Have we lost respect for our police and the law?

By mark

I remember looking at police and thinking hey they are cool but as the years went by they have gotten sarcastic and mean they can talk to me or my family any way they like but if I tell them something to hurt their feelings we get arrested. part of me loves cops and another part hates and despises them. I don't have anything against they but they seem to case out judgement on certain people and make fun of them. if cops were nice to civilians and didn't judge anyone they would be really good people.

By mark

I remember looking at police and thinking hey they are cool but as the years went by they have gotten sarcastic and mean they can talk to me or my family any way they like but if I tell them something to hurt their feelings we get arrested. part of me loves cops and another part hates and despises them. I don't have anything against they but they seem to case out judgement on certain people and make fun of them. if cops were nice to civilians and didn't judge anyone they would be really good people.

By Paku

Tell me where will we be without the Police?

By Morgan

I dont't think its a lack of respect for the law, it's a lack of respect for the police. As a person in my 20's i've seen the police abuse their positions as law enforcers more than once. They seem to always be after the option that will get the most money, it doesn't seem to be about the guilty or not guilty anymore. A perfect example i have is from a few years ago, living in my first flat in downtown auckland. one of my flatmates had a 15yr old girlfriend. we had told him not to bring her around as it would cause trouble. one night she ran away from home and he snuck her into our flat without any of us knowing. the next day her parents found out where she was and called the police, about 6 police officers came up to our apartment, one not even in uniform and searched our whole house as if they thought they were busting a p lab, of course nothing was found. they then asked us to "accompany" them to the station for questioning. we were then locked in holding cells for around 4 hrs,eventually a policeman walked by and i asked him what i was here for, he replied "i don't know" so i asked if i could be let out and explained i had been told i was only here to make a statement and answer some questions. He went and got someone and i was let out, without any statement being made. No charges were laid against any of my flatmates, our house was left in a complete shambles, and 2 of us were late for work. After being treated like that, i assume because of my age, how am i supposed to respect the police? this was the first incident i'd been part of, but not the first i'd seen, of age discrimination. Isn't that a crime? too bad if it is, because our law enforcers don't care. The young are guilty, no matter what they do.

By Feleshia

I am married to a police officer. Frankly, I wish he didn't want to help all of these ungrateful people. I wish I had the luxury of judging the police the way all of these people do. But all I see is my family getting up everyday for work and protecting people that could care less about him or the law. It is sad to think that people think one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. There are a lot of people that also support my husband and I am glad for that. Thank you to everyone who supports the police. I am grateful that my husband loves his job and loves to help people. I could never do what he does everyday. I don't think a lot of others could do it either. Police deserve respect and should get it. I have never seen so many people that disrespect police. That is like me doing my job and one person makes a mistake and they blame everyone in the place. I have also found that the people that disrespect the police are usually the criminals or people who have never been in a situation where they have needed them. Maybe if everyone put themselves in their shoes for one day they would think and act a little differently to the people that try to protect them.

By Alex

I am a teenager doing an assignment for school, one of my focuses is respect for officers. For the past 3 years of my life I have wanted to be in the police, I wanted to feel like I was giving something back to the community, but lately with all the violence toward officers it is giving me 2nd thoughts. but I believe other teenagers need to grow up and learn some respect, they are just doing their work, and they often do a damn fine job of it too. Breaking the law is breaking the law, I mean with speeding, it doesn't matter if you are 2km over the speed limit or 50km over, you still broke the law.

By Damien

I think along with the word respect, comes trust. Problem with the youths is they have no respect and the mature have no trust in the police, find them incompetent. They seem to be interested in fines rather than actual criminals.

My personal experience with the police was very unprofessional. I had been attacked by thugs that tried to take my car. This was in a busy area full of the latest CCTV. Cut a long story short. The police had a five day period to obtain the CCTV footage of the crime (The shops would only give the footage to the police). The police officers superior explained to me the reason why the police officers did collect the CCTV footage. These excuses were, that crimes are in a categories of urgency, they were understaffed and one of the officers was on holiday. Basically telling me that being attacked and knocked unconscious (Lucky I was not killed) was obviously not serious enough! Between two police officers they could not obtain the CCTV footage within the five day period.

Now if this was a business or even if we had a choice of who could protect the innocent, who in God's name would use this service again? I am twenty-two years of age and I have no respect or trust in the police force.

By Rob P

My Father had a ticket for doing 102km/h recently. He was towing a boat (a braked trailer) which makes that 12km/h over the limit but seriously: revenue gathering.