Montgomery County, MD officer arrested for DUI while in uniform after wrecking his marked cruiser.

Link

The man is a 33-year veteran of the force.

Hope he gets the help he seems to need. It'd be a shame to throw away such a long and apparently honorable career over alcohol.

I fail to see why the people in your two posts should be treated differently.

John

Not excusing it (because heaven knows that none of us would catch a break if we were DUI), but LEOs do have an extremely high alcoholism rate, and I can kind of understand it. The closest I came was working community corrections, and in the years I did that I walked into more than a few suicides and a sexual predator masturbating while watching a little kid playing across the street. I had to comfort a drug offender after his ex-wife took off with their kids and wrapped her car around a guardrail while high, killing the kids and herself.

That's just a little of the shit I wish I could forget.

It's ironic...I start to wonder if perhaps the reason we are seeing larger numbers of crooked cops is that as the job gets worse, there are fewer well-adjusted people who can stay that way over the course of a career. It took me a number of years out of corrections before I stopped viewing everyone in my life as an offender, and I still don't enter a dark room without my head on a swivel. To this day, I can count on my fingers the number of people I entirely trust...and I still have fingers left over.

Not excusing the drinking...LEOs should be held to a higher standard. That said, I can understand why some of them turn to the bottle.

-Mark

Possibly fewer well-adjusted people getting into the field as well? It is a very different type of person who would want to join an urban department today than 50 (or even 20) years ago... putting up with scum all day with little public support.

Yup. You also have to question the hiring practices and standards. We are moving more and more toward militarizing the police, and that's not a good thing.

I've got a colleague who has 8 years in the Marine Reserves as a MP in his background, is POST certified (he brought his cert current a few months ago by retesting), and can't get a job in the metro departments to save his life. Every single time, he loses out to fresh-out-of-tech-school kids. Apparently his life experience (he's early 30s, married, has worked in the real world) can't compare to the brainwashed recruits...

It seems there are fewer departments these days that focus on the "service" aspect of the job. There are a few, to be sure...but not as many as there should be (which would ideally be ALL departments).

I think the POST board and individual departments should start placing a little more emphasis on the MENTAL side of the hiring qualifications, and a little less on the bozos who just want to wear tactical vests with a thigh holster.

-Mark

That way, they can be trained the way they want them to be trained..........(militarizm.....JBT.....totalitarism?).

They can't be having someone like your friend (with real world experience), coming in and possibly ruffling feathers.

Yup. They don't want opinions and individual personalities. The problem is that while such a conformist mindset may work for a recruit in basic training, it doesn't hold up outside of that world. The average infantryman isn't interacting with John Q. Public on a daily basis.

-Mark

As someone who passed the entire selection process but was NOT hired in an urban department, I agree with that 100%. They don't want thinkers, they want order followers.

Now, what do you have against thigh holsters?

LOL

Actually, nothing. They serve a very useful purpose if you are actually on a tactical team. After all, the purpose of the thigh holster is to get the gun into a more practical position when wearing more intrusive body armor, and it's a very valid solution to that problem.

I just find it amusing to see officers that are NOT wearing longer armor use them...they certainly aren't practical for patrol (they wobble, they catch on everything, etc, etc.). Me thinks some of them just like the image.

-Mark

Added benefit - you don't have to wear pants to wear a thigh-holster. Helpful on laundry day.

Or have I just been watching too much RENO911?

old guy wrote:



I suppose I have a certain amount of sympathy for people caught up in addiction, and feel that they should at least get some chance of straightening out, especially given that no one was injured in this incident.

The cop having a nooner with a hooker while wearing the trappings of the state is quite another story entirely.

Oh, do I understand that. For over twenty years I mentally asked myself "Why is this SOB lying to me?" every single time I met a person. At one point I considered my spouse to be the only person I trusted, and that was in degrees. I will probably be recovering from that for the rest of my life.

I think this is very true. I think cops are overloaded on the work they are being asked to do.

There are many who wear the uniform who hold my DEEPEST respect, and there are others who I really wonder when not if, I am going to see them listed in an incident like this.

I think the shit of the world is spreading. I think in the past, crap was fairly contained into small areas, a LEO would get assigned to crapola shifts and locations for a while, then get a new area of operations, then maybe back to another toilet area, but they were able to get time "behind the lines" yet now, in many communities, with the lack of 'consolidation" that the Projects and red light districts once provided, there just isn't any where for cops to go for R&R. Maybe I am wrong, but I remember when the third precinct in S Mpls was a comfy post. with strong families and more johnsons and andersons per block than any other. Now it has changed. Same with Richfield, once considered the most law abiding suburb in the state, now has lots of petty crap going on all the time.