Dinosaurs

That’s what I consider myself and those I worked with in law enforcement back in the day.

The job was a lot different back in 1979, when I began my career. There was more respect for police officers from the public…and the media. We were allowed to do our jobs and we were effective. You could call a scumbag a scumbag without fear of a personnel complaint because, back then, there was no such thing as ‘political correctness’. A mope wants to fight with the police? Most times, he went to the hospital before he went to jail. The next time, he knew better.

Back then a police officer always wanted to have an edge when it came to physical confrontation with a mope. That’s why we had sap gloves, convoys, blackjacks and billy clubs. A true copper used those tools as a last resort, after it became clear that talking wasn’t going to solve the issue with a subject who was bent on violence. Those things are all gone now. The new generation is the ‘kinder, gentler’ police officer…for the most part. If a criminal is struggling with you to gain control of your sidearm, you can’t slap him in the jaw with a blackjack anymore. That would be an open invitation for the mope to file suit against you and the police department, and would probably cause the cop to lose his/her job for using excessive force.

Now, police officers carry tools such as pepper spray, Tasers and PR 24s, otherwise known as ‘side-handled batons’.  A few things about those items: pepper spray…I’ve seen people high on dope walk right through it. During training back in the early 90s, we were told it was ‘target-specific’ because it comes out of the canister in a stream. Ask any officer who’s been in close proximity to a ‘specific target’ and they’ll tell you it isn’t, that they, too, were significantly affected by pepper spray.

Tasers….the name stands for ‘Thomas A. Swift Electronic Rifle’. A guy by the name of Jack Cover, who was a fan of the Tom Swift series of young adult action books when he was a kid, invented the device. A Taser delivers very quick, repeated jolts of electricity through two darts connected to the device via small, thin wires. Both darts must have contact within two inches of the target’s skin surface in order for them to deliver the voltage, which then interrupts the neuromuscular messages from the brain that controls limb movement, causing muscles to ‘lock up’. It is also very painful. If one of the darts miss, the device doesn’t work. If the target is wearing thick, winter clothing that inhibits dart penetration, it doesn’t work. You can’t use it on children, obviously pregnant women or persons with heart issues. You can’t use a Taser if a subject is at a height which would cause injury if he/she falls. You can’t use it in a flammable environment, nor can you employ a Taser on someone behind the wheel of a vehicle that is in gear. You do not want to use it on someone holding a firearm.

In other words, there are numerous things to consider before using a Taser. Sometimes, those things must be decided in the blink of an eye.

I’ve often wondered what the ‘PR’ stands for in PR-24; I’ve heard several different terms, but ‘Police Restraint’ seems the most logical. Its 24 inches long, which is self-explanatory. I can count on one hand the number of times I witnessed a PR-24 used in the field…and not use all my fingers. I never used it because I had no confidence in it; I had TOTAL confidence in the blackjack I carried in my back pocket so many years ago and, in this day and age, if I knew where I could still get one I’d buy it. I cannot tell you the last time I’ve even seen an officer anywhere with a -24 hanging from their gun belt, which might mean they’re no longer in use. Oh, they’re still out there, but either in a locker or a cruiser’s trunk, covered with dust, road flares, rolls of ‘Police Line – Do Not Cross’ tape, the med kit, the fluorescent orange reflective vest cops have to wear seemingly every time they get out of the cruiser….you get the idea.

Technology has, and will constantly, change the job. Disappearing is the written incident report; everything is seemingly done via laptop computers in the cruisers; no more barely legible words due to poor penmanship. Computerized traffic tickets, printed by the Mobile Data Terminal, are becoming the norm. Cops no longer have to radio in a license plate number for owner information; they run it themselves. Automatic License Plate Readers, mounted on the trunk decks of police vehicles, scan thousands of registration plates on cars and trucks passing by, alerting the on-board officer to such things as stolen, lost, expired and wanted plates.

It is also breeding laziness in some police officers. I’ve heard numerous car stops initiated by officers who ‘cherry-pick’; they’ll drive through a business lot packed with cars and run license plates. Eventually they come across one that’s expired or whose owner is under a driver’s license suspension. Once they find one of those, they’ll bring up the owner’s picture on the on-board monitor in order to verify that the car’s driver is in fact the subject under license suspension. The officer then parks away from the vehicle and watches it, waiting for the driver to get into the car and enter onto the public roadway, where the officer then initiates a traffic stop. The driver gets cited, the car gets towed and the officer pads his/her stats.

Peachy, right? In my opinion it is laziness. The time you’re spending surveilling that car could be better spent patrolling a high-crime area or any other of a myriad of tasks. Then there’s the whole liability issue: what if that suspended driver pulls onto the roadway and hits a pedestrian or another car, causing injury? The officer had prior knowledge of the owner/driver being under a license suspension yet still allowed that person to get behind the wheel…all for the sake of a traffic ticket. Same thing with the practice of sitting on a bar at closing time, watching a patron stagger and stumble their way to a vehicle and get behind the wheel. The drinking driver pulls onto the public roadway and BAM! The officer stops them and makes a DWI arrest.

Let me say this: I am not, and will not, defend suspended or impaired drivers. There are better, time-tested ways of taking those people off our roadways that actually might involve thought and good-old probable cause. It also involves a little more effort.

To a man, all my retired law enforcement buddies agree: if we could go back in time and do it all again, we would. In a heartbeat. But to start today, right now, and do thirty-plus years?

Not on your life.