Small town makes a big difference. What are the odds that a friend of a friend (or even a cousin) sees the cop do something stupid, compared to a large town?
[edit] To put this in the context of the article, if a Cop does something publicly stupid in a small town, there will be a social penalty levied against them when they e.g. sit down for a beer next to someone who saw them do something stupid.
Well, it's not that small.
~35k population.
I have no idea who any police officers are, nor have I ever (knowingly) sat down next to one...anywhere. I occasionally see a group of them at Arby's or something, eating with each other at lunch.
FWIW I have a very wide social circle in town, here (I own a bar)--but it includes no police officers.
Re:Game theory’s cure for corruption
by atom-morgan on Monday May 11, 2015 @02:01PM
(#9526597)
> Maybe it's a function of me living in a small town, but I only once seen police doing anything dangerous while driving.
I guess so. I've seen it more times than I can count.
Re:Game theory’s cure for corruption
by dclowd9901 on Monday May 11, 2015 @11:43PM
(#9529484)
Know this, we had a former officer as a guest speaker and he made it quite clear that, between radio calls, logging and looking up stuff on their systems, police are incredibly dangerous to be around. His best advice was to stay far away from patrol cars.
When they have the siren on, they're typically driving much faster than normal, but normally they're indistinguishable from a normal driver.
The one incident I did see was a motorcycle officer do a U-turn across four lanes to come ticket me (no seatbelt). He turned on his lights first, and the road was relatively clear.