LEO's under attack

[meweepistola]

Newbie, here! Just want to encourage everyone to give our LEO friends an extra look as we pass by when they have someone pulled over, or are contacting anyone with an issue. With the targeted shootings that are going on, we should do what we can to help insure that these BG's don't do further damage to our 2A rights. Not to mention, the LEO's are our family, friends and neighbors that are there to put themselves in harm's way to protect the one's we love, even though we may not always agree with them. We don't need America going the way of the Mexican border towns, if we can at all help it! BTW, I am not LEO. Just a workin' stiff.

[Hex Tactical]

I am an LEO, and I appreciate the citizen back up, thanks!

[handog]

With all due respect and sympathies due to the recent events. "LEO'S under attack" seems a bit dramatic. I'd say LEOs are heroes for providing for their families like the rest of us. As far as putting their lives in "harms way", they are not in the top ten. How about these unsung heroes as well.


The 10 Deadliest Jobs:

1. Fishers and related fishing workers

2. Logging workers

3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers

4. Refuse and recyclable material collectors

5. Roofers

6. Structural iron and steel workers

7. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers

8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers

9. Electrical power-line installers and repairers

10. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs

[C-dub]

There are a lot of dangerous jobs in the world. Most people go into them knowingly. Some don't.

I can't help it, but whenever I see a lone LEO with someone pulled over keep one eye watching over until I'm out of sight. I don't slow down or anything like that, but I do watch while in sight. And it annoys me to no end when people on the highway will not move over or slow down in the lane next to the shoulder where they are stopped. Of all the other things they must remain vigilant for I'd hope they could at least remain focused on the person they've stopped and not have to worry so much about being run down by someone starring in their own show.

[texanjoker]

I am an LEO, and I appreciate the citizen back up, thanks!

..I have had citizens help me during some take downs... even bought some a beer after words

[gigag04]

With all due respect and sympathies due to the recent events. "LEO'S under attack" seems a bit dramatic. I'd say LEOs are heroes for providing for their families like the rest of us. As far as putting their lives in "harms way", they are not in the top ten. How about these unsung heroes as well.

I know your little experience probably jaded you, but I don't think LEOs being "under attack" is really inappropriate.

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

2011 was awful for us with many ambushes and blind sided, unprovoked attacks

It dipped in 2012 but is on the rise once again this year...

[baldeagle]

I pray for every LEO on this board and for all their brethren. Stay safe and keep your heads on a swivel. Until we know who's killing the DAs in Kaufman County, all bets are off. This could be an isolated situation based on cases in Kaufman. It could be a harbinger of much worse days ahead. I don't want to go to anyone's funeral, so stay sharp and at the ready.

[suthdj]

LEO or not, if somebody is being attacked I would hope we can rise to the moment and do what is right.

[bci21984]

With all due respect and sympathies due to the recent events. "LEO'S under attack" seems a bit dramatic. I'd say LEOs are heroes for providing for their families like the rest of us. As far as putting their lives in "harms way", they are not in the top ten. How about these unsung heroes as well.


The 10 Deadliest Jobs:

1. Fishers and related fishing workers

2. Logging workers

3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers

4. Refuse and recyclable material collectors

5. Roofers

6. Structural iron and steel workers

7. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers

8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers

9. Electrical power-line installers and repairers

10. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs

You ever shot at your trash man for picking up your trash, ever cussed out the airline pilot for flying the plane, or bad mouthed the farmer for growing your produce? Law enforcement is despised by many simply for the uniform they wear and for what it stands for. Many of those despisers have/will/want to harm law enforcement for it also. If you feel so negatively, feel free to suit up and join 'em in an attempt to better the field.

[talltex]

With all due respect and sympathies due to the recent events. "LEO'S under attack" seems a bit dramatic. I'd say LEOs are heroes for providing for their families like the rest of us. As far as putting their lives in "harms way", they are not in the top ten. How about these unsung heroes as well.


The 10 Deadliest Jobs:

1. Fishers and related fishing workers

2. Logging workers

3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers

4. Refuse and recyclable material collectors

5. Roofers

6. Structural iron and steel workers

7. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers

8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers

9. Electrical power-line installers and repairers

10. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs

You ever shot at your trash man for picking up your trash, ever cussed out the airline pilot for flying the plane, or bad mouthed the farmer for growing your produce? Law enforcement is despised by many simply for the uniform they wear and for what it stands for. Many of those despisers have/will/want to harm law enforcement for it also. If you feel so negatively, feel free to suit up and join 'em in an attempt to better the field.

Hold on...you're painting with a mighty broad brush...you're kinda throwing Handog in with "those who despise" and "want to harm LEOs" without any evidence. He prefaced his statement "with all due respect and sympathies" and said he thought the "LEOs under attack" was overly dramatic...that's not NEGATIVE about LEO's, that's just a statistical observation...and certainly not a valid reason to suggest he "suit up and join'em".

[TexasGal]

At our house, some of our favorite shows are "Cops" and "Alaskan State Troopers". If those shows are any indication of the unpleasant people our law enforcement has to deal with, then let me say thanks! to every officer who still smiles when he or she meets a citizen. There are lots of good people (this forum is full of 'em), but unfortunately the police meet too many of the other kind. I, too, always move over on the highway to allow LE room at a traffic stop and I keep an eye out that they do not seem to be in any trouble.

[gigag04]

My experience with the phrase "with all due respect" usually means that person feels little is due...

I know handog had a situation that would frustrate most of us here so I can view his comments in that filter.

[The Annoyed Man]

My experience with the phrase "with all due respect" usually means that person feels little is due...

I know handog had a situation that would frustrate most of us here so I can view his comments in that filter.

....which is exactly the kind of judgement most cops are called on to make every single day, and which most of the rest of us aren't. I don't want to beat handog up either, because I have posted in his favor many times about that particular incident......which remains an object lesson to ALL CHL holders of what can happen, even unintentionally, if we are not deliberate about concealment.

There are jobs which, in some purely statistical sense, year in and year out, might carry some higher degree of danger.......meaning more people get killed every year doing that job than any other. But, those dangers are related to machinery, hot metal, slippery surfaces, etc., whereas there are NO other jobs (outside of being an infantryman in a war zone) where the greatest danger, every single day, and every single encounter, is from your fellow human beings. That job description alone is the province of LEOs and nobody else's. Humans are at the top of the food chain, and they are not there because they run faster, have bigger teeth or claws, or more powerful muscles than any other animal. Humans are at the top of the food chain because they are more intelligent and more cunning than any other animals, AND humans are the only animals capable of one other thing: deliberately evil intent.

THAT is what makes LEO work so dangerous. How many fishermen, loggers, or airline pilots have to pull over a carload of people who are manifestly up to no good, and process whatever it is they are up to? At 2:00 a.m.? When your nearest backup is 10 minutes away? Several times a night? EVERY shift? Fishermen get killed by weather and the cold ocean. Loggers get cut down by falling timber and out of control equipment. Airline pilots get taken by defective aircraft and weather. But the dangers they face are either impersonal......they're just in the way at the wrong time....or sometimes their own errors, such as pilot error. Cops are different. Their lethal threats are TRYING to hurt them or kill them.........and that makes all the difference in the world. That's why (A) we hold them so much more accountable for screwing up when they do; and (B) why we owe them an extra measure of respect when they don't.....because they face that danger so that we don't have to.......and that's the difference.

I don't think they get paid enough for the responsibility they are asked to shoulder. But, as I have also posted before, I insist on accountability, because the very fabric of our society depends on every LEO rising above the baser instincts many of us would succumb to when pressed out of our comfort zones. Any cop who pulls that off has my unfiltered respect. Every cop who fails to meet the standard has my unfiltered condemnation, because our culture and social stability depend on respect for authority (not the same thing as "subjugation" to authority). Cops who abuse that respect threaten our social order. Those who uphold it are part of the ties that bind us together, and we're all better for it.

It's really that basic.

[gigag04]

Word ^

I don't know of any king crabbers that were murdered over coffee solely because of their profession.

[VMI77]

With all due respect and sympathies due to the recent events. "LEO'S under attack" seems a bit dramatic. I'd say LEOs are heroes for providing for their families like the rest of us. As far as putting their lives in "harms way", they are not in the top ten. How about these unsung heroes as well.


The 10 Deadliest Jobs:

1. Fishers and related fishing workers

2. Logging workers

3. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers

4. Refuse and recyclable material collectors

5. Roofers

6. Structural iron and steel workers

7. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers

8. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers

9. Electrical power-line installers and repairers

10. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs

You ever shot at your trash man for picking up your trash, ever cussed out the airline pilot for flying the plane, or bad mouthed the farmer for growing your produce? Law enforcement is despised by many simply for the uniform they wear and for what it stands for. Many of those despisers have/will/want to harm law enforcement for it also. If you feel so negatively, feel free to suit up and join 'em in an attempt to better the field.

What? Just how does posting the FACT that LE is usually not in the top ten list of most dangerous jobs constitute feeling negatively about LE?

Furthermore, the trash man has never pulled me over and said I was speeding when I was not, an airline pilot can't arrest me and take me off to jail if I cuss him out for flying a plane, and I haven't seen many articles about farmers knocking on doors or entering yards and shooting the dogs of people who have committed no crime. Furthermore, my contacts with trash men, airline pilots, and farmers is completely voluntary on my part. I don't have to buy an airline ticket, I can take my own trash to the dump, and if I don't like the looks of produce in the store I don't have to buy it. I have to pay the taxes that pay the salaries of police officers, and a police officer has the power to arrest me, ticket me, or even kill me, and if he abuses that power I have little recourse in the first two instances, all after the fact, and none in the last. So comparing a LEO to a trash man or an airline pilot is just absurd.

That said, the vast majority of my contacts with LE, especially here in Texas, have been good, and the officers have been professional (though years ago I did encounter one DPS officer who lied and otherwise conducted himself unprofessionally and I reported the incident to his superiors). Less true in the Northeast. In the last few years, all of my contacts with LE have been good, and in most cases, the officers have been very generous regarding traffic infractions of which I was admittedly guilty.