Question for 'cops' on the board...

[Dougthegreat]

I knew a guy from the California Highway Patrol, and noticed he never referred to himself as a "cop". Since then, I've read that officers of the law don't care for the designation "cop".

Is this true, and if so, why?

 

[racer72]

It would be like calling the chef of a better restaurant a burger flipper. It has to do with respect, someone that is willing to lay their life on the line to save yours deserves some respect.

 

[Dougthegreat]

I'm not saying they don't have a right to be upset, but it seems like your argument of master chef vs. burger flipper in comparison to police officer vs. cop is like apples to oranges - a chef probably doesn't flip burgers often enough to be referred to as a "burger flipper", yet as I understand it, "cop" and "police officer" mean the same thing. I even hear police officers use the term "cop", but usually not in reference to themselves.

 

[CdwJava]

I knew a guy from the California Highway Patrol, and noticed he never referred to himself as a "cop". Since then, I've read that officers of the law don't care for the designation "cop".

Is this true, and if so, why?

I've heard that, too, but I have yet to find any officer who really takes offense by it or even cares.

I'm a cop. What of it? (It's even in my sig. line)

- Carl

 

[Curt581]

I've heard that, too, but I have yet to find any officer who really takes offense by it or even cares.

I'm a cop. What of it? (It's even in my sig. line)

- Carl

I am too.

I've never cared what anyone called me, no matter how bad it was. My response was always... "I've been called worse by smarter people".

 

[Pugilist]

Post 9-11 it became a requirement that a good citizen express respect for firefighters and police - to the point where if you expressed anything else you might be run out of town on a plank.

But I think we are overlooking the guys who are doing a really dangerous job, for almost no money - our army volunteers. (I am a veteran but wasn't a volunteer!) I don't know how they do it.

My respect for firefighters and police is tempered by my knowledge that they are at least partly motivated by money - pulling down $100,000+ (inclusive of overtime) and, here in CA, pensions at 80% of their last year's pay.

Pugilist

 

[Curt581]

My respect for firefighters and police is tempered by my knowledge that they are at least partly motivated by money - pulling down $100,000+ (inclusive of overtime) and, here in CA, pensions at 80% of their last year's pay.

I don't know where you're getting your information, but that figure is nowhere near average. In order to break the 100K mark in my area, you'd need to pull in well over 1500 hours of O/T per year... in addition to 2080 hours of straight time. Extremely difficult to do.

In my state, there are cops working for as little as $12 an hour. It takes 30+ years of service to qualify for max retirement, or 80%.

Of course we're motivated by money to an extent. But so is every other working stiff in the world. Including YOU.

If money was the ONLY thing that motivated us, we d*mn sure wouldn't have signed up to be cops. Anyone who thinks they can get 'rich' being a police officer should have their head examined.

As for your so-called 'respect' for police officers, you've already made your feelings very clear that in previous posts...(not that we actually care).

 

[Pugilist]

I get my info from the local newspaper here in a CA metropolitan area. Pay in CA is higher than in some other areas, but cost of living is higher, too. The paper asks the local cities to provide a list of their ten top-earning empoyees, then publishes the results. The typical list, is in this sequence:

City manager (most pay)
Fire engineer (very close)
Fire engineer (very close)
Public works director, finance director, police chief, fire chief
Patrolman (very close)
Patrolman (ditto)
Police captain

The fire engineers and patrolmen are doing a lot of overtime to earn so much. But it seems that the availability of the overtime is a perk which is necessary to retain personnel. It's particularly important to those who are doing their last year of service, since their retirement will be based upon that years earnings.

I think we are bankrupting ourselves by failing to control these pensions - us taxpayers won't be able to slip out of paying them, like the airlines and carmakers would like to.

Pugilist

 

[TYRIS]

My respect for firefighters and police is tempered by my knowledge that they are at least partly motivated by money - pulling down $100,000+ (inclusive of overtime) and, here in CA, pensions at 80% of their last year's pay.

-I would love to know where they work....I might move there.

And yes I'm a "COP" and I'm damn proud of it as I stated before.

And no I don't care if people call me that..or anything else as Curt stated..Of course my wife call me worse than any civilian could if I come home too late.

On a side note, if you have never loooked up where "COP" comes from it's quite interesting. My personal favorite is that it's an acronym for Constable on Patrol.


Tyris

 

[Curt581]

The fire engineers and patrolmen are doing a lot of overtime to earn so much.

One of things that people like you tend to forget is that overtime isn't a gift, like a private company's "bonus"... it's time actually spent WORKING. People who work overtime earn that money.

I think we are bankrupting ourselves by failing to control these pensions - us taxpayers won't be able to slip out of paying them, like the airlines and carmakers would like to.

Typical. One one hand you imply, "The cops should be the very best candidates we can find. They should have very strict hiring screening, and even time one of them makes a mistake, they should be fired"... and one the other hand, you think, "We shouldn't pay them so much, and we should cut their benefits".

Make up your mind. What kind of applicants do you want?

Do you want CHEAP or do you want GOOD?

I guarantee YOU wouldn't want to do our job, under those conditions, for the kind of compensation you're advocating.

You can't have it both ways.

Whatever... I'm not going to convince you of anything. I'm done debating issues with people who haven't got the first clue of what they're talking about.

 

[dkpd73]

I'm a cop, and I don't mind the term. The term I'm called most often on the street is unprintable on a family board.

I definitely don't do it for the money. My salary now is less than when I graduated college 11 years ago. But, I enjoy what I do now much more than sitting behind a computer, so it evens out in the end.

 

[dogwood]

Just to help out

Dear Yahoo!:
What is the origin of the word cop? Does it refer to police badges made of copper?
Anonymous
Copper Mountain, Colorado

Dear Anonymous:
Theories for the origin of cop abound, including the copper badge explanation you mention. We'd always been under the impression that the term was an acronym for "constable on patrol." Well, it seems we're both mistaken, as we learned from our roundabout quest for the answer.
A simple Yahoo! search on "cop" returned many relevant categories, but we came up empty after checking sites in several categories.

We decided to narrow our probe by searching for "origin of cop" (using quotation marks around the term). We weren't expecting much, but when one of the results turned out to be a page from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary we clicked hopefully.

What we found was basically an advertisement for the Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories. At first we were disappointed, but then we realized why this page had appeared in the search results -- the word "cop" was one of the sample entries.

Around the year 1700, the slang verb cop entered English usage, meaning "to get ahold of, catch, capture." By 1844, cop showed up in print, and soon thereafter the -er suffix was added, and a policeman became a copper, one who cops or catches and arrests criminals. Copper first appeared in print in 1846, the use of cop as a short form copper occured in 1859.

To confirm the findings on Merriam Webster's promotional page we tried the same "origin of cop" search on Google, which lead us Michael Quinion's World Wide Words column on the same subject.


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[CdwJava]

But I think we are overlooking the guys who are doing a really dangerous job, for almost no money - our army volunteers. (I am a veteran but wasn't a volunteer!) I don't know how they do it.

I know that I - and the people I associate with - certainly have not forgotten anyone in the aremd forces. I have friends that currently serve, and family that have made their careers in the military. Personally, if I had it my way, military service would be rewarded with a grant of much greater benfits (medical, college, financial breaks, etc.).

My respect for firefighters and police is tempered by my knowledge that they are at least partly motivated by money - pulling down $100,000+ (inclusive of overtime) and, here in CA, pensions at 80% of their last year's pay.

What!?!?! I can count on one hand the number of officers I knew that earned $100,000 per year that were not a Captain or higher. And as Curt said, these guys worked their behinds off doing overtime!

Even in the Bay Area where cops can earn, perhaps, $70,000 in base salary, topping $100,000 would be a real chore. But when you figure that the price of a home in the Bay Area - or even within a two hour commute - tends to be well over $400,000, you can see where that money doesn't go very far.

I have never earned that much. Even as a Sergeant, I don't earn that much.

And 80% base salary in retirement! Whoa Nelly!

Our retirement system is basically 3% of the highest year for every year served to a max of 30 years. To receive 80% of base salary, an officer would have to work 27 years. Statistically, the officer is much more likely to retire at less than that due to a medical injury (generally the back). Longevity retirements are really not all that common - at least not at the 80% bracket.

I will brobably retire at 75% ... maybe less.

- Carl

 

[CdwJava]

I knew a guy from the California Highway Patrol, and noticed he never referred to himself as a "cop".

It just dawned on me! Of COURSE he doesn't refer to himself as a "cop"! He's a state Traffic Officer! Just ask them - they aren't the police (or a deputy sheriff), they are "Traffic Officers". This is drilled in to them in training ... they don't care about the Penal Code, it's the Vehicle Code that they are concerned with

- Carl