By Criminal Defense Lawyer Jeremy Rosenthal
(972) 369-0577
Police are people too and there are mountains of research on police psychology. Being a police officer can obviously be a job where any given day an officer can deal with stress, boredom, and possibly even traumatic experiences. It can all shape how they interact with the public on a regular basis.
I’d say in the zillions and zillions of cases I’ve seen, police are like an old standard car when they deal with people. (which for younger readers means a car you had to shift on your own). Police have about five different gears in my book.
This week, I’ll count down the most common police attitudes I see and feel prepared to diagnose in my amateur opinion. They are in no particular order, but I figure I’ll save the more dramatic ones for the top of list.
So we’ll start with the boring:
5. Human Scenery Mode
Most of the time you, me, and everyone in an officer’s path is nothing more than human scenery. Police have much down-time in their job as one might suspect. Probably the time they spend patrolling their beat, running a radar gun, or walking on foot through a public area is spent with their internal-scanner set to low. It is rare to see an officer get too worked up about low level interactions such as basic traffic stops.
*Jeremy Rosenthal is Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and licensed by the Supreme Court of Texas.