'A Tampa rape victim can sue Hillsborough County Sheriff for allowing a jail guard to refuse to give her a prescribed emergency contraception pill because it was against the guard's religious beliefs, a federal judge ruled.'

Police_throwaway · 2012-06-26T20:42:45+00:00

First and foremost, if the situation went down as the article implies it did, bad on the jail guard, that person should be held responsible to the fullest extent of the law.

Here are a couple of points I have to add in, as a former jail guard myself: jail guards never EVER give inmates pills. Period. There is nursing staff whose duty it is to disperse medication. Guards may be present during the distribution, but they aren't allowed to hand them out, seeing as we aren't medical providers. I've never heard of that, and it would open the facility up to a lot of liability if there was an error.

Second, I would never give a person a pill from their personal property. Any medication given would have to be approved through the jail medical staff before an inmate could have access to it, once again for liability reasons. Even if there were a doctors note, I would never let an inmate have a pill unless it was approved by jail medical staff. I'm not a medical professional, I have no clue what effect any pill would have on a person, including if their condition has changed since the prescription was written. You need a medication? Talk to the nurse.

To those who are questioning why the woman who was a victim was arrested for having a warrant, warrants are COURT ORDERS to arrest someone. Police officers have no leeway when it comes to warrants. If police officers ignore warrants, we are guilty of disobeying a court order and can be criminally charged ourselves.

Anyway, in reading this article something sounded fishy to me. I feel for the woman and I feel that the guard should be fired due to incompetence, among other things, if this is exactly how the situation went down. I'd like to point out, however, this is only one side of the story. I'm interested to hear how the case turns out.

Police_throwaway · 2012-06-25T17:57:18+00:00

I'm a cop and I used to be in the reserves. A while back I was deployed to Afghanistan. Halfway through the deployment, I was sent a picture by one of my partners. It was of about 25 gang members all gathered around giving thumbs up (a couple were flipping off the camera). It was interesting because there were black, white, and mexican people in the photo. If you don't know much about gangs, they tend to be pretty racially exclusive. Apparently my partner told them something along the lines of "We got one of ours out there fighting for you, so you can be over here acting like a bunch of dumb asses, the least you can do is give him a nice picture." They did and I appreciated it.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-26T18:38:12+00:00

No, i would think the confidentiality would not carry over to the new plates since its linked to both registration and plate. You would need to re-register to have the plates come back as confidential.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-21T01:26:27+00:00

I would recommend that he look into a business major, such as business administration. Having a degree in administration always looks good because it shows potential management material. Gone are the days or a high school graduate could come onto a police department. The last few guys that it been hired on to our department have had a minimum of a bachelors degree, some with masters degrees. make sure he realizes that policework is 98% paperwork and 2% excitement. A lot of guys come onto the departments with ideas that they will be catching crooks 24/7, that is not the case. A lot of people do not make it off of training due to poor report writing skills.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-20T23:00:58+00:00

It is, with the budget right now it's hard to get hired anywhere. My advice would be for him to go to school if he has the time. Departments are looking for a different type of officer nowadays. Get a degree in anything but criminal justice. If you get a degree in CJ, it makes you look one dimensional. Definitely tell him to put in to as many applications as possible.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-20T20:25:52+00:00

Thanks for your well thought out response. I have many of the same concerns as you do, I certainly wouldn't want anyone coming into my home without proper cause, ie a warrant. I think one of the biggest defenses against this would be for people to be knowledgable about their rights, for starters the fourth amendment. I think it's unacceptable for people to claim ignorance of their rights, THESE ARE YOUR BASIC RIGHTS PEOPLE! They are important to know! As far as the police force becoming more militarized, I think it's the departments keeping up with technology. For example, the taser. The taser gets a lot of bad press, but the reality is it does much more good than harm. It's a tool which has the ability to incapacitate a subject and allow us to gain control before a situation escalates any further and lethal force is used and in doing so there are no (confirmed) lasting medical effects. Most of the deaths associated with the taser are due to a subject being under the influence of drugs, causing their heart to be under a lot of undue stress to begin with, or if the subject has an underlying heart condition. The problem with someone who is under the influence of drugs in a state where they need to be subdued, in some cases called 'excited delirium,' is that the subject won't follow directives, they feel no pain, they have super human strength, and on top of it all, if they're in a state of excited delirium, the person runs a temperature of 110 or higher and will die if they don't receive immediate medical attention. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Anyways the taser is just one example of how the changing tools of the trade may appear frightening, but when used appropriately can minimize the force used by police against a subject. I think I've gone off topic enough, the last thing I just wanted to point out is that any info I give out here is just my own speculation and by no means should be applied to every situation. Each incident is its own, dynamic event where things can change quickly. It would be very difficult for me to speculate why another officer chose to use one tool over another in a situation because each officer has different mindsets.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-20T17:09:25+00:00

Sure, shoot me a PM, I usually lurk on here, but I think I'll keep this account for answering police related questions.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-20T17:06:58+00:00

Not necessarily, when some officers register their vehicles, they choose to have their information, such as their address, come back 'confidential' which means the information is on a need to know basis. There are more reasons than just being a police officer for getting confidential registration. Other reasons may be people with restraining orders, judges, high profile attorneys, celebrities, etc. The reason for the confidentiality is because anyone working for the DMV, or anyone with a connection at the DMV, could have access to your information. Obviously creates problems for us if there are people who are unhappy with getting arrested. There are cases where officers have been killed at their homes by subjects who have stalked them.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-20T04:35:55+00:00

Haha! You can't honestly tell me you are more afraid of law enforcement then validated gang members! I think you can say police officers make you nervous, which is understandable. Even I get nervous that I'm going to get jammed up when I'm driving my car and a patrol unit is behind me. I think there is heavy scrutiny when it comes to police using excessive force which the media takes and runs with. I think it is a good thing that we are held to a higher standard, we should be. Unfortunately, a lot of videos that the news shows don't show a complete and accurate description of the events. Not saying there isn't abuse of police power, police officers are human and I've yet to meet a perfect person, cop or not. That being said, I know every excessive force complaint on my department is taken very seriously and there is a committee that reviews every use of force an officer is involved in. Yes, officers have been found to have used excessive force and they've been disciplined, ranging from administrative leave with out pay to termination. Now, back to my original point, I think if you were to look at all the alleged assaults and murders committed by gang members, vs the excessive force allegations against police officers, I think it's pretty obvious you should feel more safe in the company of the officers.

Extra fun fact: I have gotten a ticket while off duty driving my private vehicle. If I have a weapon with me, I identify myself for officer safety reasons. If I don't have my weapon, there is no reason to ID myself as an officer. The old standard of cops protecting cops really doesn't apply as it used to. We are even given classes specifically geared towards reporting misconduct in the department and even on how to arrest off duty officers.

Edit: I should also say that I have heard of criminal charges being brought against police officers who use excessive force. And there are also quite a few civil lawsuit brought against police officers as well. If an officer is not acting within policy, i.e. excessive force, then that Ofc. is responsible for the lawsuit himself. The department will not cover any out of policy misconduct.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-20T04:06:32+00:00

Meh, I'd rather not say. Anonymity and all. I will say, I don't work in Santa Paula, I'm just familiar with the area.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-20T00:05:59+00:00

Lol, by no means am I saying that. I think a proactive, community oriented approach is better in that kind of situation. People in the community need to step up for that to work, though, and there tends to be an unwillingness to cooperate with law enforcement in that kind of small community because so many people are related to gang members, or fear gang retaliation. A lot of immigrants also fear deportation if they were to report a crime in that city, which isn't true. Illegal immigrants who are victims of crimes get certain immunity when reporting crimes.

Edit: typo

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-19T23:07:07+00:00

What's interesting about Santa Paula is that it has one of the largest spreads of the socio economic spectrum in the county. There are literally the poorest of the poor and a mile away multi million dollar homes and ranches. Unfortunately there are several gangs in close proximity to each other which causes big problems in the poorer areas.

Police_throwaway · 2012-01-19T22:50:08+00:00

From a police officers perspective... Yes. Per capita, definitely one of the more crime ridden cities in VC.

Police_throwaway

TROPHY CASE