I have limited experience, but it goes something like this. I get pulled over for going 10 mph over the speed limit. The cop then tells me that he clocked me going 14 mph over, but that he'll only report me for going 9 mph over. I guess his thinking goes something like this: "If I tell him that he was going faster than he really was, but that I will let him off for less, then he'll like me because I'm being a nice guy." Really?!? If you wanted to be a nice guy, you would let me off, the way you do when you pull over a girl that you think is cute. And if you wanted to be an honest cop, you would write me a ticket for going 10 mph over. That's what they do in Hungary (I may or may not know from personal experience). They say "Hey, you were going 17 kph over and here's your ticket. You need to pay it by this date." None of the "I could write you up for this and that, and this, etc." that the cops here try to pull to show off their authority. They simply do their job, enforcing the law.
As another examples, take Bill, who ran the Red Rock Relay with us. Bill likes to hunt, and a few years ago, he decided to go hunting on Y Mountain in Provo (which is legal, by the way) and he even had the tag necessary to put on his deer. He was hunting with a muzzle loader (for those of you who don't know, this is one of those pioneer type guns, where you put the black power down the barrel, then stuff the ball down in, and it fires when the little hammer strikes the cap and ignites the black power) and ended up shooting a deer, which he then carried all the way down the mountain to his car, which happened to have a camo paint job. There was a note on the car from the Provo City police saying that it was illegal to be hunting there (which it wasn't). He put the deer into his car and was going to put the tag on the deer, but he didn't have any scissors to cut the hard plastic of the tag. He decided that he would just until he got home, since he was already covered with blood from the deer.
As he was driving home, he got pulled over (since the cops knew he was up there and were waiting for him to come down). Since he was in his hunting gear, the cop asked him if he had any weapons in the car, to which he responded, "Yeah, I have a muzzle loader in the front seat, and it's loaded." Apparently, that statement wasn't taken the way Bill intended it (he was just trying to inform the officer, while the officer took it as a threat). The cop then started yelling at him to get out of the car, at which point his partner got out of the car to give some back up. He said that the muzzle loader was loaded because he couldn't get the cap off, so he took off the hammer, so it wouldn't be able to fire. Then his partner noticed that there was a deer in the back that wasn't tagged. Bill tried to explain his situation, to which he was yelled at and told that they didn't want to hear any more of his excuses.
They told him that anything he said can and would be used against him in a court of law and told him that he was being arrested on site. They put him in the back of the cop car and then proceeded to go through his car. They ended up taking his deer because it wasn't tagged. Someone from the fish and wildlife service came out and Bill tried to explain about the muzzle loader. They didn't believe him and they too tried to get the cap off, to no avail, which eventually led to the cops firing the muzzle loader into someone's front lawn. They called in to dispatch to let them know, in case anyone reported the gun fire in the neighborhood.
In the end, Bill was let go without his deer (which he had the cop measure, having a 22" rack). It didn't really occur to him that he had been arrested since it was an "on-site arrest" and they let him go after, but it still comes up occasionally that he has a criminal record.
All of this reminds me of D&C 121:39: "We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion."
Now, I'm not saying all cops are this way, but it does concern me the amount of unrighteous dominion taken by many cops. Just a thought that I had after hearing Bill's experience during the race.
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