Professional Courtesy for police officers

Now here's a topic that really seems to torque people off...at least jealous non-police officers and anti-government cop-haters. It's about cops not writing other cops for minor traffic violations.

Now I'll come out and say right now that when I was on the road as an officer, I'd never written a cop a ticket. Even though I've pulled over hundreds of them over the years (we cops drive horribly) I just didn't do it. But in the interest of full disclosure, let me add that I didn't actually give tickets to all of the non-cops that I pulled over, either. Cops have discretion and I practiced it. If I thought that I could get someone into compliance with traffic laws without handing them a ticket, I tried to go that route. Sometimes an explanation of what they did wrong and why it matters got the job done and I was able to send that person on their way with just a warning. I also looked at what the person hasd done. I know that I'm not perfect and I occasionally bend the laws a bit myself, and with that in mind, I typically didn't write people for things that I knew that I did from time to time. I also tried not to give tickets to people who drive for a living unless they really have one coming, because those tickets can affect someone's livelihood and affect them way out of proportion to the actual offense.


That said, when it cams to serious infractions like drunk driving or reckless, all bets were off and no one got a break. Fortunately I've never stopped a brother officer who'd had too much to drink, but I'd decided from the beginning that if and when it ever happened, they'd get the ride to the station just like anyone else. Discretion has it's limits. I also didn't put up with crap from other cops who thought that their badge is a license to speed. If they acted like an ass, I still wouldn't write them but I'd sure get their supervisor on the phone right then and there and I've done it before. Professional courtesy goes both ways.

Now on the other side of the coin, I didn't go out and drive like the world owed me a free pass. I believed that the same rules that apply to everyone else also applied to me, and when I got pulled over (it happened...) I didn't make a big deal of the fact that I was a cop or acted as if I expected to slide. Personally I think that it's disrespectful to drive so badly on someone else's beat that they have to pull me over. So I made an honest effort to drive slow and safe and I tended not to have problems.

Of course there was an incident some time back that I still shake my head over. I was on my way to a doctor's appointment in a nearby town and I went through a 4-way intersection just shy of the doctor's office. Sitting at the corner was a local police car, and I noticed that it turned the corner behind me and was driving just behind my vehicle. I wasn't concerned of course because I was driving the speed limit and had my seat belt on. However, just before getting to the doctor's office, I noticed that he was creeping up on my back bumper and I knew from professional experience that he was checking out my vehicle and probably running my tag. Again, I wasn't concerned and I was even a bit amused when I saw his lights come on. I had no idea what he wanted but if he wanted to talk to me about something, I was more than happy to oblige. I pulled into the next clear parking lot, stopped my vehicle, rolled down my windows, and turned off my engine. When he walked up, my hands were both in plain view on the upper portion of the steering wheel. In short, I stopped for him just like I preferred people to stop for me.

He sure was a young one. He looked like he was about 15 years old, and his duty gear all still had the "not quite broken in yet" shine to it. He asked for my license, registration and insurance card and I handed them all over, also letting him know that I was on the job, mainly as a courtesy to him since I was carrying my sidearm. He told me that he'd stopped me because my registration had expired and I was somewhat surprised and embarrassed as I hadn't realized it. Having recently moved to West Virginia, I hadn't realized that registrations expire on the calendar anniversary of you registering the vehicle. I was used to them expiring on the end of your birth month as they did in the state that I'd moved from. It hadn't dawned on me to check the sticker on the tag and I'd gotten nothing in the mail to suggest that it was renewal time. But sure enough, it had expired five days previously.

I apologized for the lapse on my part and explained how it had happened. He listened and seemed to understand, and then he took my license and other documents back to his car, but only after asking to see my badge and credentials. Now the general practice where professional courtesy comes into play is that when you stop a cop, you check his creds to make sure that he's really a cop and then you give him his stuff back and send him on his way. But I didn't say anything as this kid went back to his car. I'd pegged him for a newbie/rookie and if he wanted to run my name or call his supervisor, I wasn't going to give him a hard time. Like I said, courtesy goes both ways.

A few minutes later, he's back. He explains that my tag was five days expired and hands me a ticket for operating and unregistered vehicle. And not only it is a ticket, it's a mandatory appearance ticket which means that I can't pay it but must show up in court and go before the judge.
I'm stunned at this point. I don't write anybody dead tag tickets--cop or average joe--unless that tag is seriously out of date, and I'm talking at least a month expired. Five days expired is the sort of thing that I just tell someone to take care of and send them on their way. And I wouldn't even think of hitting someone with a mandatory appearance cite for something that minor. I recognize that it's a significant inconvenience for people to go to court either in the evening or during working hours so I don't do that to folks as a rule unless the situation makes it necessary. But junior just hit me with one for next to nothing and did so knowing that I was a cop. I was pretty pissed, but I bit my tongue and didn't argue.

Now I could have gotten in his face about this or told him off as many cops would have, but that's not professional or proper. I took the ticket without a fuss and I just showed up in court a month later, even though it meant a sixty-mile round trip for me. And when I got there, I had to sit in the courtroom with several dozen misdemeanor offenders, including shoplifters and drug users, and wait for my case to be called. And after about an hour, it was called. I simply showed the judge that I'd gotten the vehicle registered and he dismissed the ticket with no fine to me, just as almost always happens with tickets of that nature. Then I walked out.

However, as I was walking back to my vehicle, I saw the police station across the street. So just on a whim, I went inside and asked to speak to the sergeant on duty. He came out and I identified myself as an officer and told him that I wanted to talk to him about one if his rookies. I stressed that this was an informal chat and that I in no way wanted to do anything official or get him in trouble but I explained the situation and asked him if it was policy there to stroke brother officers and to hit them that hard for petty infractions. Well the sergeant told me that it was not policy, and that he would be talking about brotherhood with this new officer, who, as I had suspected, had been on his own less than three weeks. I made sure to point out that the kid had been polite and professional in every way and that I had no complaints about his appearance or demeanor but I thought that a mandatory appearance ticket like that was a bit harsh no matter who it had been handed to.

Well the sergeant was old school like me and he agreed with me and apologized for the inconvenience. He offered me a cup of coffee and we sat around for a while and shot the breeze as it turned out that he'd retired from a department down my way a few years back and we knew several of the same places and people. I think that I spent more time in his office than I did in court. But I left with the impression that a newbie who hadn't quite grasped the concept of discretion (for follow officers or the general public) would be getting a bit of counseling in short order. And I was happy with that. No harm, no foul other than an evening wasted and I'd gotten a few cups of decent coffee out of the deal so it wasn't a total loss. So about a week later, when I got a letter in an envelope bearing the logo of that police department, I was a bit curious as to what it might contain. Imagine my surprise when I found a hand-written letter of apology from that fine young rookie. I hadn't asked for or expected anything like that, and without going into detail about the contents of that private letter, I was pleased to see that the young'un now appeared to understand that he didn't have to hammer everyone with the biggest hammer in his ticket-book tool box just because he could.

So do I support officer discretion when it comes to citing fellow officers? Sure I do, providing that the offense is not a serious one and providing that they are not rude or disrespectful to me. But I also advocate and endorse discretion towards the general public as well with those same caveats so it's not as if I endorse treating fellow officers much differently than I do a polite citizen with a good driving record. Sure, cops will almost always get a break from other cops, but so will many, many "average joe" citizens every day. Discretion's not just a cop thing by any means.