[eyerony]

Once saw a police car in a smallish town whip a u-turn for no clear reason, no lights, nothing, nearly hit a car that was pulling out of a bank parking lot and the driver of which had clearly already looked that way and seen no-one coming, then the cop freaked out, u-turned again (lights this time) and pulled over the car they nearly hit. Guess whatever they were breaking traffic laws and driving very dangerously to get to wasn't so important after all. What a shitty day for that person. At least it was probably just a totally unjustified ticket and an unpleasant lies-filled conversation with an upset and fragile-ego'd cop, and not death or injury, I suppose.

[EDIT] this and other dangerous-driving observations lead me to treat cop cars on the road like someone I've seen through the window drinking a 40 while talking on the phone. They're far and away the most likely category of vehicle to do something batshit crazy with no warning.

[throwaway373438]

I've seen a lot of talk about how a police officer's job isn't particularly dangerous, with less chance of dying on the job than say a garbageman or taxi driver.

An angle I don't see mentioned quite so often is that for the danger that does exist, most of it is vehicle crash related. One wonders how much is self inflicted due to dangerous driving.

[sixothree]

A friends was rear ended by a police cruiser while stopped at a red light. Ten police cars showed up. They did everything in their power to find anything wrong. They photographed everything in the car. They intimidated her into saying something was her fault.

She never got the money to repair her car because they don't carry insurance the same way normal people do. She ended up buying a new car. She was lucky to not be put in jail.

It's hard to imagine there are any good cops out there with all this rot.

[FireBeyond]

Absolutely. I'm a firefighter. I was the designated driver for two friends. We leave a bar, and I pull up to the intersection. I have a flashing red traffic light, and the cross traffic has a flashing yellow. There is a police car sitting at his flashing yellow, windows down, watching (it's closing time, and there are several people milling about on the street, the usual). I wait. He doesn't move. I wait for approximately 10 seconds before turning, with my signal, left.

I'm immediately lit up. "Failure to yield". In addition I get an FST after "failing" the vertical nystagmus test (bear in mind at this point, my one and only pint of beer is coming up on five hours old). Cop is insistent I'm drunk, says he can go the DUI route, because my "behavior" in "failing to yield" shows I'm impaired, regardless of actual numbers. I'm lucid, but frustrated. Debates merits of blood draw, etc. Tickets me, "Get out of downtown and get home, I think we both know you're getting off lucky".

[eyerony]

Hahaha, yeah, same smallish town's cops love to hassle people with late or early shifts playing "20 questions" fishing for drunks or I-don't-even-know-what ("5:30's awfully early to be going to work" look, asshole, take it up with the hour-fifteen of highway I have to cover, how many drunks are you nabbing at this hour on a Tuesday anyway?), usually just obviously fabricating some reason that they stopped you in the first place, without even trying to hide that it's BS (good luck questioning it, though). That's white folks, too, I can't imagine how bad it is there if you've got too much melanin in your skin. Incredibly annoying. Often it just seems like they're super bored and looking for anything at all to do.