Do you respect your police force?

[Tiger King]

nope do not trust or respect them at all.
ive only ever come across rude and patronising officers (i live in the uk)
one incident sticks out in my mind when one policeman accuused me of peeing in public.
i hadnt and told im i hadnt. his response
"ok now your lying to me"

it took the true offender (one of my friends) to step foward and own up.
no apology from the policeman.

yes my friend was in the wrong and he paid the price with a fine but it was a little unfair.
it was about 3am we (a group of friends) were walking home from a night out and my friend needed the loo badly, whats he supposed to do wet himself?.
and its not like we where in the middle of a busy street!
what made me angry the most was the policeman just picked one of us out, theres no way he could of mixed us up as i had a black jacket on and my friend had a white shirt on.

 

[Keshie]

If you have an Irish police force (I do) then the answer to your question is this:
Yes I would trust them. To not harrass people, to not break the laws they are sworn to protect, to be open-minded and fair, to routinely display courage in the line of duty and to not simply be another kind of state-sponsored soldier.
I would NOT trust them to solve a crime that involved smart criminals, hackers or a hostile foreign intelligence. Or to prosecute blatantly criminal individuals (corrupt politicians, bankers, the catholic church.)

I'm going to assume a lot of Eastern European\post-Soviet state readers would agree with me.

 

[Double Brew]

Where I'm at in the US, I live between two police stations and down the road from a fire station, so I'm constantly seeing a cop car roll by for one reason or another. Like so many above have mentioned, I respect an individual officer more than the police force as a whole.

From my standpoint, cops get crapped on so much because their "brothers and sisters" keep fucking everything up for the rest of them. I have friends that are cops and they tell me that it only takes one rabid "Tin Man" to screw over an entire police force. IF they want to have a better image, they need to get those types under control.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

London Met.

Never had any problems, almost all of the individuals seem to be worthy of my respect.
And as a 'disenfranchised youth' in London I have probably double the usual respect for them today. Seriously, I wouldn't want their job.


[sub]they do have a habit of expecting all teenagers to be crack dealers but I can live with being searched if I get to be a smug bastard about it when I'm clean.[/sub]

 

[Hosker]

Yeah, they have a difficult and important job, and for them to willingly do it earns my respect.

 

[Keshie]

Sorry what now???
There're plenty of reasons why people DESPISE the British cops and if it isn't the Birmingham Six or Toxteth, it's Kettling.
You don't need to read between the lines of the Daily Mail's lies or an exposé from The Guardian or The Independent to point out the massive amount of racist thugs in the British police force, or the corruption, or the political pandering.

Try this: walk around any major city of the UK naked but wearing a clown costume, carrying a sex doll, during lunchtime. If the police don't protect you from harrassment or if they arrest you on some bullshit charge ('Loitering', 'vagrancy', 'decency', inappropriate' - any of those keywords will help) then those local coppers aren't worth shit.
Personally I'd use this test as a guide to know where I'd want to live in her majesty's united kingdom.

 

[Jakub324]

I respect them. If I'm getting mugged, or if someone in my family gets murdered, I'll be relying on them to help me out.

 

[JaceArveduin]

Case by case basis for me, though overall I'm in the mindset of "The whole justice system is corrupt" camp. I've met a cop or two that I've liked, but I've met many, many more that weren't.

OK, US here, where most of the drug dealers and such have drinks with the judges. (I know as a fact, seeing as my dad did.)

 

[TStormer]

I'm in London.

The met police are arseholes.

nope.avi

 

[Laser Priest]

Not at all. I respect most police forces, but where I live all we have are corrupt politicians and their spoiled brat children who could get away with murder if daddy had enough pull.

All the police do here is hand out speeding tickets and pretend like they actually stop crimes here, which everyone knows is bullshit.

 

[RuralGamer]

I'm in the jurisdiction of Lothian & Borders police and despite a couple of the officers being real jerks*, the majority are really nice, friendly folk who do a pretty good job, considering that, where I live, they are GROSSLY undermanned and overstretched. There is (and I joke you not) one officer supposed to be patrolling three (admittedly smallish) towns, several miles apart, on a weekend night when a lot of people go out drinking and start fights; this is because of budget cuts; management decided to axe a lot of local spending so they could have a nice new academy and offices in Edinburgh, or something along that line. By and large I've found my local Force pretty decent folk...

*...and now for the officers who are total jerks...
Example 1: The son of a work colleague (who was 14 at the time) was arrested and detained in a holding cell for 5 hours without being told why he had been arrested and wasn't allowed to contact his parents because apparently he first had to have an interview with a legal representative present first. Then his mother was called to pick him up and he was released without charge; apparently he had been mistakenly identified as someone much older than him who had apparently held someone at knifepoint after an argument. He was never asked to show any identification when approached by the police and they never bothered to check his identity when he was arrested.
Example 2 (and this one really takes the cake): A group of my friends had met up in a local park; the police drove up, physically restrained one of them and put him in the back of the car. When queried why they had arrested him, the officer turned to them, shouted "ILLEGAL!!!" and then drove off; they took him to his house, opened the car door, let him go and drove off without a word. I mean come on, what the heck that besides some weird power trippy thing.

 

[Broady Brio]

I do. But thats because after a minor assault I have done on me one night, they gave me a lift home.

 

[Vicarious Vangaurd]

Local cops yes, State cops no. Local cops generally don't care all that much whereas staties will pull you over for anything.

 

[Crazy_Dude]

We got like two policecars max at the station here. I rarely haver seen them act.

 

[RuralGamer]

I'm in the jurisdiction of Lothian & Borders police and despite a couple of the officers being real jerks*, the majority are really nice, friendly folk who do a pretty good job, considering that, where I live, they are GROSSLY undermanned and overstretched. There is (and I joke you not) one officer supposed to be patrolling three (admittedly smallish) towns, several miles apart, on a weekend night when a lot of people go out drinking and start fights; this is because of budget cuts; management decided to axe a lot of local spending so they could have a nice new academy and offices in Edinburgh, or something along that line. By and large I've found my local Force pretty decent folk...

*...and now for the officers who are total jerks...
Example 1: The son of a work colleague (who was 14 at the time) was arrested and detained in a holding cell for 5 hours without being told why he had been arrested and wasn't allowed to contact his parents because apparently he first had to have an interview with a legal representative present first. Then his mother was called to pick him up and he was released without charge; apparently he had been mistakenly identified as someone much older than him who had apparently held someone at knifepoint after an argument. He was never asked to show any identification when approached by the police and they never bothered to check his identity when he was arrested.
Example 2 (and this one really takes the cake): A group of my friends had met up in a local park; the police drove up, physically restrained one of them and put him in the back of the car. When queried why they had arrested him, the officer turned to them, shouted "ILLEGAL!!!" and then drove off; they took him to his house, opened the car door, let him go and drove off without a word. I mean come on, what the heck that besides some weird power trippy thing.

Edit: in both cases, the police never explained why and in the first case there was no apology whatsoever.

 

[Vrach]

Nope. Police here (Serbia) tend to be royal twats. It's kinda what you get when a profession becomes the "didn't go to school? Spend a few months in training and we'll give you a salary/pension/benefits!". Sorta similar to why high school teachers suck over here as well, except instead of being for those without education, it's for those with "useless" education (one they couldn't cash in better somewhere else).

Anyway, it results in a pile of cops that are looking for nothing more but to harass, beat up, goad people into bribing them and similar shit. Ain't something worth my respect on the whole.

That said, like with every other group I hold little to no respect for on the whole, I will always give the individual the benefit of the doubt and the respect their group is (or isn't) supposed to earn them - it's just that I will not be surprised the least if/when they show they're not worthy of it.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Yes I do respect my police force. Heck i think they get to much hate.

 

[ajofflight]

Here in Vancouver, I respect the job that the police officers do, and the danger they put themselves through. Unfortunately for us, however, there are far too many Gun-ho cowboys on the force. They'll pull out their tazers at the slightest disturbance, and they will not hesitate to use them. Just a couple of months ago, in fact, one officer was given a slap on the wrist for purposefully knocking down a homeless woman with multiple sclerosis. It's ridiculous. Thankfully, that's only about 8-12% of the force. Hopefully.

 

[Henkie36]

I'm Dutch and I respect what few police officers there are. There is a persitent feeling to them that they are deliberatly trying to annoy you, same here as in most countries. I'm talking about things like driving 5 miles an hour over the speedlimit on the deadest hour of the night and there isn't a single person within view besides the officer that pulled you over. And you still get a fine.

In any case, I do have respect for them, because they know they are almost always outnumbered, they make long days, and it isn't the best paying job in the world.

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

British here

I respect them more than I respect the people who write the laws that they enforce or the criminals they arrest, for what that's worth