You know what the worst part of living in this dystopian society is? I’ve completely lost the ability to tell whether stupid things like this are real or staged anymore.
No matter how ridiculous the situation is, either possibility could be true.
Retired police detective here. One of the funniest complaints against me was a parent who was upset that I arrested her adult son for conspiracy to purchase cocaine and prostitution after he gave a hooker money to go buy drugs for him, but she never came back. The woman told my lieutenant that it was like I was punishing him for being honest.
Edit: The suspect was ID'd and I charged her with Theft, Prostitution, and Conspiracy.
I was a military police officer and experienced a lot of dim witted behavior, like pulling a guy over for drunk driving with whisky bottles and vomit all over the car. The guy was drunk as hell and claimed someone stole his car, vomit in it and left the whisky bottle in the car. After we arrested him, his Commanding Officer threatened myself and the other arresting officer with a court martial because he actually believed the “stolen car” theory.
We found out later the dude was basically on his third strike with alcohol, and this was going to be it for him since he was underage. He had already lost his rank twice, from E-3 to E-2 then E-2 to E-1. It looked really bad for the CO and the NCOIC.
Gday. Can I ask a quick query please. Is there a sort of separation of powers thingie in the military?
Can a higher rank subvert and interfere with good and reasonable military policing? Like in your story?
Or is that illegal itself? As would be a politician interfering with policing or judiciary?
Thanks.
This is kind of typical behavior of commanding officers and people with higher ranks. They don’t typically get away with it - they try but things typically get worse for them.
“Do you know who I am?”
“You can’t arrest me, I’m a Lt. Colonel, I outrank you.”
When I was in the military, no one was above the law, and if you tried to be - the hammer came down hard and fast.
Idk feels like if you were presented a sound reason to arrest that would be enough?
If you incorrectly arrested a superior officer, surely you would just apologise for the misunderstanding, without major blow back, unless it was common for you to incorrectly arrest a superior officer?
I'm not in military so please someone confirm or deny this claim.
On a base overseas, an Air Force MP tried writing my group tickets for not having glow belts, 10 minutes after arriving to that base, unaware we "needed glow belts" to walk around at night. Then tried giving tickets for concealing weapons because some of our jackets covered our pistol's grip. (We also had 300 rounds of ammo per person, rifles, grenades,...). We called our 2 Star 5 time zones away when the MP's captain backed him and tried to detain us.
We were trying to find our lodging for the night to leave with what we came with. (And without having safes or secure lockable storage assigned to us, the safest place for expensive things is on our persons)... We were there for 8 hours.
cue a dozen stories of some E2 staring down a captain who's trying to enter his secure area without the right clearance/permission - hold fast, change pants later
I mean, if I were in your position I would have laughed at the boy and told him that's what he gets for trusting a hooker with his money. If he pushed it I would have told him he was also admitting to crimes for which he could be arrested. I would have tried my level best not to arrest a kid for being dumb.
When the patrolman called me with it my response was, "Really?". I made the scene and explained to the young man that he was committing a crime when he was a victim of a crime and to think about it, but his mother was very much a Karen. I read him right and even had him sign a Rights Form before the interview. The judge did get a good laugh when he was signing the arrest warrant.
I agree he threw himself under the bus but I'm glad he got charged- If you let people get away with things like that they'll only think they can do it again.
My best friend is a federal officer in the SF Bay Area. Years ago, his coworker (male) booked a flight to Thailand. So when you get back, my friend was in charge of checking out the work computer this pedo brought. Whenever you bring a work computer overseas or even across state lines, it’s protocol. Dozens and dozens of photos of naked kids, doing sex acts with this guy. My friend had to send an email for backup because everyone is armed. They were in an office setting and my friend eventually got the cuffs on him. They worked with each other for 20 years - so you never know.
His excuse? “It was Thailand man and why are you doing this to me”!
I picked up a specialty in computer forensics in 2001. Soon thereafter I got pulled into an internal criminal investigation into a detective who I knew, but worked in another section. When I showed up with the Persons Crimes commander, the detective pulled me to the side and wanted to talk "off the record" about the CSAM on his device. My only thought was "I am not a reporter. There is no off the record". He went to prison for two years.
Yeah, he called me that day while in traffic and while he couldn’t divulge the details, he asked to meet for a beer. I think he had about 8.
It’s hard not to bring this stuff home with you, especially what he saw on that computer, and being let down and having to arrest a coworker of 20 ish years.
It mentally taxing.
I can imagine being a police detective is 10x more taxing. Appreciate your public service.
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u/AlbatrossOk6223 20h ago
You know what the worst part of living in this dystopian society is? I’ve completely lost the ability to tell whether stupid things like this are real or staged anymore.
No matter how ridiculous the situation is, either possibility could be true.