Should Police Officers Be Considered "On Duty" When They Take Police Action While Off-Duty? (Detroit: health insurance)

[Jackson Belle Grande]

Mayor Bing wants cops to live in the city. For many years, advocates of residency requirements for police officers rationalized that they would be "force multipliers", in other words, having cops living in your neighborhood would make your neighborhood safer because if something happened, the off-duty officers would take care of business.

Here's how the city treats officers who do just that, and another reason why most of the city, geographically-speaking, is just one big ghetto:

http://www.detroituncovered.com/main_page.html (broken link)

[LEFT]Officer down but where is the police department?
[/LEFT]
What if you were pumping your gas and someone approached you at gun point and attempted to rob you not knowing that you were legally armed with a weapon causing you to engage them in gun fire. You get hit but you fatally wound the perpetrator.



Are you justified? Of course.



Would you be prosecuted, probably not?



You would no doubt be praised and trumpeted to all law abiding citizens who would see you as a patriot.

What if you were a police officer would the situation be the same? Not if you are a Detroit Police Officer.

Moderator cut: quote shortened, copyright protection

[Slappy san]

That's super lame. Hopefully enough public outcry will get and others like him taken care of.

Your last line is totally unnecessary btw. Just couldn't help yourself. smh

[us66]

Having them in the city does little but raise the amount of city income tax collected out of them. I know someone who lived in Morningside who told me once (his was a heavily city worker area) that having police living nearby didn't do much as they were not very social and didn't come outside much.

When there was a city residency requirement they weren't all living there anyway. When my in-laws bought their house near Morang and Harper in the mid-80s, the house came complete with a second phone line being used by a fireman as he was using that address as his official residence, but he really lived in Sterling Heights.

[Retroit]

I don't get it. He was not acting as a police officer, but in self-defense as a human being. Since when does health insurance reject coverage for self-defense, or acting as a police officer when you were supposedly "forbidden" to?

The city's Risk Department should be fired.

I think any city should be able to enact a residency requirement. The state has no right to prevent it in my opinion. That is an over-reach of power.

But I don't see how residency is an issue in this case. It was a matter of him being off duty not of him living outside the city, as I see it. Maybe I'm missing something?

[Jackson Belle Grande]

But I don't see how residency is an issue in this case. It was a matter of him being off duty not of him living outside the city, as I see it. Maybe I'm missing something?[LEFT]
Read more: //www.city-data.com/forum/detro...#ixzz1QNSwWu5J
[/LEFT]

For years the city had a residency requirement and every mayor since would justify it, in part, by saying that police were REQUIRED to act off-duty. In fact, they were REQUIRED to carry their guns off-duty. They still rationalize their desire for a residency requirement by saying it will make the city safer. And in fact, it did, not necessarily because so many off-duty cop are going to be rushing in to save the day, but when you have a lot of cops and their families living in one area, the area IS safer. As far as "self-defense" that guy didn't shoot it out with the carjacker for "self-defense". The vast majority of carjackers aren't going to shoot you just to shoot you. He shot it out with the guy because he wanted to take an armed robber off of the street. And now he's getting screwed for his decision. They abdicate their responsibility to pay officers shot down while taking police action while off-duty by saying: "We don't make them carry their guns off-duty anymore, so it's their own fault when they get shot up trying to take down an armed robber while off-duty". The thing is, this is NOT the first time this has happened.

I stand by my "ghetto" statement. Turning their back on this guy and not paying him for police action taken while off-duty is indicative of the attitude that permeates the city and is just one more reason why Detroit is nothing more than a relatively small entertainment center downtown. It sends the message: "Don't do any more then necessary to collect your pay check. If you're a cop or fireman, don't do your job when you're not on the clock, put the blinders on and let nature take its course. If it's not your job, someone else will do it. The philosophy of "do not do more than what is expected of you" has devolved to "do as little as possible". The Detroit Philosophy in a nutshell.

[Retroit]

As far as "self-defense" that guy didn't shoot it out with the carjacker for "self-defense". The vast majority of carjackers aren't going to shoot you just to shoot you. He shot it out with the guy because he wanted to take an armed robber off of the street.

The article says: "Officer Matthews was off-duty when he was approached by two gunmen attempting to rob him." In this case, every American has a right to defend themselves, and every American as a right to carry a gun to do so (in accordance with state and local restrictions that don't apply in tis case). The officer and the police union should fight this, all the way to the US Supreme Court, if necessary.

The vast majority of carjackers aren't going to shoot you just to shoot you.

I don't care what they are going to do. A victim, especially one at gunpoint, has a right to defend themselves to whatever extent they feel necessary. If a carjacker is unwilling to face that possibility, they should choose another line of work.

I agree with everything else you said, and I appreciate you bringing this to our attention. Throughout its history, the DPD has dabbled in that "do as little as possible" philosophy. Sometimes it has been used in an effort to reduce the crime statistics. If a crime is not responded to, no record is made and that crime "statistically" did not occur. And even when this is not an unwritten policy of the DPD, many officers simply choose to turn the other way because of the lack of support they get from the police hierarchy, the political hierarchy, the general public, and the judicial system. When a video tape of "police brutality" surfaces, they always fail to mention that it occurred at the end of a long struggle during which the "victim" resisted arrest and often endangered the lives of other, including the police officers (who happen to have lives, as well). That part is always carefully edited out.

[Jackson Belle Grande]

I don't care what they are going to do. A victim, especially one at gunpoint, has a right to defend themselves to whatever extent they feel necessary. If a carjacker is unwilling to face that possibility, they should choose another line of work.[LEFT]
[/LEFT]

My point was that he didn't engage these guys because he was in survival mode and was protecting himself. He did it because he's a police officer. He could have just "been a good witness" and likely would not have been shot had he just given up his car and filed an insurance claim. He could have let the guy go to rob someone else and it would have been just another day in the ghetto. Instead, he did what a policeman does and tried to take down the armed robber, as a police officer, got shot for it and now the city won't pay him because he was off-duty and didn't HAVE to take police action since the policy was changed years ago. He should be getting paid his regular paycheck the same as if he was disabled while taking action during his normal shift. He did what he was trained to do despite knowing that doing nothing would have been more likely to end up with him going home with no extra holes in him.

[Dwatted Wabbit]

What a bogus decision. Health insurance is health insurance.

This is what happens when the big shots don't live in the real world, but live as princes and counts, as the British did before we revolted.

[Jackson Belle Grande]

I'm not sure that it's a health insurance issue but rather that he's not being carried as "injured on duty" which would mean he'd be considered "disabled" instead of having to use sick days, since the injury took place as a direct result of taking police action, albeit "off duty".