My two (and only) encounters with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

[cherokeeprogressive]

In 1980 I was 19, and working full-time. Three of my childhood friends worked full-time as well, and all of us worked the swing shift. Every Friday (payday), we'd meet at a park in Norwalk that used to be called El Encanto, and is now called Gerdes Park. We'd have a six-pack apiece, and someone, usually all of us, brought weed. We'd sit in the middle of the park and drink, smoke, and generally just shoot the shit. It was always 1 a.m. or later when we got there.

This particular Friday, it was cold, being wintertime, so we sat in my car and passed the bong around, and drank our beers. We were hotboxing the car, meaning we kept the windows up as we smoked. It was nearly impossible to see out of the windshield. Suddenly, night turned into day, and we realized that a Sheriff's Deputy was standing outside my door, with his flashlight shining into the car. I rolled down my window when he motioned, exhaled a lungful of smoke, and asked him if I could help him. Everyone else in the car snickered, even though we were scared shitless and knew we were going to jail not only for the weed, but for under-age drinking. He asked me what we were doing, and I told him "nothing". He laughed out loud, and asked us to get out of the car.

When we were all standing in the parking lot, he asked if there was anything in the car he should know about, and I told him "no". So he told us to sit on the parking curb while he searched my car. He came out with what had been a half-ounce bag of some good weed, and looked at me. Then he took my bong, sat it on the hood of the car, along with the beer. He was silent for a while, then he told me to come to where he was behind my car, and he dumped the baggie on the asphalt, then dropped the empty baggie on the pot. He gathered us all up, and said something, and I'm paraphrasing here, to the effect of "I see you guys here every Friday night. I know you aren't bothering anybody, not breaking or defacing anything, and I appreciate that. I'm going to be back in exactly one hour, and you guys need to be gone." Then he asked if anyone had a watch. Before he walked back to his car, he asked if we knew why he came into the parking lot. We shrugged and he pointed to the wall behind my car, which was backed into the parking spot between the cars of my friends. There, painted on the wall as plain as day were the words "HEAD IN ONLY".

He drove away leaving the bong on the hood of my car along with the beer, and the empty baggie of weed was still laying on the asphalt. We giggled our asses off as we scooped up the weed, and climbed back into my car and hotboxed it for the next 55 minutes or so.

I should mention here that my three childhood friends were straight-up VATOS, and their cars were lowered Chevy's.

On June 28, 1997, I was driving home to my wife after watching Mike Tyson bite off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear in a pay-per-view title fight. I was a little tipsy, though not as bad as I might have been had the fight gone the distance. About half the way home, in La Mirada, I got into a left-turn lane and the act of turning on the turn signal (I was being very careful ya see) caused me to drop the cigarrette I had in my left hand. I bent over to pick it up before it burned my carpet. When I sat back up again, the first thing I saw were the words (painted in gold) "LOS ANGELES COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT" on the back of a patrol car, and it was too late to stop. I locked up my brakes, and rear-ended the Deputy's car fairly hard. He never got out of his car. In about 30 seconds, or so it seemed, there were sirens EVERYWHERE. By the time everyone had shown up, I'd estimate that there were 10 Sheriff's cars, two fire trucks, a paramedic truck, and an ambulance. They took the Deputy away strapped to a back-board (I found out years later that he wasn't injured, just claimed to be, and that he had been hoping for a situation just like the one I put him in so he could retire with big pay and benefits).

The first Deputy on the scene walked me from the turn lane to the curb at the side of the street, and told me to sit there. For about the next 30 minutes, I sat there all by myself and I'd say the nearest Deputy to me was never closer than about 50 feet. I was later told by a deputy who was my friend that the cops were probably hoping I'd run so they'd have an excuse to "tune me up". I'm too chicken to run though.

Long story short... The first Deputy on the scene was the arresting officer in the end. He came back to where I was, and was more than polite. He gave me the breathalyzer (sp?) test and I blew a .12. When I got to the Sheriff's substation in Norwalk after being arrested, a deputy was leaving as we were walking up the steps. He asked the Deputy walking me in "Is this the asshole who hit XXXX?" and the Deputy who had me in custody answered in the affirmative.

I was released about 5 hours later as the sun was coming up, and my wife refused to come pick me up so I had to walk about 3.5 miles home. Her words to me on the phone were the harshest spoken in the whole episode. The ONLY disrespectful words spoken by the Sheriff's Department were those of the Deputy who was leaving as I was arriving. Everyone inside was respectful and professional the whole time, even though I had "injured" one of their own.

If you're wondering what my point is, it's this: My first experience was not only pleasant, it was downright enjoyable, albeit after the fact. My second experience happened after supposedly injuring a Sheriff's Deputy while breaking the law. Not pleasant, but entirely professional and respectful. If you know anything about the Norwalk/La Mirada/South Whittier area, you know that the Sheriff's Deputies who patrol there have not only a dangerous job, but deal with some of the worst elements of So. Cal. society each and every day of their time there. Bottom line: Please excuse me if I don't jump on the COPS ARE ASSHOLES WITH GUNS AND AUTHORITY bandwagon. My experiences with law enforcement in So. Cal. were not bad ones. Even the Georgia State Trooper who had mirrored sunglasses and a smokey hat that pulled me over for going 90 on I95 treated me professionally, AFTER asking me "You know how much trouble you in, boy?" That was after I gave him my military ID though rather than my drivers license.

I posted late last week about how I thought that Crowley was a lying racist pig, and I stand by that even though I was soundly trashed because he was invited to the White House by President Obama and that alone made it okay to give him the benefit of the doubt by a large number of DU'ers. In the end, in my humble opinion, he's the exception rather than the norm.

[izquierdista]

1. My story

It was 2005 and I had finally sold my house in Las Vegas and I had headed south to see where I wanted to go next. I was driving through San Diego, thinking I would stay at the beach and look around. I got off a freeway exit in a residential neighborhood, came to a stop sign, stopped, looked left to see a cop parked on the cross street. With him parked at the curb and no cross traffic, I proceeded through the intersection. I hadn't gone 100 feet before he had his lights on to pull me over. He stopped me for "failure to observe a stop sign" and proceeded to write me a ticket. While doing so, he asked me what I was doing in California, how long I had been in the state (6 hours, I told him), what my business was and why I didn't have a California license or registration. I sat motionless while he wrote the ticket, and signed it where I was told to.

My experience with this ASSHOLE WITH A GUN AND AUTHORITY made up my mind and I left the country for the last four years. Since Obama was elected, I decided to return, and in April of this year, I found a place to call home. That is until I get fed up with cops again or I need medical care. Then I will have to leave for someplace more civilized. This country could have been so much better, but for 30 years health care has been getting more unaffordable, jobs have been leaving, what little public transportation there is gets cut, and everything is about materialism, buying the latest cheap Chinese crap. Maybe I should be a hermit.

[cherokeeprogressive]

2. Fair enough. I stand by my statement though that cops like that are the exception rather than

the norm.

You do understand though that in some jurisdictions, traffic tickets are a source of revenue for cities and counties, right? And that the law enforcement officers, be they Policemen or Sheriff's Deputies, are pushed to meet quotas in the context of giving tickets for traffic violations?

I had a friend a few years ago (still my friend), who was transporting 219 lbs of marijuana from Phoenix to St. Louis. The guy he was sharing driving duties with was pulled over for speeding, given a ticket, and they were allowed to go on their way. Hours later, the officer who wrote the ticket was talking with another officer about the encounter and mentioned that their luggage was in the back seat. The other officer asked what might have been in the trunk, and it was then that the ball started rolling.

At the trial, the original officer testified that he pulled my friend's rented car over because he needed to meet his quota of tickets, and that it was obvious it was rented because of the sticker in the rear window.

That officer and my friend are now buddies, albeit long distance ones.

The ASSHOLE WITH A GUN AND AUTHORITY wrote you a traffic ticket. I'll assume that you stopped completely at the stop sign. For that he was wrong, but you have no idea what kind of pressure he might have been under in the context of writing tickets.

Please don't tell me that you moved out of country because of a traffic ticket that you believe you were issued wrongly. That's just silly.

[izquierdista]

3. It was the last straw

Having been fed up with things for a while, all I needed was one more bad experience. I'm still viewing my return as a sort of probation, see how it goes and if fascism is on the wane. Otherwise, I could very well leave again.

[cherokeeprogressive]

4. Thanks for the honest reply.

Either way, I wish you all the best. Our experiences with the law may have been different, but I'm sure our hearts are in the same place. I'd hope you choose to stay here. We need people like you. If all the good people leave, the bad people win.

[noamnety]

5. You don't realize it, but you just supported izquierdista's case

"For that he was wrong, but you have no idea what kind of pressure he might have been under in the context of writing tickets."

This is what we've been saying - that it's not a few bad apples. It's a culture of corruption and misuse of authority. It's bad when even the people trying to defend them have to resort to "the system encourages abuses" as an excuse for their actions.

[cherokeeprogressive]

6. The case for what? Forsaking the country of your birth due to a traffic ticket

that in your mind, you were issued wrongly?

My post didn't address law enforcement officers directly, rather those who have control over law enforcement, who might be under pressure from those who are city managers, county supervisors etc.

One of my first jobs was as a "Press Helper". My press operator was under the gun to print x number of boxes of printer paper every night. His foreman was there to enforce the requirement of boxes per shift. His (the foreman's) boss, who was the supervisor of the shift at the printing plant where I worked had his marching orders, given straight from the plant manager. I'm guessing that the plant manager had orders from someone higher than his/her position.

Even under the most socialistic of systems, the job will fall on someone to say "you didn't produce enought widgets today, and if you don't step up your production of widgets, you'll be replaced."

Can you smell what I'm cookin'? In any system, the lowest of the low is expected to produce SOMETHING, and to to produce that something to some kind of standard, decided by someone else.

Cops who write traffic tickets are no different than press helpers who are expected to support their press operators who are expected to produce x amount of product.

We weren't talking about a cop who abused his authority by tasing someone who didn't bow to his/her status, we were talking about someone who got a traffic ticket they didn't think they deserved, and left the country because of it.

I respectfully beg to differ concerning your assertion that I proved his point with my post.

[noamnety]

8. I didn't read their post as leaving the country over a traffic ticket

I read it as that being the last in a series of issues - and that it wasn't whining that they got a traffic ticket, it was the realization that the system is set up so cops can fabricate any reason they want for fining you, arresting you, whatever, and if you are innocent but there aren't any witnesses, you have no recourse whatsoever.

That appeared to be the case in that traffic stop - the cop had free reign to claim whatever violations he wanted to invent, whether or not they are true, and there was nothing that could be done about it. I posted before about a similar situation and realization, when a cop wrote my grandma a ticket for an expired parking meter - even though we had just returned to the car and there were still a couple minutes left. That was before the digital camera days, and we realized if they say you broke the law it just doesn't matter if you did or not.

Your plant manager scenario is not relevant to this situation. It's not just a case of "there's pressure to perform faster and produce more efficiently so we can turn a profit." In the case of police and traffic tickets, they aren't there to produce more goods, they are there to serve the public which is inherently a nonprofit service. The system of trying to make profits off that doesn't encourage them to provide a service more efficiently or better; it encourages them to lie and abuse their power to meet their quotas. It's a system that encourages corruption, and removes the presumption of innocence from the public based only on the word of the person who's under pressure to be corrupt.

Going back to your job as press helper, if your manager required you to produce a certain number of boxes and the easiest way you could meet that quota was to cheat - so you and the other workers conspired together to fill half the boxes with garbage from the dumpster behind the building, and knowingly sold them to clients misrepresenting them as boxes of printer paper, then we'd have a scenario that might come close to things like that recent dashcam video of cops conspiring together to make up a evidence for the false arrest of a woman. It still wouldn't reach the same level because no client ever ended up imprisoned because they bought a box of faulty goods, but it would be closer.

[TheKentuckian]

7. Focus on the system rather than the individuals and we might find a way forward

but as long as the institutionalized problems are ignored and excused then relations between cops and citizens will be at best dicey.

The "few bad apples" meme is gasoline on the fire. You can't refuse to even allow for the possibility of real problems and expect them to go away. I would guess that those most supportive of the police would be the most serious about bringing better understanding and smoothing relations but it seems they are most concerned about wiping and dangling.