This got brought back to my attention when there was a report about Officer Adams not being charged. The point I'm trying to make here, is that police officers are supposedly held to a higher standard than the rest of us, yet from what I've seen over the years, the exact opposite seems to be true. And all the protestations about how I would complain about an officer being slow to respond don't hold water if you look at the facts of this case, because Officer Adams was off-duty at the time of the accident. If he had been responding "code 3" with lights and siren on, there would be NO issue here.

Geo, do you think that if YOU were going 83 in 45 mph zone, t-boned a woman and killed her, you would not be charged with ANY crime? Even if she was drunk (btw, nobody has said she was speeding, or ran a light, or a stop sign, or anything)?

Let me tell you some more information, which may explain why I personally am a little over-sensitive to this issue. My first wife made a legal turn onto a highway in Delaware once, on the way home. She was stone cold sober, pulled out in the right lane. She saw the New Castle County police car coming, but he was way down the road. What she failed to notice was the he was doing 75 mpg (it was a 45 mph zone) on the way to his lunch break. He rear-ended her, and she spent 2 days in the hospital, and went through a few months of physical therapy for back and neck pain. His car went off the road and rolled a couple times, although he was lucky, and wasn't seriously injured. It was reported in the newspapers that nobody stopped to help him, even though this happened about 2 miles from a hospital, and an RN on the way home from work stopped to help, and he pushed her away and told her to f** off (he was shook up at the time, so you can't fault him for acting oddly). When we reported it to our insurance company, and asked for the police report, it had been "lost." That's when we decided we needed a lawyer. When he subpoenaed the record, it miraculously reappeared. We ended up settling out of court, but as you can imagine, that left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and when I see the police NOT being held to the higher standard that they SHOULD be, it gets to me.

ZX, I have no reason to believe that you are anything but a fine officer, and I respect your loyalty to your brothers in blue. Maybe now you can understand why this kind of thing bothers me so flippin' much.