It took me a long time to get this job, and a long time to be trained in it and prove myself worth being retained. It is a profession we are as a group, deeply committed to. It is not just a job, and frankly, it’s not just a career. There are ways of earning a comprable or even better paying living without the same demands, hazards, scrutiny, and knowing that every so often you are going to get sued no matter what you do. But then if we opted for one of those careers, we wouldn’t be cops.

Not looking for sympathy there. Just trying to explain that there are probably some differences here that I think make the comparison with the employee at the cash register maybe not applicable.

In the case of opinions and differences with the managers that I bring up here, these differences are important only because we want to be doing the best job as cops that we can. We tend to be highly competetive and sometimes a tad perfectionist by nature. There is even a friendly sibling rivalry between squads and precincts over who is catching the most badguys, who is interrupting the most in-progress crimes, who is making the most “on-view” (i.e. proactive, officer initiated, no 911 call or complaint from a citizen involved) arrests.

When there is a policy or practice we feel impedes us from doing the best we could be doing, we tend to complain. It’s not that we don’t like what we do, or don’t like doing it here. But there is a signifigant amount of pride involved in what we do, so the perception that someone or something hinders us from doing it well tends to spark an emotional reaction.

I suspect it is a stronger and sharper reaction than I would have if my day-to-day work resembled a Dilbert cartoon. But would you want it any other way? Would you want us out there if to us this was “just a job”?

See you on the streets.

(Crap, I probably offended someone with the Dilbert reference, didn’t I? Oh, well…)

My comment was something like a spinach-in-the-teeth thing, but there wasn’t a way to do it offline. I have lots of respect for SSC.

I used to use my real name & talk about my employer and co-workers freely; I like them all very much. But I am so unprofessional in so many ways here that I didn’t want to bring shame on any of them. Couldn’t have people thinking that my workplace was full of drunks with spelling disabilities, now could I?

Imagine you’re getting a haircut and the person at the counter is talking to you, while you wait, about how the pay there sucks; and about how the boss won’t hire more people because she’s cheap; and how the boss couldn’t cut hair to save her life.
I’d bury my head in a magazine and pray that she wasn’t the one eventually cutting my hair. And I would also guess that she got fired from her last job for the very same thing (bad boss there, too; and the job before).

Just my opinion. I’m past it now.

Your opinion is just your own opinion. I do not share it or agree with it. Thanks for sharing your opnion about what is professional and unprofessional. When an individual sticks their neck way out there for the community, the rest of us have no place to judge how that person completes their goals in doing so. The rest of us are idiots in comparison. Got me?

Bien: Giving you a perspective from the inside is probably the main contribution I can make here. Part of that inside perspective is the view that most SPD officer’s have of the managment level, those at City Hall, and why. It helps residents understand and identify with the officers working their nighborhood, and a gap in understanding and sense of linking between officers and the nieghborhoods they work is something people often lament. I think it helps when citizens know that when they hear a view expressed from the podium downtown, it is most likely not the view of those officersdirectly serving them everyday, and that those officers might not even agree that those statements reflect the facts. It also provides you a look at the inner workings of and making of the public safety policies of Seattle , which serves to better inform voters looking for ways to fix problems, from a perspective other than the official City Hall approved of information put out by spokespersons and PIO’s.

If the city did not have a history of squashing dissent and reprising aginst officers who speak their mind, I could log on here with my own name. If the city did not have a history of squashing dissent and reprising aginst officers who speak their mind, those in charge might be respected and thought better of by the rest of us.

You may not like the “McCheese” references, but it was honest, a widely held view within the department, and it was pretty common in other circles already. We didn’t invent the term. The same for the “gold badgers”. You may not like it, but the viewpoint is widely held about many of the command staff. Those who it may not apply to know who they are.

I certainly could not share this information, or voice these views, logging in with my own name. And would these opinions and views carry any wieght at all if it was not known that it was from someone in SPD? No, clearly not. That is essential for people reading the opinions and observations expressed to understand. So wether I use SSC, or another name but make it known I am an officer, the end result is the same. And I have a right to express my opinions and observations from within the department.

If I am “playing” to a receptive audience, maybe it is because as an officer working the area I have a front row seat to how the city likes to write off SE Seattle. If our shared frustration with that makes the audience “receptive”, so be it.

And it’s a simple fact that the relationship between the SPD command staff and it’s officers is one fraught with distrust, and the relationship between the department and the previous chief executive of the city was downright caustic. That’s just reality.

You feel it’s unprofessional. Opinion noted.

See you on the streets.

When you post as South Seattle Cop, and give such helpful inside info, weather you want to be or not you ARE in effect In Uniform.
That was a big plus in my eyes when you first started commenting; a big boost for police in general, and the South precinct specifically. It’s a perspective we couldn’t get anywhere else. Very intelligent & articulate posts.
Even after the shocking 19 y/o comment, I could make excuses: It was late, maybe you were tired, maybe a little IPA’d. You’re human, it happens.

But the McCheese stuff, and the anti-downtown, anti-gold badge stuff was without a doubt profoundly unprofessional. You must know this, and were playing into a receptive audience here.
That’s cool, but not in uniform.

That the suspect was shot in the head may only be coincidence — I mean what kind of time did anyone have to make decisions? It has seemed many times that police shoot people dead that haven’t done much, especially compared to what this guy is maybe responsible for, huh? So shooting in the head is probably better than dead.

The police force must be full of all kinds of different sorts of people so maybe there were a few smiling as SSC might have as he rolled by our 19YROLD BLK Resident (just an example) who posted about the Columbia City tree gettin beat… shouldn’t be any surprise there, but yes, disgust, shock, and horror, as with anyone that would walk up to a parked car and shoot a cop or anyone else…

Also, glad this turned out not to be one of our teenagers.

Recently, I’ve heard that there are Seattle police officers in local gangs. SSC, do you know anything about that?

A less lethal place is going to be small in comparison to the abdomen which is why you usually you aim “center mass” the bigger area. If you go to the range see how hard it is to hit what you are aiming at from even ten yards away, If you aim knee and he aims torso he has a better chance of hitting his target, in this case there is NO WAY I would aim for his knee.

Whenever an officer shoots someone, there is an investigation and typically an inquest proceding (a trial-like proceding, with witnesses, in which a jury is asked to determine whether the shooting was justified). There will be similar follow up here, and the question isn’t whether they got the right guy, but whether they were justified in using deadly force. Based on what I’ve heard so far, it does seem like they were justified, but that’s really just a casual observation.

The other issue is why did they shoot someone in the head/abdomen/etc, rather than in a less lethal place. Whenever an officer fires his gun, it’s considered deadly force. If the situation calls for deadly force, they’re not trained to just stun or slow down a suspect.