the times they are a changing

[Jackrat]

Back in what I call the good old days when the old MOT gave out traffic tickets an the cops caught crim,s things were diffrent.
At lest I think they were.
Our local mot cop was called Vitali,or that prick,depending on whether he,d booked ya lately.
As I remember we didn,t really hate the guy,I mean we were a bunch of rat bags an every now an then he would catch one of us,
It took a lot more to lose your licence and a couple of guys I know
only got their licence because Vitali draged em, down to the council biulding and made them apply an sit the test.
It was all a big game an the guy knew all of us by name,an knew most of our familys to.
Today there seems to be a real hatred toward the cops,So what happened??.
I have a few ideas but what do you lot reckon.

PS,,This was in the early 70s

[Death 'N' Taxes]

As with a lot govt departments, they consider the best way to measure the performance of a civil servant is by the $$$$ they pull in. Whether it be a IRD debt collector or a cop.

As the pressure comes down from the bosses to the front line, the front line guys have to start pulling out bullsh@t tacticts and exercise less tolerance than they otherwise might, to pull their figures up. All this so they can go to their next review and not get a kick up the butt.

I guess the other thing could be that as the police is becoming less of an attractive career, they are having to drop their recruitment standards. As they do this, they start getting people who, don't want to "go out and make a difference" (as the posters say) but just to have power over people.

I think, from a reputation perspective, the MOT should never have merged with the police. The police have lost a lot of respect since they started handing out traffic tickets, and they need respect to fight the real crimes.

[Big Dog]

It still pisses me of that they can't send a car for a aggravated robbery and they try to get out of prosecuting them even if you detain them. But get drunk in a bar or lanesplit "fagedabowdit".

[Motu]

Yeah,we had one of those back in the 70s too Jack - his name was Manu I think...bike cop.He kept tight tabs on us guys,tough but fair - you didn't talk back and try and weasel your way out of a ticket,if Manu says I caught ya fair and square it was ticket time.If a bike broke down he was there to see if he could help...this guy had our respect! We were in awe of his prowess on the Saint - sitting on the gut stand,if he saw a speeder he would kick start it,then pivot it around on one leg of the stand,bump it off,then gone ,all in one movement,worth watching the bastard catch someone! He told us we should be able to do the Panmure roundabout at 50mph - took us a while to get up to that speed though.

He was killed one night on the Pakuranga Highway...don't remember if he was in a car or on a bike....but he was drunk and took out a tree.Great bloke,we missed him.

I think it was how we were brought up eh - we were taught to respect our elders....and we did.....if they earned it.

[Jackrat]

Yeah,couple of interesting replys there.
I can agree with both other than the dollars thing.
What I mean by that is that if it was mainly about money,they would be rolling in it.
Go to any place with a good view of a main road an it,s bloody madness,A cop who was only after dollars would never be able to keep up with the opertunitys.Take truck drivers,I don,t think Iv,e ever seen one of them traveling at or below their speed limits,yet how often do you see them talking to a cop on the side of the road.A short trip up the southern motorway would provide a cop with a weeks worth of ticket opertunitys.
Anyway please continue

[750Y]

"why do people have a hatred of cops?"...
just personal experiences probably and very dependant upon the environment eg. rich people probably get in trouble with the law less so they have a relatively positive perception of the police whereas poor people are breaking the law more frequently and have a relatively negative perception of the police due to the context of their experiences. When the attitudes are passed on throughout that community through peer groups then the perception is consolidated and perpetuated.
Of course I'm only guessing and also generalising a lot, just thinking statistically. I don't think there will be a specific answer to this question but it's interesting to think about it a little. I believe personally that the cops do 10 times more good than bad but the bad tends to have a weighty impact of more than it's 10% relativity. I hope that kinda made sense. just my 02.
Also I don't mean to polarise things into rich/poor, I could use any number of statistical examples eg moari/pakeha, male/female blablabla... it was moreso the concept that I was trying to communicate, that groups/communities of like individuals have similar experiences and similar attitudes. flame away if that was crap...

[Jackrat]

Yeah,that makes sence,but I guess I was thinking more along the lines of motorists an bikers in perticular,
And yeah It is a hard one,I myself think it has something to do with public perceptions of the cops being more of a force acting on behalf of the Gov,t more than for the protection of ordinary folks.It certainly seems you have a bloody hard time finding a copper if you need one in Waiuku after dark,yet when ever a chase happens in Auckland they are falling all over themselfs to take part,an we,ve seen the end result of that too many times.
Ahhh well at lest the bikes don,t leak oil anymore.

[Death 'N' Taxes]

The police contract to the government for certain services. They bid for money like all govt departments by saying that they will provide x amount of responses, x amount of traffic stops etc.

The police annual report has details of actual vs budget of patrol hours and crap loads of other measures.

Some targets will be easier to meet than others. If they are having a shit year, they will basically say "ok, what of our budget can we achieve" and they'll try and target that (also things that are way behind target). Going on the basis that when they bid for funds the following year they can say they reached some of the targets instead of falling short all of the targets.
It is an outputs rather than outcomes approach. Outputs being the $$$$ and the numbers, outcomes being protection of the public, gaining respect etc. The problem is that the govt can easily measure outputs as they are objective.
Outcomes are more subjective and are very hard to measure. However, if the cops concentrated on outcomes, then perhaps the reputation of the force and their treatment of the public would change for the better.

[bikerboy]

The problem with the process described above is the number of call outs/responses and vehicle stops has nothing to do with what we as the public want/expect from the police.

At least for me, I want safe streets and roads, crimes investigated and solved. Stopping five hundred cars for going 60kph in a two lane separated street is not making my world safer.

I've heard too many stories directly from the "victums" about robberies and accidents not being responded to or investigated because the police are too busy. If that is the case cruising around town to get three contacts an hour is a waste of my absurdly high taxes.

Once the bigger issues are solved then the police can waste resources on minor things like bikers riding "too fast" on the back roads on the weekend, noisiy exhausts, and many other petty things they seem to obsess over. , eh?

[MikeL]

Nowadays respect has to be earned. A generation or two ago, respect for the police was the norm. It was assumed that they were honest, impartial, fair-minded, because there was very little evidence to the contrary. There was an enormous amount of goodwill towards them, because they were perceived to be "us" rather than "them": the enemy was the thief, the burglar, the murderer and the police were our defence against antisocial forces. Over the last generation all this goodwill has been squandered. Why? "Dumbing down" of police recruitment and training have contributed, as has a general deterioration in ethical standards, but in my opinion the major factor has been the application of business paradigms in law enforcement: "quotas" and "targets" and "budgets" are the language of sales and marketing departments. And provided you meet those targets, and the bottom line is satisfactory, you are seen to be doing your job. It doesn't matter whether the product is actually worthwhile or beneficial to society as a whole. You will have a highly-paid marketing executive working closely with an even higher-paid advertising agency to ensure that the right spin is always applied and the public is conned into accepting your message. And of course the ultimate criterion of success is the "efficiency' of the system: i.e. the greatest (visible) effect for the least amount of effort. Hence the zealous pursuit of "victimless" crimes such as possession of marijuana, and the persecution of otherwise responsible road-users whose crime has been to exceed (in most cases without any provable element of dangerous driving) an arbitrary speed limit. And all the while the real victims - the ones whose cars or bikes have been stolen, whose houses have been burgled, who have been mugged or intimidated or defrauded - these people are fobbed off with excuses about "scarce resources". And we accept this sh*t!!!
Gotta stop now. Could go on and on and on... But the merlot is starting to affect me...

[Motu]

Good post Mike - I haven't got the language skills to debate inteligently,but it's the very language being used today that gets me puzzled...''quotas,targets and budgets'',this type of talk has moved into every field - pages of drivel that mean absolutly nothing...ISO documents are full of it.Paper work is generated on a grand scale,a paper trail is formed to cover everyones arse,if you can't pull out a peice of paper to say why you did or did not follow the (written) proceedure everyone else uses you for a scapegoat.I think the Police are involved in this crap up to their eyeballs - and so are the nurses....and teachers I bet.

So Mike,where did it all come from...USA or Europe? didn't come from good old NZ I'm sure.

[MikeL]

Originally posted by Motu
I think the Police are involved in this crap up to their eyeballs - and so are the nurses....and teachers I bet.

So Mike,where did it all come from...USA or Europe? didn't come from good old NZ I'm sure.

You're right, Motu. This crap is everywhere now. It's fully entrenched in the teaching profession. NCEA is all about process, paper trail, accountability - with so much time having to be spent on administration that there's little time left for teaching the subject. More dumbing down.

As for where it came from, I'd look to the U.S.A., U.K. and Australia. Strange how the English-speaking world has got sucked into this trend whereas other systems (continental Europe, Asia) have not gone nearly as far down the same track. It's hard to resist it because you are accused of being against progress, wanting to turn the clock back etc. etc. And the marketing of it has been so successful because the key buzz-words (acccountability, transparency, efficiency, outputs and outcomes) seem to indicate something of positive value. But it's all crap, because it excludes common-sense, flexibility, creativity and ultimately freedom of expression. Too late we will realize what we have done.
Enough. The sun is shining, the sky is blue. It's 10:30 on a Sunday morning. What the hell am I doing sitting in front of a computer? The road beckons...

[Lou Girardin]

It's all to do with 'efficiency' and measurable results. As usual, it was started by the Yanks with their 'time and motion' studies. You'll see it in every facet of their lives, if they can't put a number to it, they don't understand it. Just look at their magazine road tests. Full of 'G' numbers. slalom times, etc. But nothing that really tells you what the car/bike feels like. It's one reason they got their arses kicked in Vietnam, but the Pom's succeeded in Malaya. It's all about attitude and understanding.
As for the MOT days, I remember warning a driver for 140km/h on the Southern M/Way at 3.00AM. (80Km/h limit). Dry, empty road, good car, he wasn't hurting anyone, why book him? I don't think it'd happen now though. And I never felt guilty about writing a ticket, how many of todays cops can say the same?
Lou