In stupid policing news
They keep using the word ‘botched‘ when law enforcement messes up. Much like fast and furious, it seems to have been the plan and not botched at all.
Meanwhile, must have been union:
A downtown worker who flagged down a Portland police car to report a robbery in progress said he was surprised by the officer’s response Thursday.
“He told me he was off duty and I should call 911,” said Rob Anderson, 31. “He rolled up his window and drove away.”
Well, they can’t expect you to protect and serve on your lunch break.
Halo Mfg gets an odd visit from DHS.
July 31st, 2012 at 7:11 am
In my agency, that would get you fired. Immediately. We don’t have a union, don’t want one. We serve the public, period. We won’t drive past someone broke-down on the side of the road without stopping to help. Telling a citizen to call 911? Oh, my the Chief Deputy would blow a gasket.
July 31st, 2012 at 9:57 am
It’s possible the City Attorney had advised the PD about liability considerations. You just never know when some venal individual or enterprising attorney might decide to fund a personal retirement plan at taxpayer expense over some jackbooted individual shooting or otherwise harming some choirboy, when it was not his duty to do so.
It wasn’t that way when I were a sprout, but these days you just never know.
July 31st, 2012 at 10:13 am
I recently learned that where I live, if you call a tow truck to move your broken down vehicle off the shoulder of a busy street, it costs you about $70.
If the police make the call to the same tow truck, it costs you about $150.
For the added value, I guess, of getting the same tow truck there in the same amount of time.
July 31st, 2012 at 10:39 am
Just WAIT until the medical profession is nationalized, as anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see in the offing (give it a decade or so).
There are entire studies of the British NHS showing that death rates increase, and responsiveness decreases, at the end of the fiscal year, when doctors have fulfilled their care-hours and surgery quotas. Once they’re “off the clock”, govt employees no longer give a f**ck, as this police officer so elegantly demonstrated.
July 31st, 2012 at 11:37 am
I served alongside the Portland PD for 25 years, and have many friends in both their active and retired cadres. This guy did wrong, and their PIO has already said so. To comply with procedures AND his Oath, all he had to do was pick up the mike and pass the info to the Dispatcher, and he didn’t even do that.
When I pinned my Deputy Sheriff star on my chest in 1973, I was told, by the Sheriff, that I was a cop 24/7 until the day I retired. Do the right thing, at the right time, by our book and you will have a fine career, he said. I tried to follow that advice for 25 more years and six more Sheriffs, and I NEVER ducked out on a single crime call, EVER.
July 31st, 2012 at 11:41 am
BTW, the hero in this story is the druggist who was held up. Armed, he wisely chose NOT to shoot it out with the robber, but complied instead, and when the robber fled, he chased him down and held him at gunpoint until help arrived.
For HIS troubles (without which the robber would have gotten away), HE was the first to be chided by the PIO…
July 31st, 2012 at 11:58 am
Unless this idiots authority ends when he punches out, he had an obligation to act as some have said here. Although, that might make things safer for the citizenry if a cops authority to arrest, detain and generally interfere is limited only to their time in duty status. After work, they are just like the rest of us.
To bad the cops didn’t go on strike like Bloomberg suggested, the the druggist could have dealt with the robber without the bother of the PIO worrying about citizens cutting into their union work.