Yup. To see this mentality on full display you just have to pull up videos of cops getting DUIs.
They all act like it's the most insulting thing in the world that they get pulled over. They all use their status as cops to try and get out of the ticket. The cops that pull them over always treat them in the softest and most deferential way imaginable. And I'm sure more times than there are videos for, these cops get away with DUI which is why they are so incensed when the arresting cop doesn't play along.
The injury to their ego is tremendous. The ones that allow their authority to become their identity cannot mentally separate a challenge to this authority from a direct attack on themselves. To them it is quite literally the same thing and it is incredibly dangerous. It is how the authoritarian mind works, because to them it feels like survival.
Especially in the city of New York, I sincerely believe a police officer butting a reflective vest on the front dashboard of their illegally parked car is enough grounds for immediate dismissal/firing from the job and all retirement seized with no recourse. I don't know how we would make it legal but this is the kind of visible, petty corruption that makes people lose their respect for the system.
I think the point is it's not the parking infraction: it's the attempt to get out of it by signaling that they are a police officer. I agree that kind of thing should be taken more seriously than the small offense it's trying to avoid (though maybe not quite so severely).
I don't know, it depends on context and intent, like nearly all things. But this is put aside because most on HN immediately go: police == bad.
If the cop is illegally parked to get lunch, sure ticket them, and/or report them for discipline.
If the cop is attending an incident and that is the only place to park within a reasonable distance, then that's fine.
However the suggestion that irrespective of context and intent, and even for the first contrived example, the cop should lose their job and pension... Ridiculous.
You have clearly missed the point of my comment, I assume on purpose given the first sentence. The second sentence was clearly not serious, and was sarcasm, not some confirmation of "privilege mentality".
Just last week, two NYPD cops were indicted for evidence tampering for doing exactly that.
The indicted cops responded to an off-duty cop's DUI crash. They texted each other on their personal phones so as not to create a record. They positioned their bodycams so as not to capture the incident. At one point, one of the cops held the other's to make it look as if he was still standing there while he secretly called their supervisor. They then let the drunk cop drive away. Hours later, another officer found the car parked on the sidewalk. That officer did finally arrest him.
"These police officers did their job. We should not be here today," said union president Patrick Hendry, who accused the DA of targeting the officers. "He needs to support officers instead of going after them. Enough is enough."
To their credit, these charges came based on a referral from NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, though it was 4 years later.
I've always treated most of those kind of videos as staged. I like the idea that that's how it goes down but, almost because it's cathartic, I don't trust that it's real footage, as opposed to, essentially, short film fiction.
> The cops that pull them over always treat them in the softest and most deferential way imaginable.
Without denying I have seen preferential treatment first-hand, you might take a step back and imagine...
You're dealing with someone who entered a career known for its machismo, where they received training on how to use physical violence, including training on shooting a weapon that could quite possibly be with them. This person has been drinking or is flat-out drunk, and it's only a matter of minutes before they realize how screwed they're about to be.
Treating them softly is what you SHOULD do.
We should be asking whether we are content to find ourselves in a world where that soft approach is considered the noteworthy exception.
What's stupid about using a soft approach, instead of a violent approach, to take away a driver's license from a drunk driver?
Why do police so frequently resort to violence that you're probably not surprised to hear bystanders in NYC were shot by cops pursuing a subway turnstile hopper? Let the implications of that sink in for a moment.
Why have I heard so many times about people losing their life after being pulled over for speeding?
> What's stupid about using a soft approach, instead of a violent approach
The options aren't soft vs violent.
The problem with the soft approach is it's all about giving the suspected impaired drive more chances to prove they aren't impaired. It's about avoiding removing them from the road, not avoiding a violent confrontation.
While cops shouldn't be dicks to everyone and they should always work to de-escalate, what they shouldn't do is let someone they think is impaired drive off. And that's what the "soft" approach is all about. It's about letting the arresting officer make excuses like "well, they don't seem THAT drunk" or "Well, they seem a little buzzed, but not that bad."
For a regular citizen, the cops would do a field sobriety test, a breathalyzer blow, and then arrest if it comes back high. That's what they should do for everyone they suspect is impaired.
If we wanted to argue for a softer approach, then I could see removing the criminal aspects of a DUI and instead just focusing on getting that person off the road and potentially revoking their license. But in no case should a cop let someone drive off that they suspect isn't fully sober.
> [Letting someone they think is impaired drive off is] what the "soft" approach is all about. [...] But in no case should a cop let someone drive off that they suspect isn't fully sober.
You are reading more into the vague "softly" term than is present in this thread, instead of "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> The options aren't soft vs violent.
That there is a spectrum instead of a binary choice is what I discussed, though maybe it's a regional language quirk: "What's stupid about using a soft[er] approach, instead of a [more] violent approach..."
I don't think this is particularly unique to cops. When you're trapped and cornered, you desperately resort to any possible approach to get out of it. Acting incredulous or indignant when you know you've messed up, with the small hope it will get you out of it, is a very common human thing.
That's the thing, with how much cops will put on the kids gloves if it's an officer I'm certain the hope isn't small that they'll get out of it. The videos you see of cops getting arrested they are almost always completely blasted.
They all act like it's the most insulting thing in the world that they get pulled over. They all use their status as cops to try and get out of the ticket. The cops that pull them over always treat them in the softest and most deferential way imaginable. And I'm sure more times than there are videos for, these cops get away with DUI which is why they are so incensed when the arresting cop doesn't play along.