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Thanks for the insight Steve.

Unfortunately, much of the public's perception of the police is much like that of anyone that has had a bad experience with a particular breed of dog or a race of people. If one or two Pits or Rotties attack or kill someone the breed should be banned and it is all over the news for days. After 9-11 there was a lot of backlash against Muslims because some ignorant people thought that all Muslims must be in on it. And if a few bad cops violate someone's rights or worse people become wary of the police in general. And when a cop get's away with something that we would not, without having things like this explained the way you have, we all become very suspicious and distrusting. But, this also happens with executives and other people with privileges that the average person does not have. With the police it does not seem to boil down to money, but with many others it does.

Guilty should be guilty no matter how much money one makes or who you know.

srothstein wrote:There are two points you need to consider about the citing of this officer. I am not sure many of you are aware of either one.

The first is that the officer was not breaking the law. He might have been going 100 mph over the posted limit, but it would have been legal. The Transportation Code specifically allows officers to exceed posted limits. Yes, it was intended to allow them to do their job, not horseplay. But the way the law was written, the officer would be found not guilty. It might be possible to make a charge for negligent collision stick, but it is harder than most people realize.

Really? Even when not responding to a call? I certainly could have been wrong all these years, but I thought in order for an officer to break traffic laws like this they must be responding to a call. Since they were not they couldn't also be charged with speeding and or reckless driving? At my company there are positions where your employment is dependent upon a clean record. If one of these folks were to do something like this and receive a ticket they might or might not lose their job. It depends on how clean they were up until this point. I doubt that if they were to lose their job the court would forget the ticket or that the officer would even decide not to write the ticket in the first place. Add it to the pile.

Unfortunately, I'm not so sure that these two officer's shouldn't be required to look for new careers. As those who speed are told, you put others at risk, not just yourself and that is what these two law enforcement officers did. If it were up to me I would have to take their entire service record into account and they would have to explain to me why what they did was wrong and I would have to believe that they sincerely believe what they tell me.

I'm very sorry for the officer that was injured. Collapsed lung, Broken ankles, and pelvis, OUCH!

However, I'm also disgusted that they will not receive citations the same as I and a friend would had this been us. A while back a DPD HOV officer was caught in his personal vehicle alone in the HOV lane by another HOV officer. A television crew happened to be with the officer that day doing a story on HOV lane violators so the whole thing was recorded and went on the news. He received a ticket, but it was later dismissed because of a documentation error on the ticket. On my last speeding ticket, about 10 years ago when I was late for a class, the officer wrote the wrong date. I tried to have it dismissed for that reason and the judge told me that it only had to be within a couple of days. I ended up doing deferred adjudication and it dropped off after six months.

In a weird way I think police are similar to professional athletes or celebrities in that they get special treatment when they get in trouble. At least when it's not real serious trouble. However, in my opinion, if either of these groups of people deserve special treatment it would be the police. The trouble is that their not supposed to get special treatment.