I'm glad to see that there's so many internet experts out there offering up solid advice like this. Warms my heart. (Sarcasm).

sad to say but this has honestly been basically every experience i have ever had with law enforcement

You ask what it is that I expect when I've been victimized...the answer is that I want to know that the people we pay to "serve and protect" us give at least a tiny damn about what has happened to me and are giving a fair shot at getting my stolen property or whatever back to me. I want to think that people we pay to work for us in that manner aren't making their own value judgement about the worth of the wrong that was done to me, and then judging it to be of not enough value to worry about. I want to think that I am getting fair value for the money that I contribute to our police force. And fair value, by my measure, isn't getting a speeding ticket or having my neighbors get speeding tickets. That's a revenue generator, it is not police work.

And let me ask a question of those of you that are not in law enforcement. When are you most likely to see or encounter a police officer? Let me give a small hint....will you be in your car when that happens?

You need to understand LE. So I'm going to explain it to you.

First, most decent people will only deal with LE on traffic because they are generally NOT criminals.

Secondly, officers generally do not set about on their own to work traffic. It comes down from the top. Just like your boss tells to you to do XYZ. If you want to keep your job you'll do it or go stand in the unemployment line.

Thirdly, officers work traffic because traffic collisions occupy so much of their time. If citizens would police themselves then there would be no need for the police to do it.

Finally, patrol officers are generalist. They're expected to do everything. As such, many lack the time, training, expertise, or resources to do specific jobs. They're assigned to a district and expected to respond to every call for service in that district. They're expected to patrol business districts, neighborhoods, schools. They're expected to do traffic enforcement. They're expected to take reports.

Once a report is taken it's handed over to a detective. He probably carries a case load of 30 or 40 cases at any given time. As such, he must prioritize them. Crimes against people (robbery, homicide, sexual assault, child abuse, assault) are priority one. Property crimes are second, or third.

The police chief will ask for more officers, more detectives, more money for training, etc, but it'll be a trade off. County Commissioners and City Councils will give a fraction of what was asked for. Therefore, LE is operating a step behind all the time.

The only exception will be when the politicians figure out that they can make money off of traffic enforcement. Then they'll approve a traffic division dedicated to one single task...Traffic Enforcement.

So before you blow off and blame it all on the dirty, rotten, donut eating cops perhaps you should take a more vested interest in your local happenings and understand them a little better. I encourage everyone to attend your local LE's Citizen Academy to really learn and understand what they do. And what you can do to make them more effective.

I'm not going to say that there aren't poorly managed and useless departments out there. I know of a few. But they generally a direct result of city management.

How can you, John Q. Citizen, change that?

Whatever you do, don't leave a live rattle snake in the stand.

Killem, I keep a special ticket book just for you buddy.