Irresponsible Police Driving

Today I was out on the porch with the boys when this officer rounded the corner at a high rate of speed. We live on a one way street and he was going the opposite way of the one way. At the same time there was a girl about 8 or 9 on her bicycle getting ready to cross the road. Luckily she saw him and stopped, but he never even slowed down. Then he blew the stop sign at the intersection almost hitting another car. He didnt have his lights or siren on either. I called the police station and reported him. They said they would find out the reason he did that and call me back. I told them he wouldn't have a reason good enough for such irresponsible driving, especially on a street that is loaded with kids playing out and about. If he would have had a siren going or at least his lights on it would be different, but he had neither. I am so tired of the police in this town driving like buttholes just because they have the little blue and red lights on their vehicles. A few days ago, I had one pass me in the turn lane, cut me off and then turn into McDonalds drive thru. What is wrong with them???

Abby, it's funny you should mention that. A lady rang up on the local radio and said she was at a cafe when a police car pulled into a disabled parking bay outside the shop. He went to the back seat of a car, pulled out a cake box from a well known cake shop and walked into the cafe. He spoke with a lady there, gave her the cake and ordered a coffee. 20 minutes later, he got back into the car and left. In the mean time, this lady had seen at least 2 cars with disabled permits, drivers looking for a place to park, drive past.

She asked the lady inside the cafe about what the policeman wanted. She said that he was arranging one of his work-mates birthday party. Now if a policeman is on duty and has police business to attend to, he can park the police car anywhere he wants, even in the middle of the freeway (yes, it has happened - a story for another time, lol). Not only was this guy parked in a disabled bay while on personal business, he was doing it on police time!

I've seen similar things and -- even though I'm a big supporter of their efforts -- it burns me up. I once had a police officer nearly cream me at a blind intersection. He came through at about 70mph on a local road, sirens blazing. At first, I couldn't figure out what direction he was coming from, so I was checking my mirrors and trying to figure out where to pull over. When he blew past, he nearly creamed me.

So what did he do? He pulled the car to a stop, pulled around, and started yelling at me (that I should have gotten out of his way).

Now, if you're going to an EMERGENCY, so much so that you need to be driving 70mph on a small local road, then you sure as **** don't need to stop and take 5 minutes to yell at someone that was trying to get out of the way for you. I simply couldn't tell where he was coming from in the 2 seconds I had to figure it out.

It's always a bugger in NYC, too. I've seen cops go the wrong way down a one-way street, then stop to talk to friends. We used to have them come into the catering place I worked at and try to get us to give them beer while they were on-duty. And NYC has had a few scandals with cops abusing parking priveleges, getting into drinking incidents, etc...

I support them on the whole and I respect what they do - but the power goes to the head of some of these guys and they think that the law applies to everyone but them.

police think they own the roads without any consideration for anybody else on them!!!! how they can prosecute for dangerous driving is beyond me?

They can be just as bad here in the UK as well.

Look at Heather Mills who's married to Paul McCartney. She lost a leg through a police chase.

Don't ever get between a cop and a doughnut shop.

Oh yeah...

A few years ago, a couple of cops were racing and there was an old woman checking her mail - the mailbox was on the shoulder and one of the cops hit her and killed her instantly.

He got away with it.

What the heck were they doing racing their cop cars on police time?

Abby7625, did they ever call you back???

The other day I was praying to make it through the green light on my way home from the grocery store. The red light lasts soooooo long on this particular road. It turned yellow and there were 2 cars in front of me (it's a double turn lane, so 2 lanes are turning at the same time) It was still yellow as I was about to go but looked over and in the lane next to me was a cop. I stopped for fear he would say I ran the red light, he slowed a little and then sped up and ran it! What a jerk. I was so mad. To make it worse, the light skipped the turn lane on the next go around and I had to wait twice as long

Always burns me up! I remember a few months ago, when hearing the radio show of Luis Francisco Ojeda (He was a talk show host in WKAQ radio), he received a call from a person in his cell phone who was concerned that there seemed to be an emergency in the Caguas - San Juan expressway as there were several state police cars driving at over 70 mph (here in PR the speed limit is 55 mph) with full sirens blazing. It turns out there wasn't an accident in miles.

Ojeda got to call the state police to check out... they told him that the policemen were late for a meeting of policemen so they had the sirens on to get there faster.

Another case I remember is in San Juan, in the Puerto Nuevo area, where we were driving towards the Old San Juan area, and we were almost ran over by a set of blazing sirens that we had to get out of the road in order to avoid crashing. We were going above the legal speed limit, and they had almost run us over, to give you an idea of their speed.

It was a set of police motorcycles with sirens blazing surrounding a black sedan with smoked windows. Standard security of state legislators in PR.

Now, the joke is that such things are not illegal here. Many traffic laws in PR, (seatbelts, speed limits, parking violations, baby seats, etc.) give special exemption to government owned vehicles, basically putting them above most traffic laws.

I received a call from the chief of police today. He explained that the officer was responding to a domestic dispute 5 blocks away from my house. They don't use sirens to respond to those. When I asked why he chose a one way street to fly up instead of taking the street before or after, he had no explanation. I told him about the girl that was about ran over and he had no apologies or explanation for that either. I questioned his qualifications and he referred me to the Mayor's office if I "have such a problem with this minor misconduct" -- minor? patooey...The officer is a totally out of line.

I did find out who it was and it was the same officer that responded to my call when my ex husband tried to break into my house. He stood around here questioning my character for well over 25 minutes instead of taking off to look for the ex, refused to call for backup, etc and my front door was smashed in. Naturally, they never found him when they did start to look and he was never prosecuted for it and I had to pay out the money to get my door fixed.

whoa! Sounds like some $h!tty behaviour from our boys in blue.

I'm sorry Abby you had to pay for your door. Did you talk to your ex about it later?

In the town where I grew up, I would see police officers turn on their lights and sirens right before they got to the lights in the center of town...of course people pulled over and let them through...and then they would turn their lights and sirens off right after they made it through the intersections.

A few years ago there were some problems with the rookie officers in my little town driving irresponsibly. One of the rookies managed to loose control of a brand new police car (for no apparent reason) and completely total it in a one car accident. Another rookie was driving down a residental street and writing on his clipboard, when he ran a stop sign and crashed into the car who had the right of way.

Fortunately for my town, the police chief and the city council are very intolarent(sp?) of this type of police behavior and the officers were fired. My town hasn't had any similiar problems since then.

Originally Posted by Caspar

Don't ever get between a cop and a doughnut shop.

Click to expand...

LOL...

I read a story once about a man who tried to rob a doughnut shop...guess what happened...

Police are given a lot of power, and that power goes to their head sometimes. There is a difference between power and responsibility. Not all know this...but they should.

Spotz

Originally Posted by Tamme

whoa! Sounds like some $h!tty behaviour from our boys in blue.

I'm sorry Abby you had to pay for your door. Did you talk to your ex about it later?

Click to expand...

Absolutely not. I have a no contact order against him as well as a protective order for my son. He's not allowed anywhere around here--not like they would do anything if he was