Copwatch Invited for Ride-Along - Got Questions for a Keene Police Lt.?

[Beth221]

All "good cops" leaving the force would leave you with a police force that:

• Has no internal resistance to gross human rights violations.
• Confiscates property at whim to fund itself.
• Confiscates firearms at will to consolidate power.
• Imprisons any dissenters, internal or external.

This is not a model prone to its own collapse, it's self-perpetuating.

Working for any tax-funded agency is immoral in my eyes, but "good cops" do the dirty work of preventing, or at least slowing, the expansion of the police state.

[kola]

Explain how they actually do this.

[mackler]

Its like saying you hate all dentists because they all hurt,

Forget the dentists, the real problem is those hygienists!  You ever had a root planing?  Talk about pain!  Yow!

[Beth221]

lol

[Shane Maxfield]

Maxfield is fair-minded. He truly believes that he is the vanguard holding the forces of evil in check to protect the defenseless citizens of his watch. He doesn't seem to be in any hurry to hurt people for the sake of hurting them.

Thank you Caleb.

[Shane Maxfield]

Hello zaphar, I was about to post: "Echo..echo...echo........"

If you wish you can call me at the pd or meet me tonight wherever you choose, however you choose, with whomever you choose to discuss it.  I'm flexible.

-Shane

[kola]

do cops have to take urine or blood test to make sure they are not using drugs or drinking booze on the job?

if not, they should.

Kola

[David]

I will volunteer to go, if no one else is interested. 
I agree with Kat.  It isn't corruption I really expect to see, even on the copwatch struff.  It is the victims of arrest who have done nothing more serious than live their lives in an enjoyable manner, and are arrested for victimless crimes.  I care about people and it saddens me to see them harmed for a 'cure' that is worse than the 'crime'. 

[Shane Maxfield]

Since my effort at detente in offering a "Cop-Ride" to your "Cop Watchers" is being mostly met with [insert less than savory descriptive noun of your choice here], except now perhaps for David, perhaps I should break the ice by answering some of your questions here.  Most of them are pretty reasonable and fair, a few make me uncomfortable and couple are just "gotcha" questions that are probably "unwinnable" for me, and I'm sure I'm in for a drubbing as those answers are dissected and tossed back at me.

There are a lot of them, so I'm going to reply to the questioners separately (I'm not very versed in this forum thing so I can't tack together posts from multiples of y'all).  This will certainly take a while, and since I can't marry myself to this keyboard all night I'll probably continue during Sunday nights shift (provided you all haven't clicked that IGNORE button, which I assume mutes me).

Remember, these are my opinions, NOT the official opinions of KPD.  None of the questions so far request supersecret, proprietary info, so I'm going to be candid (otherwise I'd just ignore the question).  You may think I'm blowing smokerings up your butts at times, but I'm not.

Some of my colleagues think I'm nuts.  Here goes.

[Shane Maxfield]

i think its  great gesture by the cops and a move in the right direction.

like i said, they need to do something to win over  the trust of the commoners.

awesome Ian!

now if you could get them to understand the constitution and stay loyal to their oath.
==============================
a couple questions:

ask them how they feel about the Browns case

ask them if there was a high order to go door to door and take all the peoples weapons would they follow through ( ie Katrina)

ask them how they feel about arresting people for small amounts of weed and if they understand how damaging this is to an individual and what a violation of personal rights it is.

kola

Again, these are my personal opinions:

Re: the Browns, I'm not particularly happy with all the taxes I pay either, but there are other (smarter) ways of going about it.  Good way to get headlines, bad way to stimulate change.  I'm glad no one got killed.

Re: Going door to door seizing weapons.  I would not, and I doubt many others in NH would either.

Re: arresting people for weed.  I think the war on drugs is a clear failure and there needs to be a major overhaul in the drug laws.  Much crime can be traced to some peoples need to "score" illegal drugs.  If the laws were different, probably the addict from MA wouldn't need to try to steal $600 in DVD's from our WalMart to get his next fix.  I don't claim to have the perfect solution, however the way it is no isn't working, in my opinion.  Very often people are arrested already for something else, and then they have drugs on them.  Sometimes people are given breaks, sometimes not.  Many factors involved usually.  At this point, they're illegal and I'm not going to hassle my officers either way for giving a break or not.  Most of us around here are pretty reasonable.

[Shane Maxfield]

He's one who's talked to Russell, Caleb and I quite a bit.

I peeked at his profile. He looks a bit chubby and has yellowish skin. I hope its not jaundice. eek

tactical callout? whats that? like mini swat stuff?

kola

Hahaha!  This actually sent me into a tailspin for about ten minutes until I figured it out.  I was looking in my rearview mirror saying "What the hell...maybe it's the streetlights?"

The info from this site is old.  I retired  from the Marines in 2005 with 20yrs 3mos in the infantry, mostly the Reserves with multiple activations.  I've been with Keene my entire career, it's a great community and the PD is good to work for. 

I've been with KPD for about 16yrs.

[Shane Maxfield]

Replying to kola's next series, again all my personal opinion and experiences...and no bs.


why did you become a cop   -  I wanted to either fly Harriers for the Marines or be a cop.  I didn't have the grades in college to be a pilot, so I went infantry and then cop.  The philosophical "why" is because I wanted to help hold civilization / society together.

were you ever arrested before being a cop ?  if so for what?  -  No, just traffic tickets.

did you ever have a bad experience with a cop before you joined the force?  -  Aside from traffic tickets (and yes I still dread getting pulled over for anything), the one cop experience I remember was a positive one (I was perhaps in 6th grade and thought there was a burglar in the house).

do you drink alcohol? if yes how much and how often  -  Yes.  I don't particularly like the taste, except for mead, so I suppose if I averaged it out over a year it'd look like one or two drinks a month.  Once or twice a year, when I'm among friends and someone else is going to drive, I'll get blotto.  Funny/friendly, not mean, though.

have you ever driven drunk?  -  Yes, I was a senior in high school, coming home from a keg party.  I was so f'd up I drove the 4 miles at about 10mph (being reeeeeealllly careful and aiming for the center of my lane).  I was pretty disgusted with myself and haven't done that since.

have you ever smoked maryjane or done other drugs?  -  No, I think most of my siblings (older) have, but I have not.  Had some opportunities, chose not to.

(maybe you should get him on a lie detector machine!) that would be cool.  -  Been there, still here.  Pretty much straps on, the operator wouldn't like it if I sat on his laptop.

what was your worst experience as a cop..and your best?  -  Worst, hands down:  CPR with a partner on a young boy in cardiac arrest.  We worked and worked, and I'm thinking "where's the ambulance?"  He kept spitting up gobbets of blood, so we had to try to clean him out and continue.  The mother was standing right there and the kid was clearly dead but we kept trying.  After the ambulance got there I wanted to just crawl in a hole.  To add to the experience, it turns out the kid had an aggressive internal cancer of some sort, and the parents chose to do the herb thing, and when that failed they just eased his pain until he died...the mother knew he was beyond help before she even called us several minutes after he stopped breathing.  Cap it off with she wrote a nice Thank You letter to the Editor in our local paper, thanking a whole cast of people involved, including the ambulance folks, but omitted us.  I'll take that one to my grave.     BEST:  CPR, by myself, on a late 40's woman, in front of a local restaurant, while a crowd of diners waiting for their tables stood by and just watched.  She lived.  That's one out of I think five, for me.  Not a great record I guess.

do you really like messing with your siren while going under bridges?  Ummmm, no.  Actually, at the start of our shifts we check the cruiser equipment under the carport at the PD.  I just do a little "bloop" and I know it works.  Some of the younger guys / girls lay on it for two or three seconds, which irritates the crap out of me.  I mean, if the hi-low works, the warble will too for heaven's sake!

if hes white. would you marry a black women?  -  I am white, and I would marry a black woman (or whatever color she happened to be).

how do you feel about homosexuals?  No problem.  I've worked / travelled / socialized with several of both types, with nothing, at all, negative to report.

[Shane Maxfield]

Dude, you rock!!!  that fucking kicks ass!!  WOW!  I am not speechless often!  I cant believe you got invited on a ride along!  that means they are taking notice of the watchers!  ROCK ON   


My question is What made you decided to be a peace keeper?

Again, all my personal views:

Great question.  I agree with much on these forums, though when, in my opinion, they slip over the edge of reality and reasonableness I pull the cord to be let off at the next stop, so to speak.  I see lots of planning and effort resulting in some tactical actions (the level of success of these being debatable), but not a whole lot of strategic thought.  I wanted to open a useful discourse, illuminate some concepts and offer some strategic advice.   Plus, of course, we'd be in a position to observe the happenings of the City, the Police interaction therein etc. etc.  When two sides of any issue refuse to even talk civilly to each other, or we paint each other with broad brush strokes based upon the actions of a few bad apples, not much "advancement" happens.

[highline]

do you really like messing with your siren while going under bridges?  Ummmm, no. 

The good Lieutenant seems like a great guy....  but I must disagree with him on this.  The siren sounds way cool under a bridge!

Who knows, if you ride with him he may just even let you play with the airhorn!      

[Shane Maxfield]

How about "Are you amenable to starting a program where Copwatch participants regularly ride-along with cops, so that people in the community know immediately when cops do the wrong thing and, more importantly, so that so that cops are less likely to do the wrong thing and so that the community sees the cops are willing to work with them in order to provide a safer society?"

I've spent coming up on two days now trying to get ANYONE from CW to ride with me, but apparently everyone thinks it's my natural lust to immediately take them behind Wal Mart and beat the crap out of them with my stick (OK, not everyone, to be fair).  That's no more realistic than CW being able to provide the riders for each cop, 24 / 7 / 365.  

This city is small enough, and there are P-for-plenty of people scrutinizing us (including, for example, the jail intake folks, the public defenders, the local paper etc. ad nauseum), not to mention we have a pretty well-developed (and well-used) internal quality control system (read: discipline), that I think it would be nearly impossible for us to get away with the ole' "take him behind Sears and wail the tar out of 'im" thing.  No one around here thinks it is worth their careers to try that.

I'm all for oversight, and except for when it seems they're trying to be overly intrusive and obnoxious (my opinion, folks!) your CW folks don't really bother my officers or me (at least after the first shock of "what the hell?" the first night!).  Come on out and say hi, not just "Hi, we're with CopWatch and we're filming you, you goon, because we know you want to break that citizen's legs for having a tail light out."  I paraphrase, of course.

The thing that IS truly irritating is the constant drumbeat that if you guys aren't always right there, scrutinizing us on camera, that we're immediately going to do something horrible to a random citizen behind Wal Mart.  Or, if there's only one of you you'd better watch out because you're gonna get beat / sprayed / shot.  Give me a break.

While there have been, recently, some posters who have said "Keene cops really aren't that bad," etc. (isn't that an item on the one hundred and whatever reasons to move to Keene?), and we appreciate those comments, there have recently and in the past, been plenty of amazing stuff said with little retort.  An example being a comment made by a regular about a child and the cops, months ago, which included the word "gangrape"...you reg'lars probably remember it. To my recollection, while there were some "that's tacky" type comments, and he was zapped on his "karma" (oh my!) no one stood up and said that Keene cops aren't like that, that we would never do that.  I find that pathetic.  That's the kind of craziness that drags the rest of the good stuff down.