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Who would have felt comfortable in these circumstances?
A Massachusetts man was driving in the town of Medford last Saturday night. He admits he took a wrong turn and ended up going the wrong way down a traffic circle. The angry man steps out of a truck and approaches him. Michael, seemingly -- and perhaps understandably -- frightened, reverses. The angry man follows him and Michael stops.
The angry man appears to show his badge and identifies himself as a police officer. Some, though, might be troubled by the officer's greeting: "I'll put a hole in your head." Michael is apologetic and explains to the officer -- now identified as Det. Stephen LeBert -- that he is being recorded. LeBert suggests that he will seize the camera.
"I'm a f***ing Medford detective and you went through that f***ing rotary," says LeBert. As Michael insists he didn't see a sign, LeBert demands his license. "You're lucky I'm a cop, otherwise I'd be beating the f***ing piss out of you right now," LeBert adds, shortly after calling the driver an a**hole. LeBert ultimately calls for on-duty cops who at least do a little to calm the situation. However, the fact that Michael posted his video to YouTube has led to an investigation.
Medford Police Chief Leo Sacco told MyFoxBoston: "It's not the proper behavior, but we only know about it when people tell us. And unfortunately, we had to get up this morning and see it on a YouTube video."
In the days before cameras proliferated, you had to rely on witnesses and hearsay. The police were more likely to be believed by those in authority. Cameras have begun to change that -- on both sides.
Sacco told the Medford Transcript: "The video is troubling enough, and it requires investigation just based on what we see here. The driver does not have to file his own complaint. He may, but he does not have to."
[...] Sacco told the Medford Transcript that LeBert was a good policeman. He added, perhaps unfortunately: "If you work hard you do step on people's toes, which generates complaints."
(Score: 3, Informative) by naubol on Saturday August 01 2015, @04:15PM
Rational self-control in the pursuit of externally supplied duties is the foundation for law and order. Police officers should, without exception, have the ability to maintain rigid self control in all situations, even if they are tired, stressed, offended, over-worked, in personal crisis, or their lives are on the line.
This should differentiate them from gangs. I will grant you that it does not always seem to be the case on an individual basis, and, more rarely, on a departmental basis. I would counter that it would be naive to think that gangs have this mission statement, that many police departments do not have this quality in abundance, and that this is not an essential difference between them.
An article about the Sarah Bland situation remonstrated the duty-bound, weapon-wielding agent of the force for failing to defuse the situation, as he should have been trained to do. The policemen was not able to fulfill his duty because he lost control of himself possibly because he was part of a culture which exculpates police officers when they make things personal.
For us to return to a state of faith in the force, we need to see two things: that the police officers demonstrate the capacity to control themselves in difficult situations and, when they fail to do so in spectacular ways as we have lately been made aware, that they are smoothly held accountable by their superiors.
Unfortunately, the subtext of the police chief's comments in the article suggests to me that he does not see this as a fundamental violation of police decorum. In this case, I believe it is our duty as members of the body politic to relieve the police chief of his post.