Ask A Cop!!! Post Your Questions Here!

[RonDawg]

Can you settle a debate? In Ohio is it legal for 18+ year old to ride in the bed of a pickup truck as long as they are inside the bed--not sitting on the sides where they will fall out. I can't find this information online.

Have you tried calling your local police department or the Ohio Highway Patrol?

Legal or not, I wouldn't recommend it. Unrestrained, the sides of any pickup truck box will be insufficient to keep you from being ejected in a large enough collision, and even if fully enclosed with a camper shell, any passengers in the back will be thrown about the hard interior or possibly even ejected through one of the windows.

 

[BigJetDriver]

Here are my questions (brace yourself, they're good ones....):

1) What goes on in a cops mind that makes him/her keep beating someone like Rodney King even after he has clearly given up?

2) And on a related question. Do cops brag about this kind of thing in the locker room?

3) It seems to me that if the police have a constitutional monopoly on the use of violence against members of the public that people who enter the force should be screened for their ability to handle this power responsibly. Does this happen? If so, how is the screening done?

R..

RO,

Your questions have already been answered in this thread, and very well, I might add. I'd just like to say that, judging by the tenor of your questions, you must form your opinions of American police officers based on CNN International or some similar news organization with a far left agenda.

From what I've seen of your posts, you normally seem to be able to use critical thinking very well. In the case you are focussing on, however, a lot of things happened that were not reported. All that was shown was that one segment of tape; over, and over, and over again, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Please note that I am not defending the actions, nor will I re-try the case here. I am merely pointing out that there are darn near as many men and women who are police officers in this country as there are citizens in the Nederlands.

By far and away, most are fine folks who try hard to do a tough job, and take care of the citizens, and they do a DAMN FINE JOB OF IT.

 

[KOMPRESSOR]

Can you settle a debate? In Ohio is it legal for 18+ year old to ride in the bed of a pickup truck as long as they are inside the bed--not sitting on the sides where they will fall out. I can't find this information online.
Ber :lilbunny:

Jeeeez! Why do you want to do something like that with someone's kid?!

I can tell you, if you had tried that stunt over here, you'd:

1. Loose your drivers license BIG TIME!
2. Get a grand ticket. We're talking at least 1000-2000 USD.
3. Have you truck confiscated at the risk of having to pay extra registration taxes, since 2-3 seated trucks have less import taxes here. This could mean having to pay 15-40.000 USD before you'd get your truck back... NO I'M NOT KIDDING! Small trucks have green license plates to show they can't have back seats.

Wanna try?!

 

[Knight1989]

So i will toss a question now in the mix; if someone had a new Porsche 997 and decides for some reason to speed about 90 mph over the speed limt on the highway would you get a ticket or hauled off to jail? And you happened to live in FL...

Yes I would arrest you. Many states have it in the law that anything over 20mph above the limit can be considered reckless driving. Even the states that dont have it specificly spelled out in the law that 20 over is reckless, most will allow the officer the discretion to do so. I have arrest a few people in both scenarios and have never had a judge throw it out.

 

[Knight1989]

I have a question about breathalizers. I rarely drink but about twice a year I have an extended lunch with a friend at work. Everything I have read indicates that it takes 1 hour to metabolize 1 drink. So if you have a glass of wine at 11:30am another at noon then stop drinking (glass was empty at 12:30) then have only water until 3:30pm. What will the breathalizer show? What will it show at 4pm?

Its to hard of a question to answer. There are to many factors that go into a persons BAC. How often they drink, wieght, body fat, how much the person ate, what they ate, male or female, etc...

 

[RonDawg]

So i will toss a question now in the mix; if someone had a new Porsche 997 and decides for some reason to speed about 90 mph over the speed limt on the highway would you get a ticket or hauled off to jail?

I'm surprised I overlooked this one...

My answer to this will be: in this country, most high-performance cars are driven by low-performance drivers. Even if I can't catch them, they eventually will end up as road kill.

I just pray that they don't take out any innocent motorists as a result.

 

[KOMPRESSOR]

....there are darn near as many men and women who are police officers in this country as there are citizens in the Nederlands....

Impressive! 16,3 million cops...

 

[RonDawg]

O.k the scenario that happened to me was a couple of years ago at the airport in Seattle.
I was dropping off a friend and I was one lane to the left of the curb.There are four lanes total. There were six cars ahead of me and the traffic was backed up. I was stationary for less than one minute when the traffic cop came up to me and started writing me a ticket for $110. I was shocked. When I asked him why I was being cited he told me that I couldn't park in this lane. I never got out of my truck, it remained in gear the whole time with the engine running. So I questioned him about the other six cars that had been ahead of me, why he didn't write them up.

As soon as I started to question his authority, he looked at me and said "One more word out of you and I'll arrest you." I never called him a name or was derogatory to him, yet he felt that he had the ability to be proactive.

You have to understand in this post 9/11 world, the rules about parking your vehicle at the airport have gotten EXTREMELY strict. I know a few cops who work at the airport, and they are not allowed any discretion here.

I've found SeaTac to be one of the more annoying airports to use, because in typical Seattle fashion, people take up whatever lane they darn well please. Passive-aggressiveness doesn't stop at the end of Highway 518.

Not to say what he did was right, but in 99% of the cases, an officer having to threaten to make an arrest was usually precipated by an attitude given to him by the recipient. Two wrongs don't make a right, but if you don't commit the first wrong, the second usually doesn't show up either.

 

[RonDawg]

Impressive! 16,3 million cops...

Actually, according to the US government, there are only 842,000 of us, with 80% working for municipal police departments and county sheriff's departments. Another 12% worked for state governments (state troopers/highway patrol mostly) with only 6% working for the Federal Government.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos160.htm

 

[BigJetDriver]

Impressive! 16,3 million cops...

While that figure is an exaggeration, it is hard to count them all; federal, state, local, special agency and military.

I don't know how many people there are in your town, but there are, for instance, around 45,000 members of the New York City Police Department alone.

P.S.---I see the figure that Ron is quoting. I will have to do some research on this. Again, it depends on how you define "police".