CM PRESS # 600

BAD COPS COST HAWTHORNE A COOL MILLION BUCKS

Cops beat up an arrestee in Hawthorne and the guy was just awarded a million dollars. LINK

Not everyone can be a cop, and not everyone should be one. It takes a special type of person, with a special temperament, to be a good cop.

You can teach cops professionalism and you can demand honesty and integrity, but temperament relates to the psychological aspects of a person. You are born with or develop your temperament at a very early age and it stays with you all your life.

Most major police departments have trained psychologists on staff who try to weed out people who should not be cops or to find and remove them if they have already become cops.

Sometimes, it's easy to forget that cops are people just like the rest of us. Some are good and some are bad and almost all of them have a tough job with a lot of psychological pressures. The good cops have the proper temperaments to handle the pressures, the bad ones don't. That's reality.

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COSTA MESA SUED

Costa Mesa is now being sued by the family of a man who was killed by an off duty Costa Mesa cop who, according to investigators, acted in self defense after an altercation in a restaurant/bar.

According to the Daily Pilot, the family accuses Costa Mesa of “inadequate, improper, deficient and negligent hiring, training, supervision and retention of officers, continued employment of officers with actual or constructive notice of their failure or inability to properly perform their duties as officers, and/or abuse of alcohol.”

Here's a report on the original restaurant/bar incident from the OC Register.

As this case moves forward and is reported in the press, you'll see comments from some readers who think no cop can do any wrong and you'll see some from others who don't trust any cops. Obviously, both extremes are wrong.

Hopefully, this will turn out best for Costa Mesa citizens.

We'll keep you informed.

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HERE'S A FEW SCENARIOS. WOULD YOU THINK THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE COPS OR THE POLICE DEPARTMENT IN EACH OF THESE?

YOU BE THE JUDGE.

1. You report some minor illegal activity. You then see the responding cops watching the illegal activity. When you later check, you learn the cops lied and said they didn't see the activity that you saw them watching. This is repeated over several weeks. Same reports, same observation of cops watching the activity, same unable to locate reports to clear the calls.

2. Your grade school child has to leave his schoolyard each day through a playground exit that opens on to a sidewalk and street.

The sidewalk has a very long red curb to prevent cars from parking or standing where the kids exit.

However, every single day you see that the red curb is full of cars. Some are parked with no people inside. Some are standing with motors running and no one inside. Some are parked with motors running with someone inside. Some are moving slowly along the side of the curb to make room for additional cars. Some are coming or going. There is constant vehicle movement. It's a blur.

You also see that each day there may be a hundred or so grade school kids darting from the curb between stopped and moving cars to cross the street that has two way automobile traffic.

You go out of your way to try to get the local police department to do something to make this school exit safe for kids and you contact a high ranking traffic officer at his office in the police department.

He gives you the friendly uncle routine and tells you it's okay for cars to park at the red curb. You read him the law from the vehicle code--which absolutely prohibits the activity you're reporting--he laughs and dismisses you with more of the friendly uncle routine about how it's okay for them to park there. He then does nothing.

3. One day, you see a lone cop in a marked police car heading westbound by your house on a major arterial as you're about to get into your car. You believe the officer recognizes you because you see the brake lights on the police car suddenly come on as the police car goes by.

You then drive westbound on the same arterial and you see the same police car about a half mile ahead of you. There are only two cars on the road. Yours and the police car. You then see the police car do a sudden (illegal?) u-turn so the police car is now coming back toward you but in the eastbound lane while you are continuing westbound.

You see the cop intently looking at you as he slowly passes by your car. You then see the police car do another (illegal?) u-turn and start tailgating you as you drive down the street.

You believe the cop is trying to think of a reason to pull you over, and is trying to make you nervous by tailgating you so closely so you'll make some driving mistake.

You intentionally make sure your speed is below the speed limit and you intentionally make sure you make no "suspicious movements" in your car such as scratching your ear or changing radio stations. You just sit statue-like and drive with both hands on the wheel, not wanting to give him any excuse to pull you over.

You then see his flashing lights come on as he pulls you over. When he comes to the window of your car, you have trouble seeing him because he is intentionally shining a very bright light directly into your eyes that hurts your eyes and which you can't look into. You are forced to turn away. But, before you turn away, you note that he has no badge and no name tag on his uniform.

You ask the cop why he pulled you over and he says you were "impeding" because you weren't going the speed limit. He demands and then checks your papers and then mumbles something out of the blue about a "conspiracy." He doesn't give you a citation. You do get his name and badge number after asking for them several times and after he mumbles them over his shoulder as he walks away.

4. A high ranking cop in your city--who refuses to live in your city--writes a column for a local newspaper. You write a column with a different perspective. On the very morning when your column appears, you look out your window and there are two marked police cars parked at the curb directly in front of your house. That has never happened before.

There is a lone cop in each car. A half hour passes and you observe that the cops remain in their respective cars and just seem to be whiling away the time. You can see that the cops aren't really doing anything.

They both look relaxed and are slightly slumped down in their seats and may be reading books or newspapers. It looks like they're on a long and relaxing coffee break. You ask one of the cops what they're doing, and he laughs at you and won't answer. You call the City Manager. A short time later the cop cars leave.

5. You call the police to report a loud and boisterous drinking party on your street in a house that some of your neighbors suspect is an illegal alien drop house because of the constant turnover of men coming and going.

The party goers are throwing beer cans into the street from the house and are running up and down the street screaming. After your report, you see the police respond and say a few words to the party goers and then leave. The party then continues as though the cops had never been there. You report it again. No cops respond. You can't sleep. Your kids can't sleep.

Finally, in the early morning hours, the noise stops because the party is over. The street is littered with beer cans. As you look out your window, you see a marked police car driving slowly down the middle of the street with a cop following the car on foot throwing empty beer cans into the trunk. You wonder why the cops didn't do anything. Was it because the house was full of suspected illegal aliens?

6. Your home backs up to an alley. All day and all night you hear the sounds of vendors with pushcarts and roach coaches in the alley. You report it to the police, but they always clear the calls by saying they were unable to locate the vendors. You then get so pissed off that you run for and win election in your city.

7. One of your kids is attacked by a gang while he is walking home from school. The gang uses racial epithets. Your kid shows up at your house bleeding. An ambulance is called. Your kid reports the gang tried to shoot him, but the gun misfired so they hit him with rocks and sticks and whatever else they could find.

When the police write out the report, they "forget" to put in the part about racial epithets and other important things and make it sound like no big deal. This is the same location where there have been gang shootings and killings. It is a big deal.

8. You know that most of the gang members in your city are Latino. This is just a matter of fact. When citizens complain about the gangs, the police department prepares a report on the situation. You read the report.

The only race/ethnicity identification that appears in the report is "white," and the report states that there are no white gangs in the city but there may be white gang members living there but that they are not a problem in the city.

So, you wonder why if white gangs aren't a problem why they are mentioned by race/ethnicity and why there isn't a single word or mention in the entire report that indicates the several hundred gang members in the city are Latino?

In fact, the words Hispanic, Latino, illegal alien, immigrants, migrants, undocumented persons and similar terms do not appear in the report at all. So absent are these terms that they're obvious by their absence.

9. You have an involvement with the local sanitation district and you know that your city gets paid for recyclables and that this keeps the trash collection fees low for residents. As a result, your city has an ordinance that prohibits trash picking.

You see trash pickers, and you report them. Cops show up right where the trash pickers are stealing recyclables. Cops/trash pickers both within plain view of each other. Then, the cops clear the call by reporting back to dispatch that they are unable to locate the trash pickers. This goes on for months, and the sanitation district even does a formal report of the number of calls that are cleared this way.

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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.