I’m a school bus driver and I regularly get infuriated by people who drive past me when I have my red flashers on and stop sign out, wishing there was a cop around. Only once so far have I gotten my wish … and unfortunately it was the cop driving past me at 40 mph just as some of my kids were about to cross the road. I looked down and saw him with his phone in his right hand and his left hand on the wheel, not paying the slightest attention to what was in front of him.
I’m lucky he didn’t run over any kids, because I probably would have gotten shot.
One of my favorite justiceporn vids was a woman that habitually drove around a stopped schoolbus (on the freaking sidewalk) on her commute. Cop was waiting for her one day and she got roflstomped by the judge on those charges.
I’ve absolutely driven past a cop who was playing WoW on his laptop while sitting in traffic.
I don’t want to be the guy defending cops, but there is usually more than one officer in a squad car. There is no rule against a passenger being distracted.
You’re thinking of cop shows from the '70s and '80s, not reality.
No, I am thinking of what I have seen in real life. In my area there is almost always 2 cops per vehicle. I was unaware this was not standard.
Where I live it’s strictly one cop per car unless they’re training. That’s why they pull people over in packs.
That’s something I never got about cops in the US. Everywhere in Europe, there are always two cops per car, at least in the places I have been.
Fewer witnesses.
In Europe, it’s exactly because they want witnesses, cops’ words don’t carry more weight than yours by default, so if they ticket you, they want at least two testimonies on their side.
Okay, but in the US they don’t want to risk two cops messing up their witness testimony. Better to just have one, because a cop’s word is law anyway.
That sounds like even their leaders assume they’re horribly stupid…
It’s to create the illusion that there’s more cops than there really are. Same reason behind take home cars.
My city of about 300k people has about 30 cops patrolling at any given time.
San Jose, California has some wild numbers perhaps like that.
Would you take more if you could? Assuming no reform, just more of the same.
I think higher numbers would lead to reform on its own. When you’re scraping by at the bare minimum, a lot of stuff gets overlooked just to maintain numbers.
More cops would make it a lot easier to have better standards, and raise the average competency level.
