The family bias

[Slytovhand]

ok ... I probably shouldn't read Fratching, I just get stuff keep flowing into my head

Anyway...

Your <insert relative here> has just been arrested...again. For another serious crime.

No - the police are not harassing them.

No - they aren't, in fact, a 'nice boy, who should just be left alone'.

And no - they aren't 'misunderstood'.

They are a tried and convicted criminal, and the police are doing their job for the betterment and safety of society. So get off their damn backs!

If they do something wrong - accept it! And stop being so ignorant about them...

But damn it's nice to see a (often) parent take the responsibility and say that they should have done something sooner. Better than that foolish 'my child is a saint' attitude...




I should probably have headed this as "Police Bashing"..but this one will do.

Crazylegs.. any thoughts??


Slyt

[Ree]

That really bothers me.

I know a woman, and one of her boys was just a bad seed, I guess. He was always in trouble. (When he was still in high school, I worked with the guy and he said something along the lines of "Suck my...." and when I jokingly snapped back, "Produce it..." he exposed himself to me.)

After yet another "drug possession with intent to sell" arrest by police, his Mom was shopping in the store and talking to one of the other clerks. (At that point, the guy wasn't working there.) His Mom was saying that the police had it in for him and said that she had told the police to quit picking on her kid and go arrest some of the actual criminals out there.
(I think the guy ended up being killed in a car accident involving drunk driving and high rates of speed.)

I worked with another woman with almost the same story. She was always lamenting the fact that the police wouldn't leave her son alone. (This guy ended up killed in a motorcycle crash, but by that time, he had really straightened his life out, so it was very sad.)

I hear it all the time, though.
There will be news stories about a young person killed by the police while in the process of committing a crime and the anger is always on the police, rather than looking at the fact that, if the kid hadn't been committing a crime, there wouldn't have been police involvement, and he would still be alive.
They always go on about how the kid was next to sainthood, and it was only the colour of the kid's skin or ethnicity that was a factor in the death.
Umm...no...it was your kid with a prybar, breaking into a locked warehouse, and then coming at the police with the prybar raised.

Very few people want to admit that their family members are idiots.

[Greenday]

A couple years ago, there was a block party not to far from where I live. It consisted of an only Jewish population. They got pretty rowdy and the police showed up, asking them to quiet down a lil. Two young guys there didn't like that and decided it would be a good idea to hit one of the cops. Of course, it was a bad idea since there was still a bunch of other cops with nightsticks. The two kids got beat down and within a day, their parents went to the newspaper and they ran a story questioning if the cops beat them because they were Jewish. Stupid press and stupid kids/parents.

[Ree]

I realize that I opened the door a bit and alluded to the topic of race being a factor, but I was referring more to the fact that family will come up with other excuses, such as race to renounce the police and excuse their family member's behaviour.

It would be best if, for the remainder of the thread, it would stay on the topic of "family bias" rather than debating the use of the "racism" defense.

[Greenday]

The parents still didn't believe their kids did anything wrong and couldn't think of any reasonable idea as to why the cops acted the way they did. It just pisses me off that they ignored the fact that their kids attacked a cop.

My cousin dropped out of high school a couple years ago. He was doing a lot of weed and after being suspended twice, he just quit. He refused to get a job. He refused to help around the house. He refused to do anything at all. He'd just roam around all day. He stopped taking showers (which was bad, cause he used to take like three a day back in middle school). At first he had a job at a supermarket, but he tried to steal a bunch of CDs and was fired. His mom would force him every now and then to try and get a job, and when the place called him back to hire him, he turned it down. Another kid and him broke into a friend's house to borrow a video recorder. Instead of just waiting till the friend got home, they broke one of the basement windows and got into the house that way. Him and two other kids one day tried to break into cars to steal stuff. The third car was a cop's personal car. When the rest of the cops came, they did what any sane person would do...run. One guy and my cousin took off on foot. That guy on foot got caught. The third guy took off on his car and was caught. He got possession of narcotics, paraphernalia, DUI. My cousin wasn't caught, but he turned himself in. My aunt kept trying to defend him in court, saying he didn't know what he was doing and how he was such a good boy. My cousin was ALWAYS fighting with his step-dad, who isn't a bad guy, but is somewhat annoying. After us forcing him multiple times to go to rehab, he's starting to get better. He has a part-time job now that he's keeping. But not once throughout the entire ordeal, did my aunt admit anything was wrong with him.

[blas87]

This is kind of difficult for me, wanting to be a cop. I know it's one of those things "Well if you can't deal with it, you ought not go for it."

However, on one side of the spectrum, one of the school cops at my first high school was harassing kids. Especially people in my family. Before anyone hops on my case, let me explain. This cop went to high school with my cousin. This cop was one of those snooty rich kids, and my cousin (obviously being related to me) is a descendant of hard working blue collar people. Not being the right thing to do on either side....this cop called my cousin a hick and whatnot in school, and in return, my cousin always called him a "fag" and a "fucking piece of shit rich kid". A lot of people actually believe that this guy became a cop just to get his revenge on people.

Weirdly enough, he developed a crush on my cousin (the above cousin's sister...). She would not go out with him. Fast forward about 5 years, he's now a cop, and he pulls her over multiple times in multiple days for dumbass reasons and gives her ticket after ticket. My uncle put the kabosh on that. He also had a crush on another cousin of mine (different last name) and somehow he figured out she's related to us Blasenheimers (ok not my last name but let's pretend) and after she said no, he made her life a living hell as well. She actually put a restraining order on him.

Fast forward to me being in high school. He tailgated my cousin (a year older than me) in his unmarked car until my cousin sped off, then pulled him over and said to him "You Blasenheimers are NOTHING but trouble, ALL of you!" He gave me 4 smoking tickets. GRANTED, I got caught fair and square underage......but somehow he always knew where I went at lunch. He hid in the bushes on me. After I got my license and he recognized my car, he followed me one night for several miles and several turns. But never turned his lights on......

NOW to the other side of the spectrum...

Like Ree said, if people would not do such obnoxious shit and try to run or hide or even worse, attack police, shit like this WOULD NOT happen. Cops have every right to taze or pepperspray someone if they are threatening them. Get over it, stupid kids. Don't run. Don't kick. Don't spit on the cops. Get a clue.

[Slytovhand]

Hey Blas..

I didn't think your first story was so much on 'the other side of the spectrum' at all... but to the side of it.

Said cop (asshat) was harassing, and in the case of the tailgating, entrapment - illegal! But if your cousins (or even yourself) took it to the police and he went down, you could hear the outrage from the police dept about 'Such a good cop... and all those bad Blasenheimers getting away with it all. All our coppers are good coppers... ".


Just change the word 'Family' to .. something else. (of course, if he did go down, no doubt his mummy would say how damn wonderful he was!!)

[blas87]

Our family wasn't the only one to complain about him. Here's a scary thought.....he's going into the FBI!

[Greenday]

Our family wasn't the only one to complain about him. Here's a scary thought.....he's going into the FBI!

Here's another one...so am I!...some day...

[Slytovhand]

Our family wasn't the only one to complain about him. Here's a scary thought.....he's going into the FBI!

Gee Blas...thanks for making me choke!

I'd suggest you start changing your name and move somewhere.... overseas. I'd hate to think what sort of crap you're going to have to deal with next...


GreenDay...good luck! I've just got a mate waiting for a security clearance before he gets into something security-wise down here...should be all good - cos he's a real cool guy (unless he hides it well )

[crazylegs]

It all boils down to responsibilty and the verb 'parent'.

If people don't parent their children, or that the parent expects the child to have boundries set by others then this will continue to happen. How many times have I heard 'If you don't do as I say the policeman will tell you off'? Too many to remember, the line should be

Do as I say because I said so.

Yes, sometimes it is a valid line, using another group as a 'stick' will mean that the child will resent that group and that can lead to huge problems with authority later on in life (total diregard for police, teachers or whoever the 'stick' group was.

Anyhow, thats my rant over and done with!

[CancelMyService]

I've seen both sides, the police in my town absolutely harass males 18-25. My buddy gave me a ride home only to have a police car follow him all the way into my plan (way in the back on a dead end street) only to turn the lights on right as he pulled in front of my house. Our alleged infraction? Not coming to a complete stop at one of the signs in my plan, the one with maybe 1 car every 5 hours and a 25 mph speed limit. The real reason we were stopped? Being two teenage boys (we were 18 at the time) coming home after midnight and running into a cop hoping to bag an easy DUI/underage drinking bust. I was pulled over about 5 times in that time frame and not once in the nearly 5 years since. My brother was once taken to jail because he was pulled over for something minor but he had an unopened case of beer in the backseat (his fault, it should have been in the trunk but it was clearly unopened and jail was way out of proportion).

However, my aunt to this day still is convinced my cousin was being picked on by the cops desipite

1. Being friends with known drug dealers.
2. Getting busted with pot in his locker (planted of course according to my aunt)
3. Now spending his days going in and out of hospitals due to his liver failing due to years of drinking/drug use so bad that he's probably going to die since he needs a transplant but has no insurance.

It's a sad and shocking example of how blind some parents can be. My cousin has basically turned himself into Chris Farley (he was up over 300 pounds and he used to be an athlete in high school) and my aunt still doesn't seem to acknowledge anything is wrong.

[MMATM]

A bit off-topic:
I've been tailgated into speeding once, but the officer didn't even issue a warning after I was relieved to see it was him and not some road-raging psycho. I've also been pulled over for "running a stop sign" (didn't wait for 3 seconds after fully stopping), but that was really for driving through campus at 3am Saturday morning (prime DUI-time), and was again not issued a warning.

A bit more off-topic:
Blas, where are you from that you got underage smoking tickets? Around here (MA) it's not illegal to smoke underage, it's just illegal to buy cigarettes underage, to sell cigarettes to someone who is underage, and (maybe?) to supply cigarettes to someone underage. In theory, if someone underage is smoking then some law has been broken somewhere along the line (unless it's OK to give cigarettes to minors), but not necessarily by the smoker, so you can't be ticketed for it unless it's in a no-smoking area.

[blas87]

MMATM, I just figured this happened everywhere....but I live in Wisconsin.

If you are caught smoking underage, you get an underage smoking fine. Where I live, they are about $50, but they may have gone up in the past few years since I've been over 18. If you say who bought them for you, you can get your ticket dismissed, and the adult will get a really hefty fine. But who wants to do that, right?

I am not kidding, yes, you can get underage smoking fines. Both high schools I went to, where all the kids gathered and smoked, there were always cops patrolling. Instead of setting speed traps or actually fighting crime, most of the cops spent their days trying to hunt down middle and high school kids smoking cigarettes.

[protege]

Here's one to think about... Locally, a kid got shot by police. This was, after he'd shot a police dog, and shot at the cops. They returned fire, killing the kid. As soon as it made the news, quite a few people were upset. They kept going on about how he was "a good kid," "never been in trouble," etc.

Er, did I mention that he'd shot a police dog? Oh, and he'd had multiple weapons violations, multiple arrests for burglary, drug dealing, and involved in at least one shooting? The cops were there serving a warrant for one of those offenses. Sooooo wouldn't that make him *not* a good kid?