebook for the hookup.



How's he driving?

Maybe he has it on cruise control?

reply to post by spoor


No hands on the wheel!

Nice observation, that solves that.

reply to post by spoor


Did you read my post? Not an anti cop post, a social conversation post.

First I should say after reading your post. You are fifteen words short. That is including the title.

1. 1. What is your experience with police? Do you feel we are treated with a double standard or is that the experience of a minority of citizens and just media hype or the experience of the masses? Please respond only with first hand experiences and let’s be respectful here while we share. I don’t want a hate on cops thread, just truth.

My experiences are not good. While there have been several times that were not bad. The bad well outweigh the good. And that encompasses experiences with policing officers in three countries. I will save you the long drawn out details. Absolutely double standards.

reply to post by emberscott


I have to ask what are the fifteen words? I don't get the reference.

I am a bit inebriated so maybe I am just a little slow on the uptake.

reply to post by sdocpublishing

A picture is worth a thousand words

Saw the picture. Counted the words.

reply to post by emberscott


LMAO!

That was clever, thanks for the laugh.

reply to post by sdocpublishing

In my youth I was not bad but I was not a goody two shoes either.

My one and only bad experience was demonstrating downtown against the Vietnam War in the late 60's. I was in the front row facing the police. We were unarmed and not dangerous or impolite. They were dressed with big guns at their sides, billy clubs, shields and helmets in battle formation, a straight line looking directly into our eyes - and they meant business.

The group I was with were not arrested but it was a scary experience.

At all times, I remained polite and respectful - these guys were armed and while people say we are free, I began to wonder if indeed we really are. War is big business. And anyone protesting against big business is fair game. I believe I came close to physical harm.
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We had moved into our apartment downstairs in a new city.

We left for work and had a bag of that which I cannot mention on ATS on the kitchen table. A nice size bag of a plant - nothing hard but it was a illegal substance.

When we came home, someone had reported a gas leak right as we went into our apartment there were two, three police officers.

I went to the kitchen table and nonchalantly placed my school books on top of the bag to hide it from view, looked up and one of the policemen was looking at me, smiled a little and after checking to make sure there was no gas leak, left.

To this police officer if you are out there...................thank you.

I married, had three kids, a grand daughter, no prison record, (never did another illegal thing after that - that one incident scared me straighter than a arrow).

He could have arrested me, this wasn't a small bag - bigger than a sandwich baggie (party that Friday night).

One arrest record could have, would have ruined my life.

I'm basically a good person, I'm honest, I'm kind, I'm now perfectly law abiding and again, this one police officer let me go, he didn't sting me.
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Before we moved, Me and a couple friends went skinny dipping in a shallow part of a river. The cops came and told us to get out of the water, I refused because I was naked. The cop said, "Well you're naked in front of your friends."

I said "Well, they're my friends, your not, I don't know you and you can't see me naked."

He brought me my clothes, walked all the way out to neck deep water and handed me my clothes. Then he told us that swimming in this river was dangerous as it had a lot of under currents.

He also asked me if I was serious with any of these "clowns" and I said no, we were just friends and he asked me for my phone number and if I would consider going out with him for breakfast?

I said, "No thank you, we're moving in another week". He said, "Be safe, you're quite pretty and there are a lot of wolves out there."
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The only time I got a verbal warning years later (I was in my 30's) was when I went through a yellow. The cop pulled me over with my three sons all buckled up in the back. The youngest was about sixteen months old and started to sniffle. The cop told me to roll down my back window and told my youngest, "Now I'm not going to yell at your mama, just talk to her, don't cry - okay". He then came back to me and whispered, "I'm giving you a verbal warning. You have got three really cute little guys there, all buckled in safely so you care - but going through a yellow, you could end up killing them, please don't ever go through a yellow again, promise me."

I kept my promise.
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The child from hell I have talked about on ATS numerous times. We were good parents. He has ADHD and is now a respectable, law abiding citizen and excellent father but at one time he was in a hard core gang. A very notorious gang. .

One day the police came and asked if they could talk to us and "look around".

My sons bedroom was located on the ground floor of our split ranch. The policeman asked if he could go into my son's room? I asked him what he thought he would find? He said, "A gun".

I told him, if he felt it necessary, I had nothing to hide, however he gently grabbed my arm and said, "Mam, you look like you are going to faint, your face is now white as paper, here you better sit down."

Now I realize they could not have done this without a search warrant but I had nothing to hide and I suspected my son was up to something and had a husband that couldn't cope with reality so I allowed the police to search his room. He did not mess anything up, he was respectful, and left the room neat. He also inspected it lightly not hard core, pulling everything apart.

As it was a month later we did take out a second mortgage and have our son committed for a couple years to straighten him out at the tune of $150,000 we are still paying on but it was worth it to save him.
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There are some decent cops out there, they are human just like the rest of us.

reply to post by ofhumandescent


That is great to hear you had good encounters with the police. I do like to hear the good stories. Sorry about your son but you should be proud of yourself for trying to help him. I knew kids kicked to the curb for costing their parents much less.

reply to post by sdocpublishing


I have worked with cops for thirty years. Maybe I just know really good cops, but I've worked with four agencies and all the cops I've known would die for anyone else at any time. A couple of them in fact did. I've seen many instances of them dropping everything to literally run toward danger, when others were running away. I saw the two bravest men I've ever seen face down a guy with a bomb less than three feet away holding a man hostage. They both refused to budge until the hostage was safe. I did a search and rescue training with a group of cops once. I was the victim they hauled off a mountain in a litter. We were all just pretending, of course. But even in pretend mode, as they carried me down the mountain, whenever a rock dislodged from above us and debris came raining down, those guys instantly bent over me in the litter, sheltering me from the falling rocks with their bodies. That was their training, that's what they did. I have never forgotten that. Whether it's sheltering somebody from falling rocks or flying bullets, that's the kind of people they are. They do it, without thinking about it.

I could give you dozens of examples but it wouldn't matter. People believe what they believe.

As for Facebook - yes, it is an investigative tool. I've seen it solve probably a dozen crimes just in the last couple years. That's probably only the tip of the iceberg, but those are the ones I know about.

And no, I'm not a cop. I work with cops, I'm not one.

reply to post by sdocpublishing


It took a lot of work, we were both good parents.

When I was young I thought, if I marry a responsible, good man, get a house in the burbs, teach my kids to be honest, hard working and kind we would end up with no problems.

With the oldest one, he was a challenge. Seeing him tied down to a gurney and taken away for commitment was very hard.

I'm 59, he is now 35 and a really nice man, the kind that if you were drowning he would be the first one to save your hiney.............he is brave and now because we happened to find a really good counselor and treatment center, got him straighten out and away from the bad influences he had chosen for himself.

Insurance ran out after two weeks of commitment in a facility. These places are expensive. But again, I am grateful and my heart goes out to all parents that have kids that just don't want to obey the laws.

I did learn one thing, never judge another person. I always thought that bad people came from bad parents. That is not always the case. We never drank, dropped all our wild friends as soon as we got married, did everything we were told to do to ensure we would raise productive, kind and honest human beings.

Now, he says he is truly sorry he caused us so much pain. He prays each night that his daughter remains as level headed and good as she is.

With each decade it gets harder and harder for parents to raise decent people because of all the bad stuff out there in the world.

Thank you for your kind words.

reply to post by cwg100


Great post, thank you.

I am glad you have had positive experiences with the Law Enforcement. I like to think when I meet police they are the ones you know.

I don't know what you mean that people believe what they want to believe. I think the things you talked about are perfect for this thread. That is why I was asking for first person experiences. I didn't hear stories about crooked cops, I dealt with them all the time, that was just my experience.

This shows nothing in the way of proof that the officer was in any way breaking the law, workplace protocol, or even police department rules. I quite possibly shows an officer, on his break, in a parking lot somewhere, on his cell (possibly) and a website on the computer that does look a lot like facebook, the only problem with my theory I see, where are the donuts?

As far as bad personal experiences with police, I have had a couple, but they were isolated incidents, I did get in a little trouble as a kid, I remember actually kicking a cop in the face as a kid, I regret that now, I was acting out because some stuff that happened to me, as I got older, I understood this, that it was my choice more than what the world handed me that made me who I was.

I don't have a criminal record, I have worked to try and be the best person I can be, not perfect, but i try to be an honourable person. When my mom passed 3 years ago, i bought the home off my dad, moved in with him, and have been doing the best I can to take care of him, he and my mom are very much the reason I am who I am.