Patrol Officer

Posted by Patrol Officer on August 9, 2003, 9:51 am

Crime up? Police officers go do your job!

Crime is up and now a few simple rules to help you do your job better. These are limitations to help crime fighters and make it real hard on criminals. I think you will agree.

a.	Don't tackle your suspect if he decides to flee. IAD frowns on that practice. He will turn himself in when he grows tired of being a criminal on the run.
b.	If he's black or Hispanic, do not search his vehicle, or you are simply a racist rogue officer. Don't forget that or the civil attorneys can sue you later. If he is white, then it's a freebee. Search, beat, shoot, arrest, ticket, it doesn't matter. No one cares.
c.	Take care of your beat even though you may not have time to even drive to it due to call load and criss-crossing division.
d.	Don't shoot unless shot at first! All crooks get one free shot at police from now on- at request of minority leadership.
e.	Keep your head up high, even after a Chief Bolton news conference. He is the best of the best and a brilliant orator. He is the poster child for how race supercedes logic and common sense in this city.
f.	Hurry to the calls and catch the bad guy, but don't speed. How'ss that for the ultimate oxymoron.
g.	The citizens love you no matter what they said in the 78% no vote in recent election.
h.	Don't try to burn vacation time due to 90% staffing. Unless you're in the 60% of department in office work brushing up on crossword puzzle skills, no minimum staffing there.
i.	Answer calls with inept officers hired due to the city's hiring practices - "diversity at all costs, no matter how bad they are".
j.	Push that Crown Vic to the limit. The city will give you a brand new car after only 125,000 miles.
k.	Make split second decisions that will require IAD 9 months to figure out if it was right or wrong - "the ultimate hypocrites" - best case for the officer is "inconclusive"

Now these are rules anyone could agree with. Right?

The system is there to help the officer do his job. Isn't it?

My God, crime is up and the people running the show would want police to be aggressive and attack crime. Right?

They are smarter than us and these limitations are for our own good. Agree?

Now let's go do our job and clean those streets up.

Offer yourself up for intense scrutiny by simply doing your job.

The alternative is don't do anything at all, that's the only way to not to step on these land mines planted everywhere you go during a shift in patrol.