The problem I see with this situation is that when someone wearing the law enforcement uniform thumbs his nose in obvious ways at the law, he just insures that the impressionable learn that laws are really only for those too stupid to get away with breaking them. In essence, it makes law enforcement itself harder. Now, I can rally to the support of police under a lot of different scenarios, but when I see them saying "laws are for others", I suddenly come to feel that they are making their own job unnecessarily hard. At that point, I stop feeling so supportive. We need to hire people with integrity for the job of law enforcement. A officer of the law who casually breaks law because, you know, who's gonna STOP me, lacks the BASIC integrity to do his job. I don't care what other qualifications he presents, if he doesn't make it in the integrity area, he doesnt deserve to wear the uniform. (By the way, in one incident, a squad car ran a stop sign in Cooper and hit a pickup truck proceeding in a totally legal way down 36th Ave S. The driver and passenger in the pickup died. The offending officer received no real consequences for ending an innocent human life. This was about integrity for the SYSTEM because the officer had no intent of killing anybody. He was just careless).
By the way, MOST of us don't get paid lunch breaks. The law requires the employer to give an UNPAID lunch break, but where I work, we bring lunch and eat where we work to insure the phones get answered.
And, sorry, but there is nothing "petty" about concern that parked police cars would block medical emergency vehicles. That is just an attempt to dodge the real issues and try to use embarrassment to get people to change their convictions. It is clumsy and ineffective.
Gary Schiff's Friday town hall forum will include the deputy chief. Maybe someone can ask her if the department has a policy on such stuff.
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Jim Mork
Cooper Neighborhood
Longfellow Community
Minneapolis, MN
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