Cops of Lemmy?
I assume so, but obviously I hope not…
Cops of lemmy, what’s it like to arrest/beat up/kill poor people whilst defending the rich?
Oh buddy.
Oh, I know.
my sister dated a cop from a cop family a couple years ago. she said even long after weed had long been legalized in our state he still had a lot of harmful assumptions he’d make about someone if they smoked weed, along the lines of them just stright up being bad and immoral people, comparing them to more serious and/or violent criminals and vaugly dehumanizing them along with everyone else he saw as a law-breaker.
ultimately as far as I heard he didnt let these judgments significantly impact his work though, never heard a word of him doing anything more corrupt than driving a bit wrecklessly when bored on patrol. I mean I’m sure they did have an impact, but I mean to say he didnt do anything cartoonishly evil about it as long as he and my sister stayed dating.
Alternatively, my friend (the biggest stoner I know) married a cop. Our state never officially decriminalized it. His stance has basically been “as long as I don’t see it, we have plausible deniability and I don’t need to do anything about it.”
Before it became decriminalized in MA in a lot of places the worst that would happen is what stoners would call “the bowl tax”.
The cops would smash your glass. Basically to send a message that your being dumb smoking in an openly public space and making them waste their time on you.
I used to work 911/dispatch and nobody gave a shit about weed. It’s still not even broadly legal where I worked.
Current 911 dispatcher here, same kind of experience.
Recreational is not legal in our state. FWIW, I don’t smoke myself.
Seen our officers give plenty of warnings for weed, but really the only time anyone gets cited for it is when the person is already getting taken in on multiple charges and being a massive dick about it so the officers are really throwing the book at them.
I know at least one of the sergeants in my county used to smoke a lot because he went to high school with me. I’ve occasionally seen him enter some colorful notes into calls, like that he gave someone a “warning for the electric lettuce”
I know a handful of my fellow dispatchers smoke, and I’m pretty sure at least one of my supervisors does, and even more of my coworkers admit to smoking in the past (as long as you can pass the drug test to get hired, past drug use is not a disqualifier for our agency, though lying about it could be if something about it comes up on your background check, and unless they have reason to think that you’re under the influence on the job we’re not subject to testing otherwise)
We pretty much all roll our eyes when we get a call where the main complaint is “someone’s smoking marijuana”
We have to enter something about it, we can’t just ignore a 911 call for liability reasons. But we all know it’s a waste of everyone’s time and resources. We don’t really have a specific code to enter it as so unfortunately we usually have to enter it as something like “suspicious activity” which is a fairly high-priority call, but when we can we’ll try to bury it in something trivial like a noise complaint because cops don’t really need to be going out lights & sirens to tell someone to be more discreet with their smoking.
Wow, that would not fly where I worked. We were drug tested and grilled on whether or not we had ever used any drugs in the past, including weed. Your department’s way is definitely better. There’s no reason a dispatcher shouldn’t be able to relax on their own time.
Yeah, overall the policies where I am are pretty damn sensible. Technically we’re not supposed to, but unless you do something stupid like show up to work high, I’d have a hard time thinking of a way you’d get in trouble for it.
Of course if you ended up getting in trouble somehow on your own time, since it’s still illegal here it would probably lead to some sort of disciplinary action, revoked certifications, termination, etc. which I suppose is understandable
It’s always interesting to me how different some of these policies are from one agency to another. I see a lot of dispatchers in other places talking about how intense their background checks were, and they had to do a polygraph test and all of that. My background check process was all pretty out-of-sight/out-of-mind. Filled out some paperwork, I don’t even think they called any of my references (although to be fair, I was able to list a few firefighters and such as references, and got a friend of a friend who works here to vouch for me, which I’m sure helped) no polygraph, did have to go to the county detectives to get fingerprinted during training, but technically I was already hired at that point, and that was about the extent of it.
we can’t just ignore a 911 call for liability reasons
Nah, but cops can ignore someone being actively stabbed in front of them because they want the attacker to tire himself out first.
Also, many districts ignore 911 calls (even ones about violent offenses) all the time with no repercussions.
Many districts, perhaps. But not all districts. Liability is a huge issue in the 911 call taking / dispatch career field. The cops may have immunity, but everyone else doesn’t.
Do you think people call 911 to report someone smoking pot? I doubt that has happened since the 90s.
What happens on the street during police encounters and what people call you about are not the same thing.
Policies vary on this place to place, and of course there’s no accounting for police who don’t bother to follow the policies
But as a current dispatcher.
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Yes, people do call about that. I went into some more detail on that in my other comment.
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Phone calls are only half of what we do, we’re also the ones on the radio with the field units. If they pull a traffic or pedestrian stop, they call it in to us over the radio so we can check their status, send backup, run information for them, etc. because if we don’t know they’re out on, for example, a traffic stop and something happens, we otherwise wouldn’t know about it until it’s too late. They give us a short disposition at the end of the call- if someone was cited, parties advised to separate, they turned the music down, crowd dispersing, subject in custody, etc. We don’t get all the details, we don’t get their full reports or anything, but we have a pretty good general overview of the outcome.
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Paramedic x15 years. I have been called to a poison gas leak because someone’s dog got sprayed with a skunk.
Yes. I don’t think it; I know it. I actually took those calls.
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My dude, cops never gave a damn about pot. It was always a pretextual reason to screw with people.
That’s basically what OP said isn’t it?
You see a white dude smoking a joint so you wink at them and move on.
You see a black dude in a car so you put your hand on your holster, immediately your training tells you that you should sense the smell of weed, you approach aggressively make multiple conflicting demands in rapid succession, draw your weapon etc etc.
Later that day you see a white dude smoking a joint so you wink at them and move on.
It’s like they’re reciting a script when they talk about “your eyes are glassy and red” during DUI stops in bodycam videos on YouTube. Because they are reciting a script.
Kinda like the sheriff that pulled me over for unknown reasons who smelled pot in my car (literally never articulated a reason, though context clues suggest they were investigating a stolen and abandoned vehicle). I was borrowing my dad’s vehicle while mine was in the shop. No pot ever entered that car.
But he definitely smelled it. /s
Son of a cop here: I don’t think moral, normal people police officers care a ton about the small possession charges unless it involves DUI or domestic violence of some sort. Catching truckloads of the stuff driving through the small town was a big deal sometimes. I hope/think that hasn’t changed much despite laws going back and forth. Now, to dickhead power hungry hometown heroes that join the force because they got chubby and became skill-less after highschool football, they probably have never changed their stance and will still find ways to tack on charges of public impairment
I mean, we put people away for years for amounts that are now legal in many states.
I faced a year in jail over .05 grams and a one hitter back in the 1990s. Im white so I was fine but the latino kid who walked past me that day smoking a joint got time.
Yeah, it’s awful. I love THC and criminalization is historically racist suppression. I am not in support of the bad people, just trying to help answer the question! Also important to note that police do not carry out sentences, that’s the court and judges.
I work alongside police occasionally, and they really don’t care about enforcing weed laws at all. The ones I’ve spoken to about it say the only time they charge people for possession is as an add-on charge when they’ve been arrested for something more serious. This is going to vary widely by police department, though
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Never understood why this was so accepted.
Two big reasons. First, maybe they want to get the person off the streets for some reason. Maybe they’re violent. But getting individual charges to stick can be difficult, so they just throw everything they can at the person to hopefully get them for something.
Second, it’s something they can use in plea bargaining. To use the above violent offender example, maybe someone is charged with battery and weed possession. The battery charge is hard to prove, but the weed possession is ironclad. The plea deal removes the (easy to prove) weed charge, but keeps the (hard to prove) battery charge. Now they didn’t need to bother with actually proving it, because the plea has them admitting to it. Without that weed charge, their only bargaining chip would be to reduce the violent charge to something lesser.
Whether or not it’s okay is really up to individual interpretation. But those are at least the two big arguments for why it became common.
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Funny how you thought someone who works in the police force would be on the platform that predominantly hates them.
Sometimes people just make you laugh.
I’m a law enforcement officer. I use marijuana to criminalize otherwise innocent and nonviolent minorities so that I can shoot them without consequences.
Pew Pew!
Nah JK I’m not a piggy.
I’d be very surprised if there were many cops here who would out themselves just to answer your question.
If I were to speculate, however, I imagine that they don’t really care that much. Cops have other things to worry about, too, including a wide range of other drugs they can plant on “troublesome” suspects.
Would they be outting themselves tho, look below in the comments to see what I mean.
You won’t find pigs here willing to out themselves
what
He’s asking how cops feel about rapidly changing drug policy depending on the administration.
Thank you for translating that to English
Impressive translation
American cops
thanks for the explanation.
Cops be railing lines, I doubt they care sbout weed much these days unless its like the other commenter said, an added charge
I’d love to know how cops feel, in weed legal states, having to go from busting weed producers and sellers, to protecting them.
Cops don’t have a duty to protect you. Sorry, but you better build your own safety net, cuz the pigs will do whatever they feel like doing.
I’m one of dem dare peollicy ofifimericers. I think, if it doesn’t have anything to oppressing minorities than I’m not interested, ya see.
Every time you speak it’s like an episode of Columbo
I have my fun.
