It's sad that the lowest classes of people think the police are there to mediate domestic disputes and keep them from killing each other, but if you are law-abiding citizen you'll likely NEVER benefit from the police force. On the other hand, you and your family members will probably pay a TON of money in traffic tickets no matter how well you drive, since it's such an easy source of money for insatiable local governments.
I would like to think cops had honor, but those beliefs have been crushed by personal experience. Despite being a conservative driver, I found out that when cops are under pressure to meet the (unofficial) quotas for traffic tickets (like at the end of each fiscal quarter), they have no problem simply
lying and saying they clocked you doing "X" mph--when you didn't. Or if you were speeding, they add a few mph to kick you into a higher fine category. They count on the fact that 99% of people pay the huge fine and won't even try to contest it. NOTE--YOU SHOULD
ALWAYS CONTEST SPEEDING TICKETS--WHETHER YOU WERE SPEEDING OR NOT! Half the time the cop won't show up; and 100% of the time you'll get less of a fine or punishment.
Remember, speed limits are arbitrary: they are often set at the speed where 85% of the people would drive, meaning good drivers can easily exceed them without any safety risk. And much of the time the speed limit is much lower than that, simply to maximize fines or to satisfy locals who like low speed limits so their kids can play in the street. It's a joke that speeding fines are about safety and not revenue--it is the DIFFERENCE in speed between the fastest and slowest cars on the rose that cause safety problems. Why don't we go after those driving FAR TOO SLOW for traffic, instead of just those going over the arbitrary speed limit? One person going too slow on the highway is FAR MORE LIKELY to cause an accident, than everyone going 10 or 15 mph over the speed limit. To impose huge fines on drivers who present no safety risk, to ignore those who REALLY do cause safety concerns, and to make almost everyone in the population a law-breaker, is beyond stupid.
Some people think the police "keep order" and help keep the crime rate down. Not so. After experiencing the devastation of several hurricanes in Florida, I know that all the police can disappear for long periods of time, and the vast majority of people wouldn't even notice (unless you live in the crime-ridden inner city, where lack of police is a great excuse to vandalize and riot even more). Normal people don't refrain from crime, or drive slower or better, because there are cops around.
I'm sure there have been cases of cops being nice to citizens, but I've lived 50 years and not once has a police officer protected me, or helped me, or bothered investigating when I was a victim of crime (a car stolen, houses broken into, etc.)--let alone arrested any of the perpetrators. Even when I asked, the cops couldn't even bother to give me a ride home when I was 23 and alone (spouse stationed overseas) and my car got stolen--even though at least 20 men lounged around the police station chatting with each other.
In another eye-opening incident, thank heavens I was driving when my elderly father's car battery died in horrendous traffic, coming from the Boston funeral of his beloved sister on a Friday before a 3-day weekend. I called a mechanic friend who jumped in his car and rushed to bring us a new battery. Even though the car was safely off the road, I had to go to ridiculous lengths to talk the cop into waiting a few minutes before he called a tow truck company that would tow the car to a holding lot. He was so insistent--giving me a 15 minute deadline for my friend to arrive--that I couldn't figure out what was going on. It was only later that I heard about another person who had fallen victim to this scam--the tow truck company charges five times the normal rate, and the storage lot charges ten times the normal rate (and won't answer the phones so the fees rack up). I'm now certain the cop's insistence was related to the kickback he would have gotten. My 85-year old father would have likely been charged more than his yearly Social Security check, just to get his car back.
So why would anyone ever want to be a cop today? This is why: cops are paid VERY, VERY, VERY WELL, and on top of that they have EXTREMELY generous pensions and benefits packages (even better, compensation and benefits do nothing but INCREASE every year, on top of raises related to performance and longevity).
Supposedly we must compensate them so much because it's a "dangerous" job. Trouble is, it isn't very dangerous (and if you factor out the cops killed in car crashes, usually chasing speeders in order to impose big fines, it's one of the safest of all professions). Police and firefighters have a rate of about 16.7 on-the-job deaths annually per 100,000 workers. It's hard to find another field with that LOW a death rate--grounds maintenance workers (the guys with the weedwackers and leaf blowers) are about the same. Construction Laborers have 21.4 deaths per 100,000. Truck drivers have 27.2 deaths per 100,000. Farmers and Ranchers have 37.2 deaths per 100,000. Fishers and related Fishing Workers have 147.2 deaths per 100,000 (
Police & Firefighter work dangerous? Yes. And no. - Richard Rider - Open Salon).
So do all those more dangerous professions get a huge increase in benefits to make up for the danger? Hardly. Yet these people certainly pay through the nose in taxes to support the cops who hide in speed traps and prey on them every time they get on the road.
Want to know the REAL reason cops (and firefighters) are paid so well? Because any local politician who tries to rein in the ever-expanding budgets of the police or fire department will be told in no uncertain terms just why he'd better not say a word other than "approved" when their budget discussions come up. Even the most Libertarian politician will give up fighting for the taxpayer, when he is pulled aside by a cop and told that continued opposition will get him and his family members very expensive speeding tickets
every time they leave the house. Same thing when he is pulled aside by firefighter, who confides that he can expect his house to "accidentally" catch fire some night when his family is sleeping, and that when it happens all the fire trucks will somehow be "unavailable" to respond.
Aside from very high pay and unbelievably high pensions in places like NH and Mass., there are other (unspoken) perks to being a cop: free police car and gas; no speeding or parking tickets no matter how dangerously you drive (even if you cause an accident and hurt someone--ask me about that one!); a "get out of jail free" card for almost any crime; the ability to harass and give out expensive tickets to anyone you want (and they won't dare retaliate), etc.
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