LE/Ten Ocho - Ask Him Anything

[ten ocho recon scout]

Fwiw, my agency is very heavy handed on discipline. I could bore everyone with stories of write ups, days off, and getting fired and what it was for but it would take too long. But one of the things its done, along with the model theyve been using for new hires, is that really there arent many guys i can look at and figure theyd ever really do anything shady. I could be totally wrong (and to be fair, as far as anyone reading this knows, im a dirty cop). But i think thats why im a bit naive when i hear people accuse the police of wrongdoing, and equally as suprised when i hear about cops actually doing bad shit. As many nerds as weve hired (and work for), the one thing i can say is that no one really does anything stupid.

Im sure theres a few guys at work who cheat on the wife...2 of them got time off for it (yes, im serious, and it wssnt on duty). So that kind of enviornment (with cameras and gps) pretty much keeps everyone in check.

[arch stanton]

As with most dangerous jobs, the thing I'm most concerned about encountering with cops is stupidity. I honestly can't see that the number of truly qualified applicants is anywhere near the number of slots allotted for cops around the country. Simple math dictates that there's a decent percentage of incompetents with a badge and a sidearm. An unprepared or untrained cop will struggle to handle situations with both good guys and bad guys and everything in between. This has to be a pretty big concern for the other members of the force as well.

[Adam]

Does your department allow the Asian officers to operate a vehicle?

[Spirit]

Does your department allow the Asian officers to operate a vehicle?

 

 

[mp170.6]

This is interesting.  In my Orange County city, they were trying to hire more cops recently.  The police chief claimed that out of 100+ finalists, every single one of them failed to pass the entry exams.  I'm not sure if he meant psych / polygraph evaluations or what. 

 

My first thought was that the tests or passing criteria were unreasonable / defective.  On the other hand, the cynical side of me wonders if everything was rigged, because, among other things, there's a huge problem with nepotism in the department.  It seems like everybody's wife, husband, father, mother, brother, etc, worked for the city long before they got hired, so then you wonder how they just "coincidentally" passed all the tests, yet nobody else can.

 

That nepotism seems to breed the police code of silence.  I'm paraphrasing an example offered by my cousin because I don't remember specifics.

 

Cop A = 48 year old sergeant

Cop B = 25 year old rookie

 

The rookie does something bad and Cop A is supposed to report it.  Twenty year earlier when Cop A was a rookie, Cop B's father was his training officer and bailed him out of a jam.  In addition, Cop A's son is good friends with Cop B because they were police cadets together.

 

In the end, nothing gets reported because personal loyalty and "returning the favor" is more important.  Does this sound familiar Ten Ocho?

[ten ocho recon scout]

As with most dangerous jobs, the thing I'm most concerned about encountering with cops is stupidity. I honestly can't see that the number of truly qualified applicants is anywhere near the number of slots allotted for cops around the country. Simple math dictates that there's a decent percentage of incompetents with a badge and a sidearm. An unprepared or untrained cop will struggle to handle situations with both good guys and bad guys and everything in between. This has to be a pretty big concern for the other members of the force as well.

very much so.

More directly, like i was alluding to, someone who might make a good office manager (administrator) wont necessarily make a good cop (or bouncer, any other job that requires you to confront people). At the same time, a good street cop might be a really bad supervisor.

IMO, a smaller book smart person who was never in a fight or blue collar is more likely to shoot than vice versa. Regardless of what anyone thinks, your heart rate does jump, and you do come accross people routinely who intimidate you. The less background you have standing up to another guy prior to the job....

But again, the era were in wants the less risky applicant, and theres some wisdom behind it.

[ten ocho recon scout]

Does your department allow the Asian officers to operate a vehicle?

they all work for irvine, so not unless theres a fall down emergency

[ten ocho recon scout]

Not so much where i work mp, but out of curiosity, what city was that?

Weve been struggling to hire for a few reasons, the main one being the former chief lost his mind (literally went senile) and decided nobody was good enough to work for him. I know from the background investigators that he was DQing like 9.5 out of 10 for beyond retarded reasons.

Most agencies, the chiefs interview isnt really an interview. You have to be a total ph*ck up to get DQd. The chiefs interview is basically after the 8 month background process (where you were already interviewed), you meet the boss for 20 minutes or so and he just wants to know who you are and if you work out, he'll see you in 7 months after the academy.

Our chiefs interview was getting to around 2 hours, and he was washing people out because theyd been to a strip club in the last 2 years, or couldnt name all the city council members, or all the captains at the department. People these kids had never met. Total waste of time and money for the city and the applicant.

And fwiw, theres a nepotism claus for my city, nobody can work there if they have a relative (unless its like your uncle works for public works and you get a job at the pd or something).

[ten ocho recon scout]

Ill give you guys something to be pissed at, especially the conservative / small govt crowd.

IMO, the real waste in taxes isnt on the guys like me on the ground (which sounds arrogant), but on the people up above. Police administrators arent cops...and most only were for a relative short time. They are in title, ie "police captain", but they havent solved a crime, stopped a crime, prevented a crime in years. They exist for risk management and things like that. But the city councils want those spots because they assume the more supervised we are, the less likely we are to cost them money in a lawsuit. Meh, maybe. But we have body cameras, car cameras, etc for that these days.

You could eliminate a decent amount of them (depending on the city and how its staffed) save a ton of money, and spend it on the guys on the ground. And i dont mean that as in pay me more, but on hiring more of me. Or civilian jobs to ease my work load (like csi, front desk civilians that can take a cold report for you, etc). Its a huge waste to have 1000 bosses above me, have one of me for every 20,000 residents (thats the break down on any given shift roughly), and further tie me down trying to find fingerprints on a stolen car when more are being stolen while im doing it.

Right now, our organization table is still based on how we were staffed in the 80s...the city's population has grown about 100k in the last 20 years (documented citizens...), and yet we have 40 vacancies in patrol currently. Meaning, we have less people in patrol than we did in 1991 (from an article i just read) with over 100k more people in the city.

It would be like going with 2 outfielders, no bullpen, so that you can have three managers.

The sheriffs dept taking over cities makes a lot of sense because you eliminate a lot of those admin spots (they already have a shriff/chief, depty chief, etc). I think in the next 20 years or so the sheriffs will absorb a lot more cities in OC, a la LA county.

[mp170.6]

Not so much where i work mp, but out of curiosity, what city was that?

 

Fullerton.

[mp170.6]

Ill give you guys something to be pissed at, especially the conservative / small govt crowd.

IMO, the real waste in taxes isnt on the guys like me on the ground (which sounds arrogant), but on the people up above. Police administrators arent cops...and most only were for a relative short time. They are in title, ie "police captain", but they havent solved a crime, stopped a crime, prevented a crime in years. They exist for risk management and things like that. But the city councils want those spots because they assume the more supervised we are, the less likely we are to cost them money in a lawsuit. Meh, maybe. But we have body cameras, car cameras, etc for that these days.

You could eliminate a decent amount of them (depending on the city and how its staffed) save a ton of money, and spend it on the guys on the ground. And i dont mean that as in pay me more, but on hiring more of me. Or civilian jobs to ease my work load (like csi, front desk civilians that can take a cold report for you, etc). Its a huge waste to have 1000 bosses above me, have one of me for every 20,000 residents (thats the break down on any given shift roughly), and further tie me down trying to find fingerprints on a stolen car when more are being stolen while im doing it.

 

I agree with you for the most part. 

 

What's really disturbing is the pension spiking that takes place with guys racing to promote to Lieutenant or Captain in their last several years before retirement.  I wish the public had a better idea of what's going on because most would be mad as hell.

 

Not sure which system Ten Ocho pays into but I'm sure it's either CalPERS or very similar to it.  Most public safety employees who've retired in the past couple decades did so under a 3% at age 50 formula.  That's 3% of your final salary multiplied by years of service. 30 years x 3% = 90% of your final salary.  So if your salary is $100,000 you could retire at age 50 and have a $90,000 annual pension for the rest of your life.  I personally think it's obscene, but that's just me.

 

What these clowns do is kiss ass to get promoted late in their careers, so their "final salary" is calculated at $200,000 or more.  Then they walk away with a pension amounting to 90% of that amount.  The push to get promoted sometimes DOUBLES their pension when they only held the Lieutenant/Captain role for maybe a few years total.

[Blarg]

It would be like going with 2 outfielders, no bullpen, so that you can have three managers.

 

 

Hmmm.. The Angels have Scioscia, Roenicke, Black, no left fielder and the bullpen is horseshit. Seems like you nailed the problem the head.

[Blarg]

Probably the most important question is, in the locker room, Paco Rabanne or Old Spice?

[Glen]

This thread is the tits. Seriously. And not the kind of tits that TORS sees all the time.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Glen

[Adam]

Ocho, you ever get the rhetorical question: "Do you know who I am?"

 

Please give us the deets

[Amazing Larry]

And please say it was an awesome B class celeb like James Woods or Michael Rapaport.

[Stradling]

Do cops lock their lockers at work? If so why?

[Blarg]

Whoa, this is tree fall in the forest level of philosophical.

 

More like I don't want my civies pranked and smelling like Paco Rabanne or Old Spice.

[Angel Dog and Beer]

Tweakers are hard core porn addicts. Porn addictd, like any other addiction, lead to the need for more and more hard core "doses".

One thing you can guarantee when you jam a tweak is they will have porn in their backpack (which is weird, because it will be a dvd, but their transient so who knows where they find a player), and i sh*t you not, a lot of gay and shemale porn. If thats your kick, more power to you, but these guys identify as totally straight. Its just that their brain doesnt get the same kick anymore from straight porn.

When they run out of kicks from shemale gangbangs i dont know what the next step would be.

 

TDawg, care to elaborate?

[Angel Dog and Beer]

TORS, how easy is it for a cop or investigator to steal evidence? Say one of them came across a bag of cash, possibly drug money, or even drugs themselves. If they're first on the scene, no ones around, is it easy for someone crooked to keep it?  What's the procedure when you encounter something like that?  Do you hear that happening much?

[ten ocho recon scout]

Fullerton.

gotcha. I dont know anyone over there so im not too familiar with what they have going on. My parents' neighbor's son (ferris bueller almost) left LASD to go to fullerton and didnt make it. My parents said he hot screwed over, ad to be fair it could have honestly been him just not beong competent going from jails to patrol, but i wonder if they have some fuzzy politics going on.

[ten ocho recon scout]

Probably the most important question is, in the locker room, Paco Rabanne or Old Spice?

not near enough of either for a lot of the guys.

Side note. Our city is really cheap...so we cant control the AC at the building. So when they go home for the weekend (they being the city people downtown), our thermostat is where they left theirs...around 85 so they can save energy.

So when the summer hits, and youre in our building on a weekend....

[ten ocho recon scout]

This thread is the tits. Seriously. And not the kind of tits that TORS sees all the time.

oddly enough, most meth addicts get skinny right? Not true a lot of the time. Most of the regulars can eat when they tweak, so a lot of them have guts like regular people.

But the meth still eats the boobs...once youve seen methed out boobs, with abscesses, resting on a gut....

[ten ocho recon scout]

Ocho, you ever get the rhetorical question: "Do you know who I am?"

Please give us the deets

there was actually an angel a few years ago that pulled that noise...wont say who, but he hot put into his place real quick.

The rich people try it though. My area borders a pretty decent area, and a lot of them will try that stuff. I could never work for a nice citt just because of that.

Side note, years ago i used to bartend, and wed get a lot of celebs there. In my experience, rhe big named people were very cool (usually). The nobodies were the oned who thought they were a big deal.

Corey feldman was funny...

[ten ocho recon scout]

Do cops lock their lockers at work? If so why?

sometimes lawyers walk through the locker room

(Sorry cals, that was an old joke)