Things POLICE KNOW

[Guest mustangdave]

From another forum: Worth sharing

Things Cops Know, (and Things They Want You to Know)

* The speed at which you respond to a fight call is inversely proportional to how long you’ve been a cop.

* If a large group of drunk bikers is holed-up in a house, the department will send one officer in a beat car. If there is one biker holed-up in a house, they will send the entire S.W.A.T. team.

* Domestic arguments will always migrate from an area of few available weapons (living room), to an area with many available weapons (kitchen).

* The better you do your job, the more likely you are to be shot, injured, complained on, sued, investigated or subpoenaed on your day off.

* The longer you’ve been a cop, the shorter your flashlight and your temper get.

* The bigger they are the harder they fall. They also punch, kick and choke harder too.

* Watch out for the CSI effect. There is no machine that we can drop an eyelash into and come up with the DNA profile, fingerprints and mugshot of the owner in 2 minutes.

* When you see an emergency vehicle behind you with its lights and sirens on: pull to the RIGHT, and Stop. We are usually required to pass cars on the left.

* When a civilian sees a blue light approaching at a high rate of speed he will always pull into the lane the cop needs to use.

* Dunkin’ donuts has much better coffee than they do doughnuts.

* When you’re driving in the fast lane and you see a cop behind you don’t, go 5 mph under the speed limit. We are not impressed by how safe of a driver you can be, we’re trying to go help someone (or catch that guy in the SUV that just cut you off). Safely move over and let us pass by you, please.

* If you get a warning instead of a ticket from a motorcycle cop…go buy a lottery ticket, because you’ve already beaten the odds.

* When you see an officer conducting a traffic stop, [or with a suspect in handcuffs] it is generally not a good idea to approach him/her and ask for directions. If you do, don't expect the officer to be nice when he/she tells you to get lost, and don't expect the officer to take the time to explain.

* If a cop causes a car accident we usually get a ticket, and sometimes we get suspended. When is the last time you got 3 days off [without pay] for rear-ending a guy at Wal-mart.

* If you think you can fan all the pot smoke out of the car before we smell it, good luck.

* We know you’ve had more than 2 beers. I’ve never had two beers and driven my car through the front doors of a Toys-R-Us, wet my pants, and passed out with my foot on the gas.

* Here’s how to get out of a ticket, don’t break the law in the first place.

* If you drive a piece of crap car, this is why you’re getting pulled over. In one week I pulled over 10 cars for “minor†equipment violations:

o 8 out of 10 had no vehicle insurance,

o 7 out of 10 had suspended drivers licenses,

o 5 out of 10 had warrants, 2 out of 10 had felony warrants,

o and 1 out of 10 was a known sex offender with his 12 year old niece in the car without her mothers knowledge.

o Of the 2 out of 10 that didn’t have any other violations, one was given a “fix-it-ticketâ€, and the other was given a warning. (if you are trying to do the math many had multiple violations)

* If you’ve just been pulled over doing 70 in the 35 Do Not greet the officer with “What seems to be the problem, officer?â€

* We get coffee breaks too, and sometimes we run into stores and do some shopping during them.

* When you’re the victim of a burglary take the time you spend waiting for the officer to find the model #’s and the serial #’s of the stuff that was taken.

* Some cops are just jerks, but take heart in the fact that other cops don’t like them either.

* If it’s nighttime and you’re driving a vehicle with tinted windows and I pull you over. It’s not because of your skin color, I usually can’t tell if the vehicle even has a driver until the window's rolled down.

* Cops make mistakes, and sometimes they’re big mistakes.

* Some cops are bad, and sometimes they’re real bad.

* Every time you hear on the news about people running away from a crazed gunman, someone’s son or daughter in a blue or brown uniform is running TOWARD that crazed gunman.

* City cops don’t like the highway patrol, and vice versa.

* Yes it’s true, cops usually don’t give other cops speeding tickets. Think of it as an employee discount, and unless you're a habitual speeder all you ever get is a fine.

* If your local police agency has a helicopter everyone knows it’s loud and annoying, but did you know it can cover the same area as 15-20 patrol officers, and safely chase criminals that are driving 90 MPH through city streets. Many times the guy has no idea it’s there and slows down.

* Your 5 year old kid getting pushed down by another 5 year old kid IS NOT a police matter, talk to the other kids parents.

* If your kid won’t do his homework or do his chores, 911 is not the answer for a uniformed second-string parent.

* If you hit your spouse in front of your children, your children will hit their spouse in front of their children.

* Police work is…writing reports.

* If you rob a gas station you’re only going to get $20, but I get to see a large K-9 dog use your arm as a chew toy. For all I care you can keep the $20.

* In 1 year of patrol work in a large city only about 10 mins. would be cool enough to be on the television show, COPS. But if COPS was about report writing and accident reports each show would be a year long.

* Every traffic stop could end in gunfire, but we have to be polite and professional until that time.

* I’ve taken about the same amount of men/women to jail for domestic violence, so NO it’s not always the man.

* People love fire fighters.

* Attention Victims: I need to know the WHO,WHAT,WHERE,WHEN, and HOW. Not what meds you’re on or what your 15 cats have peed on.

* Some cops don’t like to be called cops. I don’t know why, but most don’t care — we’ve been called worse.

* If you find crack pipes in the ladies purse, there is a good chance they belong to her.

* Cops know you pay taxes and that your taxes pay cops’ salaries. Cops also pay taxes, which also pay cops’ salaries so, hey, this traffic stop is on me. Now sign here; press hard.

* And a Variation On The Above —

Irate Offender: My tax money pays your salary, so you work for me!

LEO: I pay taxes, too, so I figure I’m self-employed.

* When you see an officer walk into the room, a polite greeting of “Hello, how are you?†is much more appropriate than, “Uh-Oh Jim, it looks like they’re here for you!†or putting your arms up and exclaiming, “I didn’t do it!†It will surely save you from looking like an unoriginal horse’s patoot.

* If there are police cars, firetrucks, or ambulances at your neighbor’s house then there is a problem. You don’t need to meddle into your neighbor’s business by asking us what’s happening. Your curiosity, no matter how strong, is not a reason violate your neighbor’s privacy. If it’s something that YOU need to worry about, we would’ve knocked on your door and told you.

* Remember that you and I enjoy the benefits of Constitutional rights. And so does the guy you suspect of stealing your stuff. No, I can’t go search his house for your property just because you suspect he might be involved.

* No, I don’t know your cousin who’s a police officer in (fill in location anywhere in the US)

( IOW We Don’t All Know Each Other)

* No your crappy band doesn’t have until 10:00pm to blast your crappy music out of that garage.

* If I can see a 12 year old in your house finishing a beer bong I don’t need a warrant.

* If you don’t know what the speed limit in your neighborhood is, what makes you think it’s 65?

* If a neighborhood association asks for police to start ticketing in their neighborhood, one of the first five ticketed is on the board. (I know, I've seen it done!)

* When you’re blocking an area to traffic (both foot and vehicle), “No, you can’t go that way†doesn’t mean, “You’re special, so by all means, go ahead.â€

* If an officer is standing in front of you with his hand outstretched, waving furiously at you, plus he’s yelling for you to “Stopâ€, it’s usually a good idea to do as he asks. Please don’t keep driving towards the officer (as happened to me the other night).

* Flares + cruiser parked at an angle = Place you can’t go, even if it’s a ramp to the interstate.

* Don’t run from the police and then attempt to hide in a warehouse. Especially don’t do this if the officers tell you that the dog is going to be let loose, as this will generally result in the dog winning. They leave some pretty marks, by the way.

* Stop resisting means exactly that. Don’t say “I’m not resisting†as you throw a punch at the officer’s face.

* Just because you’re handcuffed doesn’t mean you won’t go on the ground if you attempt to assault an officer. We don’t even make exceptions for pregnant women who bite us, either.

* Did you really think I wasn’t going to find that large lump of crack you got clenched in your butt? Come on, it’s either the world’s largest ‘roid, or you got something you ain’t supposed to have.

* For some reason, you think I’ll believe it when you tell me that you don’t know how it got there.

* Stopping a green man in a blue shirt and pink pants a block away from an armed robbery when the suspect description is a green man in a blue shirt and pink pants…IS NOT racial profiling.

* Just because you have your hazard lights on, doesn’t mean it is okay to park in the fire lane and run into the store. Even if you really need milk!

* No I will not go get your 6 year old from their friends house, because it is 1:00am and you don’t want to drive 3 minutes. Maybe you should set a curfew, and enforce it. I am not a bad police officer, you’re a bad parent.

* And Last but not least: 99% of Police Officers do their job honestly and with great pride, we try to do our job well.

Often we have to work in environments where we are the only ones that have to follow the rules.

Cops do make mistakes and due to the nature of the job sometimes they have horrible results.

Sometimes minor mistakes cost Police Officers their lives, at a rate of 1 every couple days.

[GLOCKMEISTER]

lol... more true then you realize

[Smith]

That was pretty good.

[Guest kdpate]

[Guest Policek9Trainer]

Geez, remind me of everything that happened in my LEO life

With that one exception of crack in the butt, I was working in New Orleans (Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office) when I had to strip search one guy who was being processed, we did the old bend over and spread em routine. You'd never guess what was crammed in deep (and I mean in the hole) - his drivers license. When I asked him why in the hell he'd cram that up there, he replied, "I wanted to keep something". In Lousiana, it was a HARD laminated one (stiffer than what TN issues), he did manage to slightly roll it up, and crammed it deep and NO I wasn't touching that sucker - we let him remove it and put it in a plastic bag (SEALED) so he could have it back when he got out.

[Guest mustangdave]

[Guest db99wj]

Good stuff. thanks to all the LEO's out there!

[Guest JHatmaker]

* Dunkin’ donuts has much better coffee than they do doughnuts.

So true, so very very true......

[Guest monsterking138]

Geez, remind me of everything that happened in my LEO life

With that one exception of crack in the butt, I was working in New Orleans (Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office) when I had to strip search one guy who was being processed, we did the old bend over and spread em routine. You'd never guess what was crammed in deep (and I mean in the hole) - his drivers license. When I asked him why in the hell he'd cram that up there, he replied, "I wanted to keep something". In Lousiana, it was a HARD laminated one (stiffer than what TN issues), he did manage to slightly roll it up, and crammed it deep and NO I wasn't touching that sucker - we let him remove it and put it in a plastic bag (SEALED) so he could have it back when he got out.

we had one come in with a small radio and head phones up his ....

[Dropkick Murphy]

Man! That's spot on. That is hilarious.

[Guest m&pc9]

....

Edited May 21, 2009 by m&pc9

[Guest mustangdave]

...and I was trying so hard to move away from the perps gettin beatdowns and tazed...after that poor pastor in AZ and his BP experience. You had to inject that chase video......did you see the guy just FLOP out of the drivers side window?......too COOL.

[323ssplt]

If you rob a gas station you’re only going to get $20, but I get to see a large K-9 dog use your arm as a chew toy. For all I care you can keep the $20

That's the best line right there...

[Guest ColePersonalSafety]

Hey; I want to use this for our local paper. I don't if the Chief would like it though. This is right on the money. One thing to add: Get your own kid up and ready for school. You are the parent, not me. It is your job to make your kid go to school.

Great stuff.

[Guest HexHead]

You forgot,

I will beat you even if your are unconscious.

I know all cops are not like this.

No, but this kind of crap happens way to often these days.

And then thug cop is high five'ng all his buddies. He's so proud.

[Smith]

No, but this kind of crap happens way to often these days.

And then thug cop is high five'ng all his buddies. He's so proud.

Why is it that this kind of crap always gets in these threads any time there is mention of cops?

Thanks to the overwhelming number of good guys doing their jobs!

[Guest mustangdave]

Why is it that this kind of crap always gets in these threads any time there is mention of cops?

Thanks to the overwhelming number of good guys doing their jobs!

I tried...but it seems some folks have "issues"

[Guest m&pc9]

I tried...but it seems some folks have "issues"

Im sorry I messed up your thread. That was not my intentions.

I respect all LEOs.

I will delete my other post.

[Guest mustangdave]

not necessary...I'm just as bad sometimes....I liked your..especially when the guy flops out the window...I felt for him being unconscious too...but you ought not RUN from the MAN

[mcurrier]

When I was a LEO back in the early 80's, we only had three precincts in Virginia Beach. We used to say, "meet me at the 4th Precinct", meaning Dunkin' Donuts. Kinda like the "19th hole". They ended up getting a fourth precinct just before 1990. Then we had to meet at the "fifth" precinct.

[Punisher84]

This part made me kinda sad, even though it's all in good fun it does say alot about the mentality towards LEOs.

* When you see an officer walk into the room, a polite greeting of “Hello, how are you?†is much more appropriate than, “Uh-Oh Jim, it looks like they’re here for you!†or putting your arms up and exclaiming, “I didn’t do it!†It will surely save you from looking like an unoriginal horse’s patoot.

This also made me sad...Hex really man? We get the point dude. Can't just leave it be, is it really that big a thing?

No, but this kind of crap happens way to often these days.

And then thug cop is high five'ng all his buddies. He's so proud.

[Guest Matchguy]

The hardest fact of life I had to get used to as an LEO was that there is no law against being a sorry SOB or being stupider than a gumstump. Both are perfectly legal. I'm an olphart from another state, but I thought you might like to see the story of the closest time I ever came to getting killed. Here's the kind of thing that killed 68 of my fellow CHP officers in my 28 years. Here goes....

Back in 1969 the CHP converted to the '69 Dodge Polara with the 440 Magnum engine. Like most Chrysler products of that era it was an absolute pile of junk that went like the wind - a screamer and a half. Literally every '69 Dodge we had in the fleet would break 140 mph without batting an eye.......but like I said they were horribly built - so bad in fact that at speeds over 100 mph the top of the driver's door would pull away from the frame about an inch, just from the wind pressure, and the howl it set up would just about deafen you.

By the end of the '69 model year we started getting its replacement, the 1970 Mercury, and that pitiful excuse for a patrol car was just the opposite of the Dodge - beautifully built and dangerously slow. No acceleration at any speed and a really anemic top end. Heck, we called them names like "the lead sled", "the anchor", and such. My partner was fond of saying that the Mercs wouldn't pull themselves out of their own way, and he was right.

Well, by the end of the year, the rattletrap Dodges were falling apart and, despite the slow Mercs, the Sergeant just about had to beg us to drive the few Dodges still left in the fleet. This was the case when he gave me one of the last of the old Dodges one afternoon in 1970, and little did I know he was saving my life when he did.

I was working US 101 that night from the downtown signals of Santa Barbara out to Goleta. It was Friday night and the southbound traffic headed for L.A. was very heavy and very fast. The normal flow of traffic was about 70 mph and the cars were about a car length apart. At about 8:30 that evening I was southbound just south of Turnpike Road and I stopped to check on a disabled motorist. As it turned out he was just checking his map. So I got back in the Dodge, buckled up, made a log entry, dropped it into "drive" and as soon as my eye hit the mirror my heart jumped into my throat.... I saw a pair of headlights coming down the shoulder directly behind me going at least 100 mph, and I punched that poor old Dodge straight down the shoulder for all it was worth. The traffic was so heavy I couldn't get back into a traffic lane and had to try and get away from the guy by screaming straight down the 8-foot-wide shoulder. I killed the air conditioner in order to get every last ounce of speed out of it I could, and despite the best efforts of that wonderful old 440 mag engine, the guy was eating me up. I knew I was going to get hit hard at a high speed, and I didn't think much of my chances of surviving the impact.

Just about then the guy got so close to my rear end that I lost his headlights in all of my mirrors and I instinctively braced for the impact. But after a few seconds there was no impact, so I risked a quick look in my mirror and saw that he had leveled off about six feet behind me - and my speedometer read 92 miles per hour.

So now the problem I have is that I'm screaming down the shoulder at 92 mph with a madman on my tail, and I'm passing within a foot or two of traffic moving 25 mph slower than me........I said a little prayer that nobody would pull out onto the shoulder with a flat tire....... I thought about turning on my rear amber lights to see if I could fake the guy into slowing down and backing off, but drunks tend to fixate on bright lights and I was afraid it might have blinded him and caused him to crash into the other cars. Besides, even the slight movement needed to turn on the lights could have moved the steering wheel a fraction of an inch and killed me. So all I could do for the time being was to keep on running.........except that I was running out of shoulder to run on!

As my luck would have it, there was an off ramp coming up, and I couldn't try to go across the ramp and remain on the shoulder because cars were exiting, and in cutting across the ramp at such a high speed I was certain to hit one of them.. But, on the other hand, if I took the ramp I was equally dead because it had a ninety degree turn in it about two thirds of the way up its length, and there was just no way I could spill off enough speed to take the curve without eating a guardrail or a light standard.

So I had to take the least of three totally untenable risks and try to get out into the traffic lanes and off the shoulder before I got to the off ramp. Just about when I was almost out of room, I spotted an opening just very slightly bigger than the rest and went for it. I jerked the Dodge hard into the space and buried the grille in the asphalt trying to slow down enough to keep from hitting the poor guy in front of me, and through the Grace of God and the modern disc brake system (which I pretty well burned up) I made it by the skin of my teeth. But my "friend" wasn't done with me yet.

I had no sooner leveled off behind the other car when my "friend" decided he wanted to come over too-only there wasn't a space available for him to do it. So, you guessed it, he came over directly at me, and the poor old Dodge's grille made another trip to the asphalt to keep me from getting clobbered broadside.

Now that he was in front of me, and with the off ramp coming up, I hit the red lights and he somehow slopped his car to the right far enough to get on the ramp and stop. But in one final attempt to get me killed, he stopped squarely in the middle of the two-lane off ramp in heavy, fast, traffic, threw his door open, and staggered out of his car with his hands raised high yelling: "No crook! No crook!" And despite my most fervent longing to see him splattered all over the radiator of an oncoming Mack truck, I nonetheless rushed up, with cars flashing by all around us, and yanked his sorry butt back out of the way.

My antagonist was a thoroughly intoxicated, five foot tall pharmacist from a nearby city who had been commuting to a moonlighting job in a pharmacy 115 miles away, and working 16 hour days. He had had a tough week and decided to stop in a local watering hole on his way home and celebrate the weekend. And believe it or not, after he sobered up he was a very nice man. I never saw him again.

So now you might understand why I can't help but get a little grin on my wrinkled countenance every time I see one of those sporty Chrysler hotties going down the road with "MAGNUM" painted on the hood. It sure saved my tail!

Jer

[Punisher84]

That is a great story!

[tennessee01tacoma]

about the thug beatdown...

Running from the cops is totally uncalled for and the thug should be punished acordingly.

As for the douchebag that punted his face, he should also be punished accordingly. just because you are wearing a badge doesn't mean that you can do whatever you like.

I have been a volunteer firefighter for 5 years now and Just like in the fire depts there are bad eggs in every group. When I am responding in my personal vehicle I don't pull out infront of people or cut people off and I generally stay below 65 mph on the highways.

What separates good police and fire people from the public should be control of thoughts, emotions and judgement.

[Guest Policek9Trainer]

Again with another comment about something that didn't even belong in this thread in the first place.