Police Harassment ????

Jim Goose · 23-09-2010, 08:55 PM

Just got this email today, as always one cant tell if its true or not, but the reply is pretty funny, especially the last one.

Enjoy...

Quote:

Recently, South Australian Police ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being "Community Policing."

One of the civilian email participants posed the following question;

"I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?"

From the "other side" (the law enforcement side) Sgt. Kym Webb of Mount Barker police, (a cop with a sense of humor) replied:

"First of all, let me tell you this...it's not easy. In the Adelaide Hills we average one cop for every 600 people. Only about 60% of those cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as "general patrols") where we do most of our harassing.

The rest are in non-harassing departments that do not allow them contact with the day to day innocents. At any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60% general patrols are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So roughly, one cop is responsible for harassing about 5,000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 10,000 or more people a day.

Now, your average eight -hour shift runs 28,800 seconds long. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and then only three-fourths of a second to drink a Farmer's Union Iced Coffee AND then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to this challenge day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow down those people which we can realistically harass.

The tools available to us are as follows:

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase used often. This means we'll come out and give somebody some special harassment. Another popular one is, "There's a guy breaking into a house." The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance or no driver's licences and the like. It's lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding FINS warrant on file.

RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.

LAWS : When we don't have PHONES or CARS and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called "Statutes" . These include the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, Summary Offences Act, Road Traffic Act and a whole bunch of others ... They all spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people.

After you read the law , you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, there's this book we have that says that's not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It is a really cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well.

We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to "harass" some people.

Next time you are in the Hills, give me the old "single finger wave." That's another one of those codes. It means, "You can harass me."

It's one of our favorites. "

Auslandau · 23-09-2010, 09:26 PM

Sorry ..... very old one. Here is a few versions mostly from the states .....

http://bpoa-online.com/newsflash/a-t...ice-harassment
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...0172750AA6L2RS

Jim Goose · 23-09-2010, 09:35 PM

bugga

||| · 23-09-2010, 09:39 PM

nice. i'd buy kym webb a beer (or iced coffee lol)

dave351cid · 24-09-2010, 07:57 PM

i like it.

Mad Maxine · 24-09-2010, 08:57 PM

Like it? I love it!

Auturbo6 · 24-09-2010, 09:33 PM

Have considered becoming a cop, too many people to harrass. Think i'll stick with fixing cars.

pauljh74 · 24-09-2010, 11:11 PM

Quote:

LAWS : When we don't have PHONES or CARS and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks.

That's the phone book isn't it? They harass people with that so they don't leave marks

Deebs1990 · 25-09-2010, 05:46 PM

Haha that was very well written, a cop with a sense of humour, never thought i'd see (or read about) that.

grandpa_spec_F6 · 27-09-2010, 12:23 PM

Old, but good

Funny thing is some of this rings true, as we watched an individual in a VN station wagon harass the police, except he forgot about the bag of drugs, mainly filled with little white pills in the boot.... 3 cop cars and a dog squad later they were still harassing him

irlewy86 · 27-09-2010, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pauljh74

That's the phone book isn't it? They harass people with that so they don't leave marks

Wet towel and a length of garden hose.

Den76 · 28-09-2010, 11:17 AM

LOL love it

Just wondering if it took Sgt. Kym Webb lets say 30 minutes to reply she effectively missed out on harrasing 625 people.....

ltd · 30-09-2010, 09:09 AM

Cops have always had a sense of humour.
Sometimes, they can't even contain their sense of humour.
Like this guy; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv4tK...eature=related

Sizey · 30-09-2010, 10:50 AM

Be it a joke or not, many cops will give you a smart **** answer when you ask them a serious question these days. Ever been pulled over when with a young bloke lately????? You should see what they tend to say.

grandpa_spec_F6 · 30-09-2010, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sizey

....Ever been pulled over when with a young bloke lately????? You should see what they tend to say.

Yeah you get some good, some bad. I've had some legends in the past who let me off the hook big time when I was young and stupid, (read: exhaust dumped at the first muffler, old and probably unroadworthy car) simply said "yeah I know what it's like, I used to own a 9second ute" and told me to behave.

Then the other week I was accused of yelling at a patrol car, cops exact words were (in a thick south African accent) "its a friday night, your a p-plater, do you think we're bloody stupid!? do I look stupid to you!?"

When I explained who I worked for, he came out with a pearler of a line "I don't care WHO YOU ARE! You could be the prime minister for all I care and I'd still pull you up!"

This area has some real dropkicks around it so he was probably having a bad night, but he not only admitted to profiling and discriminating against me, but was rude and not very objective about it either.

At the end of the day I'd rather be harassed by the cops than by criminals

A friend of ours has a habbit of going up beside unmarked patrol cars and loudly exclaiming "I SEEEEE YOOOOOOOOU!" and is then promptly harassed