The following piece deserves Slappy's BEST A DA MONTH AWARD for the month of November. It was in response to member 88-310 regarding the Ranger/duner incident that happened over Halloween.
Posted by BeachHead—11-13-2003
88-310....
Welcome to GD.com. Quite an interesting first post. While I'm sure I would have used a different style the first time I was speaking to someone in their "home", you do make some valid points about the media, and what would happen if some folks played out their "frustration" over the alleged heavy handed law enforcement practices and incidents at Glamis.
But, I don't think you, or any of your leo "brothers" have anything to worry about from the GD.com folks. Why do I say that? Well, rather than coming on the board, reading one thread, and immediately telling everyone that their opinion is stupid and immature, I've actually met some of these folks. They have a love for duning, for Glamis, and the freedom associated with it that you cannot believe. And, I'm sure that virtually everyone here would give the shirt off their backs to help one another if needed.
So are some of the comments in this thread immature? Possibly...but more than likely, they are out of frustration. You see, when dealing with people, you have to consider the person and their personality. I think in "general" the type of person who dunes has a very freedom loving spirit. And this type of person finds it VERY hard to accept even the APPEARANCE of abuse by authority, much less some sort of incident where someone is actually seriously injured. Couple this with a few "loose cannon" type, possibly undertrained LEO's, who aren't "mature" enough to deal with the public properly, and either make inappropriate comments to the public, or act unprofessionally/criminally in their public encounters, and you have a powderkeg environment for a duner to develop the frustrations you have seen posted here.
I'm sure that even you must admit that there ARE bad LEO's, in every agency. I know that no one at GD.com thinks there are no bad duners!! It is unfortunately a fact of life that a few bad apples make the whole bushel look unappealing. Now, IF you are one of the "good" leo's, you should be far more upset IF (notice the IF there) this incident turns out to be a case of abuse by the LEO's involved. For they are making YOU and your profession look bad. There is a lot of hard, ugly work involved in the profession, and it is made even tougher by those FEW idiots who manage to get through the system.
I think if you took the time to read through this forum, and meet the people who participate, you'll find they are much different than you painted with such a broad brush in your first post. I think you'll find a solid group of citizens who SUPPORT logical, safe, professional law enforcement activities. You've already discovered what the general attitude is about criminals, and criminal behavior....from either side of the badge. I also think the GD.com crowd is smart enough to realize there is two sides to the story, with the truth somewhere in the middle.
As further evidence to the mettle of the GD.com crowd...your post, however wrong your initial impression may be, is still here. I think these folks are mature enough to accept opinions other than their own. Hope you do take the time to see how you might have missed the forest for the trees...
Great job BeachHead. Please e-mail Slap your info BeachHead so he can ship off a Slappy Package to ya
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