Damn, I still really hate cops (except for handful which include, but aren’t limited to: Officer Tom Gibby, Phil Klotz, and those two that let me slide when I got pulled over on La Cienega. Those two douchebags that my sister dated stay on the hate list). I don’t want to dislike the police so much, but they give me so much reason to time and time again. I’ll skip past my encounters with the po-po as a kid and go straight to about 10 months ago when a couple guys stole some equipement from the company I used to work for. I’ll leave their names out since it’s really not that important to make the story interesting. Coming into the office at 9am, I saw that all of our video shooting and editing equipment was gone. Knowing damn well who took them, we had someone call the Sheriff’s Department in Carson, California. They came down, took a bullsh*t report, and pretty much said “tough sh*t.” In fact, I don’t even remember the dude writing an actual report. Just jotted down some notes on a pad. Later on in the day, I called in to check up on the status and the lady who answered said “just take them to small claims court.” OK. How long is that going to take to file for all that? Why don’t you guys just do your job and go over to get the equipment back? Then she says it’s not their jurisdiction anymore because the stolen equipment was now in a different city so call their police department. I call the other department and they ask where everything was stolen from and then told me that’s the city who has to file the report and get the equipment back. Dude even called them lazy for not doing anything about it. I decide to drive down to the Carson Sheriff’s Department and just ask them in person, just in case there was any misunderstanding on the phone. While waiting in line, I watched them fast talk three people in front of me out of filing reports. One lady had a person harassing her at work and school, and the cop just told her she should ignore him. When they got to me, dude said the same thing about taking them to small claims court. Lazy asses. Oh, but it doesn’t end there. At a Home Owner’s Association (HOA) meeting at my townhouse complex, my neighbors made a big point about getting kids to stop hanging out in front of our building and smoking weed. Not sure why they do it anyway, since they always end up chillen by the dumpster. I guess drugs ruin your sense of smell or something. So I come home one day and see five teenagers smoking weed in front of my building…by the dumpster. I hated being a whistle blower (after all, snitches get stitches. lol), but I figured it’d be best to not have some weed smoking teenagers in front of my building every day so I called the Lakewood Sheriff’s Department. Over an hour passes and dude finally shows up all pissed off because he can’t get into our complex. OK. The kids were smoking outside, he doesn’t need to come into the complex. Then when I come out, he’s giving me a hard time because they had already left. OK. It’s been over an HOUR! I don’t know how big the joints are that he usually smokes, but they usually don’t last an entire hour when there are five people puffing on it. Then he starts sweating me: asking my age, checking my ID, grilling me on why I’m living here and who I live with. Before he left, the only thing he even bothered to write down with my name driver’s license number. WTF? Still not sure why it took an hour since the station is like two miles away. I could have moonwalked there in under an hour.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when that dipshit with the white Toyota truck was essentially treating my Benz like some white chick in Colorado. Straight riding up on its ass. I call the Lakewood Sheriff’s Station again and see if they can at least give him a ticket. Not sure if you can get a ticket for parking like an asshole, but it was worth a shot. They said he can park as close to me as he wants as long as he’s not blocking a driveway. Well, I told him was. I just failed to mention that it was his own driveway that he was blocking. Dude needed a ticket for something. Fatass. So they said they would someone down to write a ticket and never showed up.
Double fast forward to last Thursday when my neighbor kids decided to have a graduation party in the pool and gazebo area. It was around 11:30, my normal bedtime, and they were still in the back with about 10-15 people yelling and screaming. Since it was a graduation party, I figure letting them go until midnight was fair. But at 12:15 they were still being loud as F, so I called the lazy Lakewood Sheriff’s Station to report it and they said they’d send someone out right away. I don’t want to be the grumpy old guy, but I need to sleep. If I’m staying up past midnight, there better be a damn good reason for it that involves Crown Royal and not a bunch of loud kids. I’m in bed waiting for the cops to show up and sandwiching my head between two pillows while these idiot kids continue to make noise. I start thinking, well I could just go down and beat all of their asses. I mean, they graduated so they must be close to 18. Depending on how many there are, I could take a few out before they all jumped me. Maybe I can get a quick start and knock all of those bitches out if I could find my bat. Seriously, this was going through my mind to the point where I also thought about who to call to bail me out of jail and wondered if Laura McDonald was sober and could represent me in court as my public defender. In actuality, it would be the Sheriffs at fault for not showing up. I tried to do the right thing. Ahhhh! OK. I calmed down, but still wanted these idiots to shut the f*ck up so I could go to sleep. I thought it’d be best to call the Sheriffs again to remind them about the noise in case they forgot. This was an hour later at 1:15am and the guy who answered said that two deputies had just picked up the call and would be here shortly. Just now? It’s been an hour and there isn’t much drama going on in Lakewood. Maybe in Hawaiian Gardens across the freeway, but not here. I continue to wait and listen to the loud nonsense going on outside. By 2am they finally shut up and the Lakewood Sheriffs never showed up. Did I say lazy? Probably, but I’ll say it again. Lazy. Still not sure what they are good for, so to the lazy asses who we pay to protect and serve us, I salute you…with one finger. F the police! No wonder they make such a big deal on the news when a cop does something right because it doesn’t happen very often.
One-time, does suck. I have MANY reasons myself.
i feel you man.
someone rear ended my car.
and instead they pulled ME over.
they other guy floored it and took off.
thats a hit and run wtf.
F the police.
to protect and serve. my ass ther just giveing out tickets and impounding cars not careing about any thing else to fix ther citys budget and pay them selfs that’s why it takes so long
I feel your pain. I’ve been pulled over plenty of time for DWB’s (Driving while Black). Luckily I never got ticketed for anything because I had never done anything wrong. There are a few good cops out there but the majority of them are on mad power trips. I should know as I work in a hospital and see them in action every day with ER patients.
LMAO @ Q, DWB. Sad, but true. A friend of mine was DWB and given a loud exhaust ticket, for his old ass cadillac! Cops probably pulled him over, thinking he’s a drug dealer or something and gave him a BS ticket to justify pulling him over.
And, regarding that white tacoma, he would have gotten his tires slashed for parking like that!
Rikdaddy,
It sounds like you guys have problems with your local police force. Well I cant take up for the whole police force (being one you flip off) - but I found something that maybe useful or not.
Discretion, uncertainty, and inefficiency are rampant and essential in criminal justice. Nobody expects perfection. That would neither be good nor fair. Justice is a sporting event in which playing fair is more important than winning.
Rikdaddy,
It sounds like you guys have problems with your local police force. Well I cant take up for the whole police force (being one you flip off) - but I found something that maybe useful or not. I feel your pain- We all have our ideas on how law enforcement has to respond and how to handle the situation. You got to take into fact the severity of the call- I am sure the officer that responded to your minor traffic crash (no longer accident- don’t ask) wasnt looking forward to coming and taking a call when he had more other stuff he had to do (eg. deliver a baby, got shot at, take down a car jacker, arrest a drunk for the 15th time, do chest compressions and rescue breaths for 40 minutes while the ambulance got lost) I have done all these things and I will continue to do them. Police officers are not perfect and this world aint perfect. Until this world is do me a favor- Be curitious to the help! This person may or may not come and save your life or your families life- Would you still flip him off???? Don’t think so. I am a fan or your work and I am sure majority of your readers would agree with you but I had to say my piece-
It is written somewhere:
Discretion, uncertainty, and inefficiency are rampant and essential in criminal justice. Nobody expects perfection. That would neither be good nor fair. Justice is a sporting event in which playing fair is more important than winning.
My car was broken into a few months ago. I lost my bag which had my iPod, Nintendo DS, etc… inside. It was the first time I had ever left it in my car for more than an hour, so of course that was the first time it got stolen. I called the police to file a report since six other cars on the street also ended up with broken windows and lost items. The lady told me that nothing much could be done since I didn’t see it happen, nor have an idea of who did it… but a few weeks later, a local crime ring was busted and after giving them the serial numbers for my stolen gadgets, it turned out that they had recovered them from the bust. I got excited, only to be knocked down by the news that they had let some other person walk away with my stuff just because he went into the station and said he lost the items. I had the bloody serial numbers for crying out loud and had them filed with the report.
That’s just one incident, but there are so so so many more… I really do not like the San Diego police force. I once reported a man beating a woman after stopping in the middle of my street outside my house. He kicked her out of the car, then started yelling, but decided she needed to get back in the car… so he figured the best way to do that would be to beat the crap out of her… no cops ever showed up and there’s a station right by my house, less than five minutes driving time away.
*facepalm*
Of course I cannot speak for law enforcement all over the world, but I am for the ones I have dealt with. I know there are a lot out there that do a good job, but that has yet to be the case for me. Back when I was young, the cops would always harass us. We got jumped by a bunch of cholos and called the cops. When they showed up, they tried to arrest us. Another time we were leaving Taco Bell with our skateboards and they set a full on assault team on us. Blocked off a major intersection and had snipers and helicopters surrounding us. When they found nothing, we didn’t even get an apology. Only made it seem like it was our fault for it all. If I had a good experience with a cop, I would definitely give them their props. To date, that just hasn’t happened yet. I do give props, though, to all the fire fighters out there.
If I get lame stuff from the police, like the time I was getting pulled over all the time and hassled, I call the watch commander personaly, then I call the mayor, no shit, I thell him I voted for him but the cops are pissing me off. It seems to work pretty good. Havent gotten a ticket since then in my city (cypress). Cops show up in about a minute when you call them as well. Belive it or not the operator put me through to them on the phone. This also got me off of a ticket in Cerritos, I made a complaint with the mayor and the chief of police for racial profiling.
One day i was making a racket with my racecar, someone complained and the cop that showed up said he was in Wicked and asked me if I knew Dr Charles, Ed and Ron, then he told me it was ok but he had to show up. Hahaha.
Rik, i am with you with the BS cops all the way. i only like the ones who actually do their job, other than that here in palmdale there are not that many A holes. ROFL funny ass blog though! but if that was my McMerc, all hi crap wouldve been gone a long time ago. And as for the kids, couldnt blame you. A friend of mine had neighbors that were playing music as loud as hell one night for a party, so she got out of bed at 1 am and turned off those circuits on the circuit breaker panel. They were so intoxicated that they didnt notice it was tht until the next afternoon!
All I can say is i feel your pain. Been there done that and still going through it. Im just one soldier looking out for myself.