Don Vito Corleone
Elite
- Feb 10, 2000
- 30,029
- 66
- 91
I have dealt with a lot of police over the years, including as a prosecutor, a criminal defense attorney, as a lawyer handling police civil rights cases on both the plaintiff's and defense sides, and as a subject of investigation (in a traffic context).
My sense is that police, as a whole, are no better or worse than anyone else, but it is a profession that is unusually unlikely to attract people whose intentions are either altruistic or self-serving (that is, compared to most other professions, police are more likely to be motivated by either helping their fellow man or taking advantage of him).
Lay citizens normally have no way of knowing whether the cop they are interacting with is a good, bad or indifferent person. With that in mind, when I am interacting with a police officer acting in a law enforcement capacity (pretty much invariably because I have been pulled over), my job is to make him feel safe, comfortable, and sympathetic toward me. I don't BS him, I don't treat him with hostility, I don't raise my voice. I am polite and respectful. Obviously that doesn't guarantee that I won't get a ticket or worse, but it does improve my odds. I am mindful of the fact that I am a middle-aged white guy with a doctorate driving a BMW, not a young black guy with low-hanging jeans walking down the sidewalk, so I probably get subjected to less scrutiny and skepticism in the first place, but I would advise anyone to treat the situation the same way I do, regardless of race, age, sex or socioeconomic status.
My sense is that police, as a whole, are no better or worse than anyone else, but it is a profession that is unusually unlikely to attract people whose intentions are either altruistic or self-serving (that is, compared to most other professions, police are more likely to be motivated by either helping their fellow man or taking advantage of him).
Lay citizens normally have no way of knowing whether the cop they are interacting with is a good, bad or indifferent person. With that in mind, when I am interacting with a police officer acting in a law enforcement capacity (pretty much invariably because I have been pulled over), my job is to make him feel safe, comfortable, and sympathetic toward me. I don't BS him, I don't treat him with hostility, I don't raise my voice. I am polite and respectful. Obviously that doesn't guarantee that I won't get a ticket or worse, but it does improve my odds. I am mindful of the fact that I am a middle-aged white guy with a doctorate driving a BMW, not a young black guy with low-hanging jeans walking down the sidewalk, so I probably get subjected to less scrutiny and skepticism in the first place, but I would advise anyone to treat the situation the same way I do, regardless of race, age, sex or socioeconomic status.