Phil,
I Don't know all the circumstances of the situations you mention - but I can tell you that while the law allows a PO to drive WITHOUT LIGHTS AND/OR SIREN to a call (and there there a bunch of choices here:
1) no lights with a siren,
2) lights with a siren,
3) lights wihout siren or
4) no lights or siren
the officer is STILL responsible for arriving at his destination safely. You may not agree with his methods, but YOU are not in a position to understand the problem. You don't like the "inconvenience" of having to stop for an officer going through an intersection against traffic (nearly causing a crash), but the officer has to get there under a variety of circumstances, and has reasons for doing what he does (i.e. - not alerting the bad guy he's on the way). There are so many tactical things PO's do that you could not possibly understand. You don't like what you see from YOUR perspective, but you don't understand because you've not been in the position to make the same decisions.
What PO's do is not necessarily reported to the press. As a matter of fact, I'd venture an opinion that probably less than 5% of what we do is reported to the press. So because you don't see it in the paper or on the evening news doesn't mean that we aren't doing something important at the time that we are responding to a scene.
Imagine for a second you are a police officer. You receive a call that there is a domestic. The call is going to be something like this... "...respond to 123 main street for a domestic in progress. Husband versus wife. Unknown weapons involved. Unit for cover?" Break it down - you are going to one of the most dangerous situations officers face. A domestic. There is HUGE potential for violence, often with children present. This is the situation were a large number of officers are killed.
Okay - now you think about it from YOUR perspective. Sure, I have arguments with my wife, what's the big deal? The officer is overreacting because I've never hit my wife, nor have a thought about killing her (expcept maybe when the credit card bills come in, but that's a different story).
Ok - so here I am - an officer who's been on the street less than 5 years. I get the same exact call - except there was no cover for me. I "tactically" (including driving without headlights for a while) responded to the scene (no doubt, pissing off a few people) and parked several doors down. I could hear the guy yelling at his wife as I walked closer to the house. Then I hear him say, "If the f***ing cops come to this house, I'll blow him away!". I peek into the window and the guy has an old west style holster strapped to his waist, carrying a .45 revolver. Do you want to walk into the situation???
Or how about the domestic where after arriving "tactically" I approach the house and the father is standing in front of the plate glass window, holding his 2 year old son in front of him with a kitchen knife to the childs throat. How about it? You want to complain about the driving tactics of the officer going to that scene?
Then there was the family fight with the son who was on drugs, barricaded himself in his room, and threatened to kill any officer who came in. And you HAVE to go in... Make sure you use your lights and sirens all the way up until you pull into the driveway....
Or you stop someone who's drunk and he starts to physically fight you, grabbing for your holstered gun. Wait that 30 seconds or so it takes for back up to get there - it seems like an absolute eternity. Sorry an officer passed you at a high rate of speed on the way to the call...
How about the guy who slides sideways into the back of another car (drivers side facing the traffic) and he steps out to check the damage as he is struck by another car that slid into him, destroying everything below the waist. And you are the officer at that scene - you see how serious the situation is - and are calling for help... Take your time, guys - don't want to piss off the public...
And I'm ASTONISHED when I deal with a fatal traffic crash. I have the road shut down so that I can conduct the investigation (after all, if I let cars through they're going to drive over all the evidence), but you go some MORON who's very upset and arguing with the PO who's blocking traffic because he HAS to go the way that's shut down. Or I shut down one lane of traffic to conduct the investigation and have motorists driving by swearing and screaming at us because we screwed up traffic... What if it was your relative that was killed, but no information was collected at the scene because the public was upset the road was shut down. Comes time for court and the case is dismissed because of lack of evidence. How would you feel??
Sorry about the rant, but it just sickens me to see the kinds of posts I see in this thread. "I respect LEO's, but...." "I know it's done all the time because I once saw a ticket get ripped up..." "I know the vast majority are great guys, but..."
I've said it before, I'll say it again... Until you walk in the shoes - STFU....
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