Placerville CHP - Profilling Question

[IronColt]

I did. If you look between post #9 and post #10, you can see where it says deleted by retired.

would you care to explain why? I Merely stated a true event that happened as I witnessed it. Do we not have opinions that can be truthfully expressed on this forum?

[Uhhlexxxis]

You know, I'm just going to leave this here. I'm new.


Just an old email...



POLICE HARASSMENT
Recently, California ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being "Community Policing".

One of the civilian email participants posed the following question: "I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?"

From the "other side" (the law enforcement side) a cool cop with a sense of humor replied:

"It is not easy. In California we average one cop for every 2000 people. About 60% of those cops are on patrol, where we do most of the harassing. One-fifth of that 60% are on duty at any moment and available for harassing people. So, one cop is responsible for harassing about 10,000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial, business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 20,000 or more people a day.

A ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds. This gives a cop one-second to harass a person, and three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND THEN find a new person to harass.

This is not an easy task. Most cops are not up to it day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow down those, which we harass. They are as follows:

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase we use. Then we come out and give special harassment. Another popular one on a weeknight is, "The kids next door are having a party."

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars blasting music, cars with expired registration stickers and the like. It is lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, are drunk, or have an outstanding warrant.

RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.

CODES: When you can think of nothing else to do, there are books that give ideas for reasons to harass folks. The books are called "Codes"; Penal, Vehicle, Health and Safety, Business and Professions Codes... They each spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people. After you read the code, you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses, and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy smash a car window. Well, the code says that is not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It is a pretty cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well.

I seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because the good citizens who pay the tab like it that we keep the streets safe for them. Next time you are in my town, give me a single finger wave. That is a signal that you wish for me to take a little closer look at you, and maybe I'll even find a reason to harass you.

Looking forward to meeting you."

[retired]

would you care to explain why? I Merely stated a true event that happened as I witnessed it. Do we not have opinions that can be truthfully expressed on this forum?

Per the rules, a non leo can ask a question civilly of an active/retired leo. Here are a couple of other rules that pertain to this forum:

3. This is NOT a place to air your dislike of the Government, Law Enforcement, LEOs in general or the law in general. Doing so here will result in losing access to this forum.

6. 'Cop Bashing' will NOT be tolerated in this forum at all.

Here is your statement:

Funny story happened to a buddy of mine. He was pulled over and asked to open the hood, the CHP officer looked at the engine bay and pointed to the intake manifold and said " This is not legal, I have to cite you for the turbo!"

Are you going to attempt to say your statement wasn't an effort to show the alleged ignorance of the CHP officer. You are basically telling us he didn't have the intelligence to discern the difference between the intake manifold and a turbo. That seems pretty clear to me.

An inference from that is you are expressing your dislike of a law enforcement officer by posting this and are also bashing the leo in doing so. Both are a violation of Rule #3 and Rule #5.

ETA: Somewhere back a few pages, I advised the OP that either he or better yet, the young men involve, call the local CHP station and speak to them about this alleged problem of "profiling or harassment." The chances of a CHP officer from that station being a member here is slim to none. Considering this has gone on for 4 pages and no one from that office has replied, my earlier statement seems to have been appropriate.

As such, this thread appears to have run its course. Those who think no plate, dim rear license plate and illegal engine modification laws are stupid and shouldn't be in existence, should contact those bodies responsible for them and attempt to have them removed. Until then, leos will enforce the laws on the books they choose to enforce; they do not make them. If you do not want to take the chance in being stopped for them and any other law violations, do not violate them.