The Uncertainty Police Can't Train For
At the Connecticut Police Academy, 30 recruits are training to become officers. Some of what they must master is clear-cut, like their time for a 2-mile run, or how to write a traffic ticket, which is covered in their six months of classroom instruction and 400 hours of field training. But when they hit the street, everything won't be so cut and dried, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod.
Lt. Karen Boisvert is a training officer at the academy. She teaches recruits that merely being uncooperative isn't a crime.
While officers answering a call are stepping into the unknown, often alone, they must feel endangered or hampered in doing their job to make an arrest - which will naturally vary from cop to cop.
"I can't tell you when you're going to feel threatened. I can't tell you when you're going to say, ' Enough. I've been here for two hours on this call and if you're not going to cooperate with me, you are hindering my ability to do my job and you're going to be arrested for interfering.'" Boisvert said.
In 2007, there were nearly 710,000 arrests for disorderly conduct across the country. Unlike charges from speeding to murder, each disorderly conduct arrest is dependent on the discretion of the officer.
"It's an invitation to abuse," said Eugene O'Donnell, a former NYC cop and prosecutor. "The law creates a situation in which different cops go into the same calls would handle it differently. The law almost commands that because it's so unclear. So if you took a dozen cops and you send them to the same call you might very well have vastly different results among that group."
At the academy, they are taught by the book.
"It has nothing to with that I'm going to show you you're going to respect me," Boisvert said. "You have to violate a Connecticut general statute."
But after they leave, was we've all found recently, the book can be a complex read once the recruits hit the streets.
