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First let me commend you for being patient with these scammers and being willing to turn in any professional who did something like this. As an emergency services provider this is part of your job, to serve the public no matter how stupid the interactions might get or how often. I understood that you personally and your crew would not have allowed this to happen on your watch. And it would be the right thing to do no matter what the others might say.

I was directing my judgement at this one officer directly, When we start saying as a society “oh.. he was wrong but only just a little bit wrong, not too serious, he didn’t hurt the guy much... It’s acceptable because he was having a bad day and was frustrated, the guy deserved it because he was a scammer anyways.” And the big one... “It’s acceptable because he’s a cop”. We are then allowing ourselves to be conditioned into slowly accepting more and more of it as “acceptable”. At what point do we finally see it as “too much” when ANY AT ALL is already too much and crossing a line?

There is a line that cannot be crossed no matter what the circumstances happen to be. It is the same with any occupation where human personalities interact. I have been working with the public and a-holes all my life and can’t count how many times I wanted to punch someone because I was “frustrated” with them. But it’s unacceptable in ANY form and ILLEGAL without the justification of self defense. You just can’t be rough with people because you are frustrated or having a bad day.

And I do have some experience with this and do not live a sheltered life. I have been working with the public all my life as a service provider and business owner. I was once homeless for a couple years and ran with these “scammers” for a bit and full well know the game and how they play the system and purposely “test” public servant professionals.

Both my father and my uncle are retired law enforcement. All three of my daughters and one son in law are in health care and have all worked emergency services and in large hospital emergency rooms. Now three of them work in an Alzheimer’s and mental illness center where they have to physically defend themselves in a patient passive manner all day long from residents who try to beat the hell out of them for just doing their job. They actually do get punched all the time and CANNOT physically defend themselves and retaliate.

So I do understand the system, and I do understand how frustrating it can get interacting with society and personalities. But there is a line that cannot be crossed no matter what the situation might be. And never should we start accepting this line to be crossed even “just a little bit” without a serious legitimate just cause. It is a bad road to go down especially from a professional who is trained and paid NOT TO DO THIS.

Public interactions too frustrating for you... get out of it... It’s your job to be patient with it no matter how often or how bad it might get until they actually do break a law. Tell you what... You would seriously want to smack the crap out of half my customers. But I just can’t cross that line under any circumstance without being able to prove self defense.

It is what it is... and it does indeed extremely test my own patience constantly. And public servants are bound by these very same legalities and constraints that everyone else is.

After 25 years I took my first opportunity at an early retirement because I had had enough. My wife does historical displays and presentations mostly for military groups and we had been out at Fort Lewis the entire day that the party for all the people who had retired the year I left was being held. Even though we are not party people, we were heading home early enough that we decided to go ahead and stop by for the festivities and free food at the union hall.

It was good that we did because the mayor and city council and past mayors and other politicians were all there pandering for union support and a lot of my buddies and people that I knew were there also. When it was time for people to get their little retirement statue they were suppose to say a little something. Every one was getting up and thanking the mayor and the city council and the union, and the chiefs, and etc. etc. for their years on the department.

I got up and I said that I wanted to thank my wife for putting up with me for all of those years. And then I started telling the story of one of the old men we responded to who had collapsed in front of a local gas station. I told the people at the gas station that I would be back the next day for his car that he was living in so that it wouldn't be towed. I noticed on his ID that it was his birthday the next day, so my wife and I took him a cake in the hospital. The people at the hospital wanted our phone number.

He was kind of a mess so the hospital kept him for a few days. When it was time for him to go “home” they couldn't find any relatives so they called us and we went and got him and took him out to dinner and were going to take him back to his car. But at dinner we realized that he had some serious cognitive issues and was going to end up back in the same situation very quickly. So we took him home instead and tried to use our connections to get him placed in an old soldiers home where we knew the director.

And this story went on and on. And the ridiculous extent that we went to take care of this guy and fix his messed up car just had everyone laughing uncontrollably. They were pounding on the tables and rolling on the floor, because every time we thought we had everything worked out, something else would happen. My wife took care of him for weeks and he wanted to stay with us instead of going to the old soldiers home. And this wasn't the only time that she stepped up to the plate and took care of people that I met at work. So to hell with thanking the city council, the mayor, the chiefs and the union. I thanked my wife who has the biggest heart of anyone that I know and has changed me so much over the years.

All my friends knew that my story was completely accurate, that's why they thought it was so funny. But for months when we were doing events, politicians would come up to my wife or I and ask if the story was true. It and so many other situations were so ridiculous that they sound like a comedy routine... As do so many other interactions with people like Cecil Leadinghorse and his buddies. When reality is crazier than fantasy you just can't make this stuff up.

I thank you for your perspective, as someone who has been down on their luck, or outgrew being an irresponsible a-hole. There is nothing like real life experience to change your perspective. I agree with you that police officers should not treat people the way that we saw in this video. Actually, behavior along these lines typically has less to do with frustration and is more of a power thing that goes to the heads of some people. I was threatened with arrest for interfering with the police on some occasions when I was critical of the way that they were handling certain situations.

For the most part we get along very well, and the police often would hang out at fire stations during the day. But there is often friction between the police and firefighters because our missions are very different. The police are there largely to establish and maintain order and control not to help people. Firefighters are there to help people or save property. I don't think it is a secret that they are often feared and we are often loved by the public. Maybe you are from a small town or rural location where there is some cross over in roles. Was your dad kind of like Andy Taylor and you were like Opie? I have a great uncle who is a retired police officer and he is and always has been an extraordinary person, but he worked in a suburb outside of Detroit and he would be the first to tell you that things were a lot different there than in Detroit.

One more funny thing about the people we had who hung around the train stations... Our city had a bit of a parking problem downtown. So they came up with the great idea to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for a light rail to take people from a parking garage a mile and a half away to downtown.

So when they finished building this giant boondoggle that has permanently disrupted traffic downtown... almost no one was willing to pay the money for the overpriced parking garage and the fare for the trams. To top it off developers started building more parking downtown further lessening the need for this idiotic project. It was far more convenient to park near the little shop you were going to and then leave. And the transients knew that the drivers of the cars actually parked in the garage were a mile or more away so it was open season. Every time we went responded to a call there was glass from broken car windows all over the place.

The transit authority started dropping the fare to attract more riders, but very few people wanted to put themselves in a situation with all of the aggressive pan handlers that hung around the stations. So they came up with a brilliant plan.

They made the tram completely free and instead of chasing away the panhandlers, derelicts and drug addicts they embraced them and let them ride around on these heated trams all day long. And they counted heads at every stop and called each of them a ride. So their ridership numbers went through the roof making the failure not look like a failure using their statistics. And watching a tram full of warm and comfortable freaky looking people go by every few minutes who would normally be on the streets bothering people … provided good entertainment for the people who actually work and park downtown.

The situation has evolved a little over the years, but I do still warn people not to take their kids on the trams no matter how good the publicity shots look.

See how happy all the young beautiful people look riding the trams. But how come the rest of the street looks like a ghost town in the background? Where did all the garbage and normal inhabitants disappear to? It is because they cleared the street and the sidewalks to take the pictures. It never actually looks like that ever. Not ever! The people you find at that stop typically used to look like zombies from one of those stupid apocalyptic shows or movies. It has improved somewhat over the years as more affluent people have moved in from Seattle to escape the high price of housing there.