No, they didn’t pass SAFE. That we all agree on. I don’t blame New York State troopers for the law. But police front line when it comes to prosecutorial discretion. They don’t have to look, they don’t have to find, and even if they do find, they don’t have to arrest. If a trooper pulls someone over for a traffic stop, and that person comes back clean when your run their driver’s license, there’s no reason why “have a nice day, and drive carefully,” can’t be the end of that conversation. If they choose to enforce this law on otherwise good and law-abiding people they are as bad as the politicians who passed it.
7 thoughts on “NYS Trooper PBA: We Didn’t Pass SAFE”
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Gee, what a popular and “common sense” law.
If only New York had some sort of waiting period for legislation. You know, some type of “cooling off” period to keep someone from making a rash decision that they’ll later regret.
Oh wait… the Governor waved that by declaring a state of emergency.
Also gotta love how they think “Sorry, just following orders” is a valid excuse. Because cops have never slowballed laws they don’t like or directed their attention towards certain crimes over other ones.
Nobody forces anyone to work for these organizations.
When it really comes down to it, enough cops will serve the warrants or enforce at traffic stops. Their brothers in blue will look away and do nothing.
There are LEO jobs in free states. Anyone wearing a NYSP uniform clearly chooses to do so.
“I vas chust following meine ordungen” works for the NYS PBA, I guess.
Sure they didn’t pass it themselves, but I bet they supported every single legislator that voted for it and the governor who signed it. What a disgusting bunch of Judases.
Exactly. They not only have the right, but the DUTY, to ignore unconstitutional laws.
I do find it interesting that they actually have to come out and say this. I suspect they are hearing it not only from citizens (or subjects as they are seen in NY) but from their own rank and file, who are also hearing it from citizens/subjects.
the question i ask is, did the union that represents them support it?
My father is retired NYPD and as kids we have been pulled over by state troopers when he was still on the job. After indicating as such and showing his ID to the trooper they generally didn’t even bother making it all the way to his driver window before telling him to have a nice day.
That’s the same kind of discretion any cop has the authority to exercise. Of course sometimes you have a cop that doesn’t care for it and writes another cop up anyway starting a feud between departments. 9 times out of the 10 the cop who wrote the ticket gets messed with badly by his own guys. If only enforcing the SAFE act could carry around that kind of stigma within the barracks.