Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

Indirectly, I work with local, state, and federal law enforcement.

Today, talked with someone who was wound a bit tighter than need be. Which caused me to ask myself, when did LEO's stop being "peace officers", and become "law enforcement"?

I remember deputies, and cops as a kid, and young adult solving issues without every resorting to arrests, or tickets, or shooting someone.

Did the WORLD change, or did they?

When did they stop referring to people as "the public", and start referring to them as "civilians" as if they were military?

Dunno. Not saying they don't have a hard job, but mentally, do they make it more difficult looking at "civilians" as not part of the SOLUTION?

Just sayin...

Our police departments are rapidly turning into another branch of the armed forces. It's almost like they're preparing for something.

Then:


Now:

The culture changed. And it didn't change for the better.

Personally, I think that the changes were instituted in earnest at the end of the 1st World War, when the communist immigrated over here and infiltrated our school systems.

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It's threads like this that make me wish SgtBill was still around. Who wants to call him?

The ones I keep in my inner circle, they act like peace officers. Half the time they tell miscreants, "D'hell were you thinking dude?!?"

But they're the EXCEPTIONS, not the rule... and most of them are close to retirement now.

Kinda scares me what the upcoming generation of LEO's is gonna be.

It is a very real and serious problem. Even in our small town we've got young cops who want to be judge, jury and executioner, who persecute people they don't like or that give them any backtalk or criticism, and who in at least one case have bragged that THEY decide who stays in business and succeeds in the town. And they think nothing of perjuring themselves to accomplish such things. I fear local law enforcement is fast becoming as corrupt as the feds.

Reverenddel wrote:Did the WORLD change, or did they?

Both...

My thinking is that the expression/description Law Enforcement Officer is completely wrong. They don't enforce the law... only the courts (our peers) can do that. Police officer are really supposed to be an unbiased witness to events, make a determination if there is sufficient evidence of a crime, and detain the accused to an appropriate level (based on the accusation) for the courts to do their job. They are not required by law to protect and serve.

I have several family members and friends who are Police Officers that I can speak to openly too. I have had my uncle, my cousin and one of my friends all tell me that when you don't know who the threat is, you have to posture yourself as if everyone and anyone is a potential threat, just to stay alive. Plus, my friend went as far as to tell me that, when you spend your life in that frame of mind, you start to not trust anyone ever. Even in your private life.

Now, I can't say that is every LEO, but it is a little look behind the curtain for those few people.

Too many kids want to live the video games in real life. Too many soldiers come back from battlefields with all the problems and then became police officers, but part of their mind is still in a battlefield. Too many trigger happy characters, or guys who believe they are semi-gods.
We need SERIOUS psychological exams for all leo's.

When I became a Deputy Sheriff in 1982 we had SERIOUS psychological exams that had to be passed in addition to written and verbal examinations. My oldest son has had the same evaluations in two states so I do not believe that the police have become a dumping ground for mental misfits and would need to see serious studies performed my medical doctors instead of an opinion that is popular with Progressive media types that hype every incident as the police officers fault ala Ferguson.

That being said the people that police get to deal with have become more self centered and less concerned with anyone but themselves. Additionally society has become dependent on the state for their lively hood with nearly 50% receiving their income from the state.

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My father had occasion to engage in idle chit-chat with an off duty Maryland Trooper, a while back. This Trooper was fairly close to retirement; he'd been doing it a while. Apparently, part of his particular job description was breaking in fresh rookies.

He was saying that the first thing that he had to do with each rookie was to get the rookie to unlearn everything that had been programmed into his head in Police Academy.

According to the Maryland Trooper, young rookies are taught that they're job is to keep the citizenry under control; kind of like prison guards keep inmates under control.

Of course, I'm relaying information from a conversation that I did not witness, and while I know my father wouldn't make stuff up to fit a narrative, I have never met the aforementioned Maryland Trooper, so I cannot speak for him.

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