Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/22/nice-vs-nightsticks.html
…
5 Likes
Good news.
These are indeed real. I have seen one.
12 Likes
How about none of these being handed out, ever? Sheesh.
54 Likes
When my kid was 5 or 6 he sold a bunch of chocolate bars from a school fundraiser to some cops, and one of them gave him one of these cards. It looks almost exactly like the one pictured. They thought he was cute.
My wife thought it was a big deal, and I didn’t believe it at the time. I guess I should have ebayed it? Not like the kid had any use for it. Although maybe it was late in the year or something?
5 Likes
In a just world any cop handing out or honoring one of these cards would be dismissed immediately for violating their oaths. The existence of these cards is an open admission of corruption.
71 Likes
Same here, at a wedding when one of my Mom’s friends whipped one out. Before that, I was totally ignorant re these cards.
6 Likes
Wait… these are a real thing?
12 Likes
Nonsense. The cards eliminate the time-wasting task of having to contact and cajole for “special treatment” whoever arrested your friend or relative. Keeps cops busy on “more important stuff”.
7 Likes
The cards definitely exist. How effective they are IRL at getting you out of trouble, I don’t know.
6 Likes
Hmm. Let’s see:
Cops involved? check!
Exclusive privilege? check!
Justly arrested let go? check!
An outrage? check!
Therefore… it’s real.
10 Likes
The Widows & Orphans fund will suffer…
5 Likes
“They are treating active members like s–t, and retired members even worse than s–t,” griped an NYPD cop who retired on disability.
I think that s–t stands for “citizens” iirc
32 Likes
The whole idea is anti-democratic, anti-justice and totally perverse. Which means they just had to be real.
11 Likes
The next thing you’re going to be advocating that the justice system treat everyone the same regardless of how well connected they are to the powers that be in the law enforcement community. What kind of leftist commie pinko propaganda are you peddling there?
25 Likes
W&O “fund” is already addressed via classifying cop suicides (“accidentally killed when cleaning gun”) before a cop is convicted of something and lose their pension.
3 Likes
From talking to a cop about those cards…
If someone at a stop hands you one then you can decide if this is a minor infraction or a serious deal. If it is serious either tell the guy to put that back in their pocket and get ready to be arrested, or at best “fine I’ll call your cop friend and he can come tell you what will happen after you get arrested and how to act to make sure you get in the least possible trouble, but my free advice here is to shut up and not say a word until he gets here”
The dividing line between serious and minor depends on the cop, and the era. He use to treat DUI as serious, others would frequently treat it as minor until sometime in the ‘80s where DUI got treated almost universally as serious (if you weren’t around in the ‘80s this might seem shocking, but drunk driving really was treated as a not-so-big deal for a long time)
If you accepted the card and let “the guy” off with a warning you also contacted the officer that gave out the card, and let him know what the offense was, and then he was supposed to go give the former card holder a serious talking to. Giving the card back (to the cop, or to the former Card holder) was optional.
If you decided the offense was too serious for the Card to get anyone out of, but the cop that issued it disagreed you could get into a serious argument, but the arrest (or ticket) was still going to happen, in fact in most cases had alread happened.
In theory the card would only help you in a case where a cop already feels they have discretion to issue a warning, as in a case where they think telling you not to do it again is likely to be as effective as ticketing you. The help there would be extending the cop’s evaluation of your personality from what they just saw you do and how you reacted to them to “some other cop thinks this guy is an ok person”.
In practice I think it probably goes farther. More like “do I think someone would disagree that this is too serious? If so do I want to get in an argument about it and maybe have my locker filled with shaving cream?”.
I sincerely doubt it lets anyone get away with robbery, and maybe not DUI, but it is likely good for speeding. The value for a more serious offense is probably limited to “advice”, and maybe making you a less attractive suspect if they only think you maybe have done something, especially if they have another suspect in mind.
(Is it a corrupt system? Maybe, but definitely less then “get out of jail free card” makes it seem)
15 Likes
How many minorities & people of color get / got this cards?
My guess is not too many…
11 Likes
If being subject to the law is being treated like “s–t” then he’s admitting the rest of are being treated like s–t.
19 Likes
jesus christ.
6 Likes
They’re largely not. There’s so many out there and they’re so easy to come by most officers ignore the regular ones. Many unions have started issuing limited, permenant card to members and family members. With the officers name and badge number on them.
Generally the most they can do for you is get you out of a minor traffic or parking ticket. But that’s a situation where an officer has very broad discression to decide whether to ticket or not and once they start writing a ticket, or call a violation in they can’t (legally) “tear it up”. Citations are numbered and tracked. A missing ticket is a a bad thing for the officer. And any record of the incident on the departments side means there’s a case number and it’s now too late for them so quash it.
Any thing more serious than that and they mostly can’t let it slide. So the card is just to keep them from fucking you over, And so they can notify a police family member “hey I just arrested your kid”. Sort of as an extension of union rules and membership. These really aren’t supposed to handed out the general public. But they are.
Like I said there’s so many of the damn things out there they don’t really do even that anymore. Save the family cards.
But people think they work. And think they can get you out of nearly anything. And your various police fanboys love collecting them up and bragging about having them. I’m surprised anyone is willing to pay for them, as they aren’t hard to come by. But from what I heard these NYPD officers were selling the lifetime family cards that arent supposed to go to anyone outside close family. And there’s been a lot of this lately with NYPD, they were selling those fake coroners’ placards too. So people could pretend to be in an official city vehicle on official police business to avoid tickets.
3 Likes
