A San Antonio police officer was suspended 30 days without pay late last month after an internal affairs investigation determined he went shopping while on duty and visited his home three separate times while assigned to calls for service, discipline records obtained by KSAT Investigates show.
Legit though, the home stop could be dereliction of duty, but shopping?
That’s actually encouraged in some places, so long as the cop stays in radio contact. It puts officers in contact with people while in uniform, in as close to a zero threat situation as they can be while running around in uniform. Makes businesses feel safe, supposedly deters theft and robbery even when they’re not there because you don’t know when they’ll be back.
Is san Antonio not one of the places that encourages “community” policing?
Edit:
Ignore most of that. I went back to the article because it genuinely confused me. The page had frozen on me the first time, so I didn’t see the rest of it.
It wasn’t just shopping that was the problem. It was when he was doing it, and the fact that he cut off his body cam. Dude was ignoring calls he’d been sent on to do the shit, and saying that he went on the calls, but didn’t need to do anything (and the kind of calls would have needed action that would need reports).
Back to the shopping thing… I can see the PR value of a uniformed cop buying groceries, but what’s the cop supposed to do with what they’ve bought if they can’t go home right away and put them into the freezer?
I would say either restrict it to small things, or allow a drop off (the cop in question was spending much more time than it would take to drop off groceries, even putting stuff away)
Legit though, the home stop could be dereliction of duty, but shopping?
That’s actually encouraged in some places, so long as the cop stays in radio contact. It puts officers in contact with people while in uniform, in as close to a zero threat situation as they can be while running around in uniform. Makes businesses feel safe, supposedly deters theft and robbery even when they’re not there because you don’t know when they’ll be back.
Is san Antonio not one of the places that encourages “community” policing?
Edit: Ignore most of that. I went back to the article because it genuinely confused me. The page had frozen on me the first time, so I didn’t see the rest of it.
It wasn’t just shopping that was the problem. It was when he was doing it, and the fact that he cut off his body cam. Dude was ignoring calls he’d been sent on to do the shit, and saying that he went on the calls, but didn’t need to do anything (and the kind of calls would have needed action that would need reports).
Back to the shopping thing… I can see the PR value of a uniformed cop buying groceries, but what’s the cop supposed to do with what they’ve bought if they can’t go home right away and put them into the freezer?
Just strap them to the body of the next person they shoot and pick them up from the morgue later.
I would say either restrict it to small things, or allow a drop off (the cop in question was spending much more time than it would take to drop off groceries, even putting stuff away)