Mathew Bianchi took routine traffic stops seriously and handed out tickets regardless of people’s connections within the Police Department. He says he was punished for it.
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The police unions distribute the wallet-sized courtesy cards — sometimes referred to as “get out of jail free” cards — to members, who in turn pass them out to friends and family. Bianchi had been instructed to let card carriers off without a ticket.
By the time he pulled over the Mazda in November 2018, drivers were handing Bianchi these cards six or seven times a day. But this woman’s card was a little older, a little tattered-looking. It was difficult to make out the contact information of the officer who had given it to her, which is usually written on the card’s back. So Bianchi did the wrong thing, which is to say, the right thing: He wrote the woman a ticket.
Though Bianchi didn’t know it then, he had just begun what would become a yearslong struggle to do the job the way he thought it should be done. He had inherited his moral obligations — and a strong dose of stubbornness — from his grandmother, who raised him on Staten Island. But he had no family in the Police Department, and no one who could tell him what to do when its leadership began to turn against him.
The month after he stopped the Mazda, a high-ranking police union official, Albert Acierno, got in touch. He told Bianchi that the cards were inviolable. He then delivered what Bianchi came to think of as the “brother speech,” saying that cops are brothers and must help each other out. That the cards were symbols of the bonds between the police and their extended family and friends.
Is an idealistic cop the kind of cop who commits domestic abuse against their spouse because they believe in the goodness of it not because they enjoy it?
Comment on the article please.
I did, my comment is that there are no good cops.
I struggle to find an argument for that, but I wonder, what is your solution for fighting crime if not the cops—who are clearly selective, as this article suggests.
And we all think you’re a child for that comment.
Are you not understanding the context of idealism here?
If the cop was idealistic in this context he wouldn’t be doing what the shitty cops do, he’d be trying to put the shitty cops away, for all of the reasons that make the shitty cops shitty cops.
More idealistic cops would be a nice change, too bad too many of those cops are usually forced out of the job early into their careers.
The new Netflix true crime doc American Nightmare has a perfect contrast between shitty cops and one that stepped up to do her job the right way. (Fuck the Vallejo PD!)