Messaging
By Mitch Berg
There is an ad running at my station, from some major police organization, urging people to not escalate issues with the police during routine contacts.
“It’s easier to de-escalate if you don’t escalate” , the add urges.Which is good advice, provided you trust both sides of the episode to be above board and trustworthy.
The ad sticks in my craw, knowing the advice is only as trustworthy as the system it speaks about.
Which, when you remember that police are an arm of government, gets to be a little less sustainable.
Which is why I’m hoping some police department, somewhere, is having a word with this particular wannabe stormtrooper.
Police departments have spent the last couple of years trying to rebuild their public image, after a decade of episodes of police overreach, arrogance and brutality. 
It’s people like this that make it really hard to “back to the blue“ without a big, bold asterisk afterwards.
UPDATE: The officer, Breanna Straus, apparently was suspended.
It wasn’t enough.
September 15th, 2022 at 6:20 am
I won’t defend anything this officer said or did, but I will say this, while on a ride-along with the MPD, responding to a “baby stopped breathing” call with siren wailing and lights flashing, I was stunned by how many cars refused to pull over and get out of the way.
September 15th, 2022 at 7:54 am
Greg;
I see it every day, bro. Just yesterday, between the Highway 10 intersection on Highway 61 into Hastings, before, on and after the bridge, morons weren’t pulling over for a police car, two ambulances and a fire truck responding to an accident.
September 15th, 2022 at 8:21 am
The casual matter of factness is what really bothers me about this and makes me think she shouldn’t be a police officer. She’s not talking about if sirens and lights are on. She’s just talking if she’s just driving.
OTOH, if I do take her advice and I keep moving out of the way of an officer behind me who decides my actions are suspicious enough to initiate a stop, will they accept my statement that I was merely following the advice of Officer TikTok and getting the “f*** out the way”?
September 15th, 2022 at 8:53 am
Officer Straus, sworn in Aug. 9, 2021, is the Next Wave, post Floyd cohort that is attracted to police work. Things won’t get better.
September 15th, 2022 at 9:04 am
Well said on yielding to officers where the bubblegum machine and siren were going. Um, you getting to work, a date, or the health club is more important than the emergency call they’re going to? Really?
I can understand, in that light, some of the emphasis on the officer’s part, but methinks she’d do better to simply note what can often be at stake. There is all too often way too much “click it or ticket” instead of “this can be the difference between you coming home safe at night….or not”.
September 15th, 2022 at 9:27 am
Yeah, moving out of the way when there are sirens is important. But yikes on this person who goes on to say that they can follow us and eventually find (create?) a reason to pull us over.
September 15th, 2022 at 9:42 am
Even though she’s acting like a twit, if she pulled me over for something, I would demand that she frisk me! 😎
September 15th, 2022 at 10:25 am
Not sure how much more I could de-escalate a contact with a cop in which I never say 1 word.
Pig has it exactly right. In the current year, the only people attracted to cop work are low IQ losers and sociopathic robocops. In my many turns around the Sun, no cop, no prosecutor, no judge ever did *anything* good for me or my family, except keep street thugs and petty thieves busy enough I don’t have to deal with them. Now they don’t even do that. Fuck ’em.
September 15th, 2022 at 10:26 am
Hoss, you’d have to fight her girlfriend after that.
September 15th, 2022 at 10:38 am
It just occurred to me.
Given the worthlessness of cops today, and the ridiculously high price of fitting them out and paying them, I guess I’m in the “defund the cops” camp.
September 15th, 2022 at 1:29 pm
I guess I’m in the “defund the cops” camp.
Definitely “defund the pigs”, there are still good cops around but indeed you need a candle to find them.
September 15th, 2022 at 5:54 pm
Police have been enabled by you righties. GET TOUGH ON CRIME – and why not do racial profiling? You created the jack-booted thugs you rail against, and the hypocrisy, as well as the irony, isn’t lost on us.
Yet, the power of the purse, works.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/police-misconduct-insurance-settlements-reform/
Which was the whole point of “defund the police.” A term I never liked as it failed to capture the essence of the change. No one meant eliminate the police, they meant, hit them in the pocket book and you’ll see change. Do so by carving off overtime for “police service officer” hours, give that to social workers equipped (unlike police) to deal with students in crisis.
The funniest part is, while you rail against police state tactics, you support a President (former) who allegedly asked if the National Guard (or police) could just “shoot them in the legs” – when speaking about LAWFUL protesters in Lafayette Square, yet you refuse to hold insurrectionist, UNLAWFUL protesters accountable, despite being “law and order” folks, yeah, right.
Your preferred President steals confidential, secret and top secret documents, fails to adequately secure those national secrets, lies about returning them, may STILL be holding some, in violation of law (they aren’t HIS, he never got that) – but you shouted “Lock her up” about 6 e-mails which were retroactively marked as classified. He tries to intimidate DOJ through veiled threats, which is commonly called obstruction and rightly so. He says folks like you would riot (or more likely engage in violent rebellion) if he is indicted for ACTUALLY breaking the law, and not some BS law, the espionage act. We don’t know what he’s done with the missing files, maybe sold the info to Russia? Anyway, you want to rail against the excesses of the state all while embracing the FAR FAR more virulent and dangerous excesses of Trump.
If it weren’t so sad, it’d be laughable. I KNOW you don’t actually approve of it. You and your readers are better than that, it’s time to stand up against it. I don’t for a moment support what this officer did, not for a second, why are you opposed to using the power of the purse to correct misconduct? More importantly, why do you want to hold the police to account but not hold the former President to account for his misconduct (let alone very likely illegal and highly dangerous misconduct). Do you seriously think it’s ok for a President to declassify (and so make public) national secrets? Talk about jack-booted tactics.
September 15th, 2022 at 8:57 pm
Emery’s father Paddyboi emerges after a long stay in his bunker in fashionable south Bloomington!