Now where did I put my glock?.....
Check the kitchen cabinet with all the other Tupperware.
-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
Retired Green Beret shoots intruder, gets court martial
- Thread starter nittany03
- Start date
Check the kitchen cabinet with all the other Tupperware.
"You're going to have to kill me, I'm coming in."
Roger that!
Roger that!
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
The story is comical, but this little bit annoys me.
Having the police chase a subject does not "waste state money." Police work set hours and they are salaried. They don't get raises because a fugitive is on the loose. In other words, the police get paid the same regardless of whether or not they have to go after a fugitive, which means it costs the taxpayer the same amount of money to have them around. If they're not chasing bad guys, then they're sitting in their cruisers eating donuts. And THAT is a waste of state money.
Birdman
Registered User
Talking about clogging the judicial system, court fees, etc
What is comical is the stupidity of your post. You attitude annoys me.
There are far more open investigations and fugitives then there are cops or normal working hours to investigate them. That is why cops routinely receive overtime pay which is costing the taxpayers money. If you get rid of the stupid cases like this, you get rid of some of the overtime requirements - you save taxpayer money.
If you think cops just sit around wasting time and taxpayer money eating donuts, you are again showing your stupidity. A cop car on the street or a uniformed officer is a presence and a deterrent. He is also in his assigned patrol area in a position to quickly respond to any incident in his area. I don't know how many times I have observed a cop order a meal, take a bite and them have to answer a call. They throw their money on the table, never get to finish what they paid for or get their change, and rush out the door. So what if they latter decide to get a donut during their time between calls.
You also can't just take that cop off the street to chase the fugitives. If you do, you lose your deterrent, presence and response time. Public safety goes down. So you have to hire more cops to keep the public safe and happy - more money being spent by the taxpayer.
The retired SF guy should have used a larger caliber gun and you should STFU.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
Again, judges are salaried, so they're getting paid whether or not the case goes through.
Legal fees are only paid by the defendant. The DA office is paid by the state, and salaried. The money they use to pay court fees has already been collected through taxes. They're not going to raise taxes tomorrow becuase they have one more case to try.
"Clogging" the courts...how do you know that the court system down there is running at capacity?
@Hal:
Whoa. The donuts thing was just kind of a joke there (the donut part). My father and brother are on the force, so I'm not intending to shit on the job cops do.
My point, which was not a joke, was just that cops get paid the same whether there is a lot of crime or a little crime.
Yes, cops get overtime. The thing is, overtime saves tax payers money. It is cheaper to have one cop get 1.5x his pay working overtime occassionally than it is to have two cops getting the same pay. Benefit also to the officers who might need a little extra cash, so it's win/win. Now, there are the exceptional "workaholic" cops who make over double their salary by working 60+ hours a week and never having a day off, but by and large most members of the force do not double their salary through overtime.
If crime gets so out of hand that people start to get too much overtime, then they'll hire more cops. But in this case, they typically re-structure contracts (if the cops are lucky enough to even get a contract) in such a way that makes the salary extremely low for newbies so that the senior guys making the big bucks have time to retire. By the time the newbies get to that point, the county/state can decide whether it can just freeze hiring or if it needs more newbies.
As far as deterrent...with the exception of NYC, increasing the police force in high crime urban areas has very little correlation with lower crime. Some cops is good, but more cops are not necessarily better.
As far as keeping the public safe: with the exception of traffic violations, a very low percentage of crimes (I forget the number) are actually stopped while in-progress. Most policework involves catching criminals after the act has been committed (or in the case of drugs, getting a tip to a someone who's been dealing for quite some time). This leads into why the argument for the 2nd amendment and private concealed carry for personal protection is so strong.
They also aren't going to take a beat cop off the street tomorrow and assign him detective duty because one more fugitive is on the loose, no matter how much most cops (at least in this area) would value such a promotion.
Now, this doesn't mean that I think that cops are useless. They serve a very important function in our society, and most cops are under-paid for the job that they do. It probably got lost in writing, but I don't think for a second that cops actually just sit in cruisers and eat donuts all day.
The bottom line, though, is that the guy is not costing the taxpayers a dime that they wouldn't already be paying because he used a .22 and failed to kill the assailant. It's like saying you're wasting money because you used the minutes on your pre-paid cell phone.
MPH
Well-Known Member
Read the article!
That "defendant" (I think that's an interesting turn of phrase) was homeless. That means that YOU and I get to pay for it. "If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you."
Furthermore, we don't just "pay" for the justice system in taxes. Next time your family is the victim of a crime, and they don't see speedy justice, you paid the cost.
Your argument is fundamentally wrong on principle.
Theoretically, the 9-1-1 dispatchers get paid the same as well. Why don't you give them a couple prank calls and see how they like that. After all, there's never been a backlog in dispatch when someones life was on the line. It must not cost anything extra. :icon_rage
Wrong. Overtime by definition costs taxpayers more money. More crime also decreases the amount of protection provided to citizens by law enforcement. If an officer is getting paid overtime, that means there is more crime than the department can efficiently handle. Furthermore, it means that your previous post is directly contrary to your most recent comment. Cops cannot both be paid overtime due to extra crime and not be paid extra as a result of increased crime.
Wrong. I agree in principle that it is cheaper to fund 1.5 cops than 2, however the secondary purpose of enforcement is the prevention of future crime. If said citizen "puts down" a criminal, that's one less criminal to deal with next week, maybe that's one less overtime hour they take from our pocket.
See previous points.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
They'd be pissed, but this has nothing to do with "wasting money," and everything to do with making someone go out of their way for absolutely nothing.
You just missed the point entirely. First of all, cops don't get overtime because of "increased crime." They get overtime when the amount of staff that is supposed to be present (which is pre-determined) is lacking. There will always be overtime because people call in sick for various reasons. Second of all, cops like that there is overtime because it allows them to earn a little extra should they need it. Third of all,
. That's all I was saying.
If you had read the rest of my post, you would know that police do not prevent or deter crimes.
In 18 case-studies done in the '90s where police actively and publicly did raids, crime went down in the short term for 16/18 of them. However, once the raids stopped, crime snapped right back to where it was in 14/16 of those studies. So unless you want to hire enough police where they can constantly enforce everything, everywhere 100% of the time, which would cost a ton of money and make innocent people feel like they're being "watched" too much, police are not going to deter crime.
The PD is salaried by our taxes. It doesn't vary with the amount of cases he has (or else every PD would be a multi-millionaire, since they typically have many times the workload of private attorneys).
Oh, and let's take another route: assuming that you're right and somehow our taxes immediately go up with every criminal who jumps bail (even though you aren't), how do you know that killing the guy would not result in the state contacting the homeless guy's long-lost uncle, who now wants to press murder charges on the guy who shot him?
^ Jesus Christ .... where DO we get such men??? :sleep_125
MPH
Well-Known Member
You have stated the following:
- Crime is not correlated to enforcement.
- The expense of maintaining a police force is unrelated to crime.
- There is no backlog in the judicial system.
- Jails and Prisons are not over-crowded.
- There is no added expense for: building and maintaining more jails, fielding extra police to enforce the law, or providing public defenders for criminals who cannot afford attorneys.
All of the above would be reduced if every home intruder, murderer, rapist, etc. got a bullet in the brain.
I have no problem with people who believe that killing criminals should be a last resort. I have no problem with people who believe the death penalty is wrong. I have no problem with people who believe that capturing a criminal so that he can be brought to justice is a good thing.
I do take issue with people who are so willfully ignorant that they believe that prosecution and "lead in the forehead" cost the same thing.
Birdman
Registered User
Blue states? People like that are going to get people killed if we let their stupidity run away with them like that
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
Way to put words in my mouth.
I said that crime is not correlated with the amount of police; I did not say that crime has no correlation to enforcement. If the cops start staking out the local grocery store for people trying to buy underage alcohol or sell weed, people are going to stop doing it there. The problem is that it's not feesible to have a cop outside of every grocery store to prevent this. The decrease in crime in cities is more attributed to the decrease in crack use after the 80s than higher police numbers.
I said that the expense of maintaining a police force is not going to go up because one person skipped bail. If there was a surge of crime in an area, the local government would probably hire more cops. However, first that would be an ill-advised move due to the previous point. Second, if it did work (as is the case in NYC), those cops can't suddenly be laid off because crime goes down. Slight fluctuations in crime aren't going to cause jurisdictions to expand the police force.
I didn't say there was or wasn't a backlog in the judicial system. I actually got into a little trouble myself a few years ago, and I can tell you that my case was handled in less than four months. I can also tell you that I had to go into a city court. The only reason it even took that long is because of bargaining stuff between lawyers, and not because the courts were full. The courts were ready to go within a month. But whether or not there is a backlog depends on the jurisdiction. I only asked how do you know that there is a backlog in the system where this guy ran away?
And your last point: when did this discussion even talk about that? My point is that it's not going to come to extra jails being built and hiring a ton more cops because some guy got away.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/123429.html
This article says pretty much everything I was saying: unless you increase the amount of cops to a level where taxpayers simply would be overburdened, you're not going to decrease crime by adding more cops.
And this one points out that there are a lot more factors than crime rate that affect police hiring:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/weekinreview/26chan.html/partner/rssnyt?_r=2&oref=slogin
All you have to do is google it. There are literally dozens of articles all saying the same thing: more cops != lower crime. But, as I said before, that doesn't mean that cops can be done away with entirely. It is important to have a police force, and it is up to people with doctorate's to stare at data sheets and figure out how large that force has to be.