Originally posted by joerdie
i really didnt want to get back into this but lets try and have a real discussion.
tangman99: my dad is a cop.. has been for 31 years. if i saw a cop letting someone... anyone... even tony detriot after he just killed me for keying his car get beat up. that would be the end of your career. you ARE the reasion that cops have a bad rep. i understand that cops are still humans and have feelings but sometimes as a cop you have to stop something (in this case a fight) even if you think whats going on is wrong.
tony detroit and tangfman99: wow. you guys must drive really big cars. congrats on following the "trend".
Ok, Joerdie. Let's have a real discussion, but first go back and read your original posts about how if you drive an SUV you deserve to DIE and other stupid statments you made. Maybe you can see how you managed to get a few feathers ruffled. Now your reply to our emails was more mature and I've calmed down a little since then so lets have that discussion:
Your dad should be commended if he has carried a shield that long. Sit down and have a talk with him sometime and I bet he can share some of my feelings on the matter. To be truthful, I was a pretty damn good cop. I did my best to make the community around me a better place and help troubled kids get their life straight. Some I helped and some I could not. I spent a lot of my free time following up on them because I cared about them. It was more than a job.
Now the kid that I let get a little street justice (he was around 19) was a different story. I had watched this kid since he was a young teenager get in countless trouble. Like most kids, the court system just slapped his wrist and put him back on the street. This kid had an arrest record that was over 4 pages long dating back before my time to when he was 10 years old and had several battery charges against him so letting him get a little of what he dealt out seemed like poetic justice at the time. Was it wrong? Sure, but here is the twist.
Nothing happened to him for vandalizing the car, but he did get 30 days in a juvi facility for violation of probation. I saw him a couple of years after that in a grocery store with a wife and small child. He came up to me and to my surprise thanked me for what I did and shook my hand. He said that all the times before he had never cared about going to jail or getting in trouble, but he said that what happened that day was the first time that he had ever thought he was about to die and he had never been so happy to see a cop in his life. He said the shock he felt that I did not immediately intervene really scared the hell out of him and made him rethink his life. He was working a good job and I found out that after he was released from the juvi facility, he finished 6 months of probation without an incident and had never been arrested since then. This was a kid that never went more than 3 months without an arrest since he was 10 years old.
Why did I change careers? After almost 10 years, I got tired of the helplessness I felt watching the same young kids get in trouble time and again and a justice system that failed them by not reacting. I got tired of seeing things with my own eyes that you only see on the news. Seeing a small child lifeless in a mangled vehicle is something you will never get out of your mind until the day you die especially when you have a child about the same age. What makes it even worse is when it was caused by a drunk driver which happened to be the childs mother who was driving the car and was so drunk she was not even hurt. Or the kid you thought was turning his life around and making a life for himself is found shot in the back of the head and dumped beside a road like a bag of garbage. It was just taking too much out of me because I cared too much.
So, before you say I'm the reason cops have a bad reputation, I thought you should know the other 99.9% percent of how I did my job.
Now would I really stick a gun in your mouth if I caught you keying my car? No. I'm sure I would not. I'm not really sure what I would do and I hope I never have to face it.
I do not drive a big car. I have never owned an SUV and I don't plan on it. I currently drive a Corvette which to the surprise of some actually gets very good gas milage for 400 horsepower. I average 21 mpg and get as high as 33 mpg on the highway thanks to 6 speed transmission with a very high geared overdrive.
As far as you leaving the forum, that is up to you. I've been around on the forum for a few years and I'm a very easy going person. For anyone to pee me off and have me get on their case is almost unheard of for me. I value and respect everyones opinion.
Sorry everyone for making you read this if you are still here.
Maybe we can find a way to run our cars on saltwater.:thinking: