[dataway]

In my small town I was stopped behind an officer parked in the middle of road handling a small fender bender. I waited till it was cleared up, the involved autos were gone, the officer still parked in the road sorting the paperwork. I waited patiently for him to vacate the scene ... he sees me, walks back, fingerless black gloves and all, leans in the window and says "What's your problem?". I said ... "Just waiting for you to be done, didn't want to squeeze by your patrol car." He replies, "Why aren't you wearing you seat belt." .... here we go, he was correct, I wasn't wearing it ... So he calls in my plate. Three minutes later a senior cops pulls up, that I've known for 20+ years (he heard my name on the radio), calls the young officer back and has a talk with him, comes back and tells me to meet him at the station in five minutes. I show up, walk up to the station with my friend, he grabs some paper work, walks out to my truck ... says "Looks like you got the tail light fixed, good" and tears up the seat belt ticket. Not sure what that was all about, but as we are there the young cop pulls in the lot and yet another officer I've known for decades says to him. "I hear you are harassing citizens" and laughs. Young officer is hanging his head .... small towns, you gotta love them sometimes.

I knew these officers their entire careers, and their fathers, they had been drinking in our bar for decades along with half the police force and the captain ... "back in the day".

Unfortunately things have dramatically changed since. Town has grown, we have cops that didn't grow up here, and aren't related to anyone (maybe a good thing?), and don't know which citizens are a problem in the community and which are not. Tough issue, I'm a big fan of local cops being local people as they usually know how to react to situations based on local knowledge of the parties involved. But ... downside it can lead to nepotism, corruption and often children of officers getting WAY more leeway than the average Joe.