Music Banter - California Police...Funny

Got this from another forum, but it's great
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Recently, California ran an e-mail forum (a question
and answer exchange) with the topic being "Community
Policing". One of the civilian email participants
posed the following question:

"I would like to know how it is possible for police
officers to continually harass people and get away
with it?"

>From the "other side" (the law enforcement side) a
cool cop with a sense of humor replied:

It is not easy. In California we average one cop for
every 2000 people. About 60% of those cops are on
patrol, where we do most of the harassing.

One-fifth of that 60% are on duty at any moment and
available for harassing people. So, one cop is
responsible for harassing about 10,000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial, business, and
tourist locations that attract people from other
areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single
cop is responsible for harassing 20,000 or more people
a day.

A ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds. This gives a
cop one-second to harass a person, and
three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND then find
a new person to harass. This is not an easy task.
Most cops are not up to it day in and day out. It is
just too tiring.

What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow
down those, which we harass. They are as follows:

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things
that cause us to focus on a person for special
harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a
code phrase we use. Then we come out and give special
harassment.

Another popular one on a weeknight is, "The kids next
door are having a party.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people
who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast
cars, cars blasting music, cars with expired
registration stickers and the like. It is lots of fun
when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more
obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get
to really heap the harassment on when you find they
have drugs in the car, are drunk, or have a warrant.

RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the
sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as
satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the
scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass
them for hours.

CODES: When you can think of nothing else to do, there
are books that give ideas for reasons to harass folks.
They are called "Codes"; Penal, Vehicle, Health and
Safety, Business and Professions... They all spell out
all sorts of things for which you can really mess
with people. After you read the code, you can just
drive around for a while until you find someone
violating one of these listed offenses and harass
them. Just last week I saw a guy smash a car window.
Well, the code says that is not allowed. That meant I
got permission to harass this guy. It is a pretty
cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty
well.

I seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to
harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because the
good citizens who pay the tab like that we keep the
streets safe for them. Next time you are in my town,
give me a single finger wave. That is a signal that
you wish for me to take a little closer look at you,
and maybe I'll find a reason to harass YOU.

Looking forward to meeting you.