Jesse Walker | February 14, 2003
After the laugh he just gave me, I'm ready to pay for the man's coffee myself.
[Via Undernews.]
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maybe one of them wanted to get third degree burns on the, um, lap and then sue a la mcdonalds...
What was left unsaid was, where did this whole show-a-badge-get-free-coffee thing come from anyway? He just said, "Hey, I'm a cop, see?" and they gave him his coffee for free? Was this a common practice there? It sounds like a minor form of bribery/shakedown...
It's common practice for eateries to give cops free food and drink. As an incentive to keep the law close at hand, or as a token of appreciation for the job that they do, I don't have a problem with it. I do have a very big problem when cops use the practice as a pretext for extortion. Thus turning law enforcement into organized crime. There is a distinct difference between "if I don't get my coffee free here, I'll get it somewhere else" and "if you don't pay me off in food and drink, you're likely to get robbed". In this case, it looks to me to be common stupidity, a disease that plagues many (if not all) professions. It was not typical, nor was it egregious enough to cite as an example of a wider problem. Yet problem of police corruption, is too wide spread and troubling for me to find humor in such trivial occurrences.
Cops also got free stuff at the supermarket I used to work for in college. What a crock. I respect cops and the job they do, which is why I think they deserve a very good salary. They do NOT deserve these kinds of kickbacks.
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