Acquitted St Louis cop a USMA grad ?!?

Jcleppe said:
MidwestDad said:
I was surprised to see this - Class of 2002 sounds like; served 5 years and then joins SLPD as a beat cop after being an Army officer ??? [rank of Captain upon leaving service.] Incident happened in 2011 BTW. Makes you wonder if something in his service record influenced that career choice.
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Contrary to what many believe, leaving the military as a Captain, even with the WP pedigree, does not always translate into that corner office. We hear and read a lot of success stories on this board of those that make a great transition from the military to civilian employment, but that isn't always the case. Law enforcement is a common transition for ex military, even officers. The current economic climate at the time they leave the service is always a factor. When you read about the high unemployment rate among vets it's not exclusively among the enlisted.

EDIT:

One struggle these O-3's have when they leave the service is finding a job that matches their current pay. When you figure in the BAH and BAS they receive tax free as well as the full medical, they need to find a job that pays a good deal higher then their current pay just to break even. Depending on where they live, that can sometimes be a struggle and if they have financial obligations such as a house or family, they need to find something that pays at least enough to make their obligations as well as good benefits. A job such as law enforcement can be an easy transition. Not sure about the pay for the St. Louis area but here in the Seattle area, law enforcement is paid well and even better if you have a degree, it's on par with an O-3 salary.

As far as WP being part of the resume opening doors, a lot will depend on the company and the geographical location. A good friend of our family's son, WP grad, left the Army about 6 months ago. When talking to him about his job search he told us that during his first two interviews, when they looked at his resume they said he listed West Point but then asked if he had gone to college as well. As good of a network they have, it doesn't reach every corner of the business world. As a disclaimer, we do live in the Pacific NW.

Just as a side note, Who in God's name would carry an AK-47 Pistol in their patrol car?
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St Louis City patrol officers make about 50K. St Louis County makes a little more. A lot of police (at least in this area) carry an AR in their cars (usually trunks) but they are police issued. Even your own personal handgun is against larger department policies.

DS's guard unit went on alert Wednesday and activated and mobilized yesterday. He is currently on rock dodging patrol in St Louis.
 
QA1517 said:
St Louis City patrol officers make about 50K. St Louis County makes a little more. A lot of police (at least in this area) carry an AR in their cars (usually trunks) but they are police issued. Even your own personal handgun is against larger department policies.

DS's guard unit went on alert Wednesday and activated and mobilized yesterday. He is currently on rock dodging patrol in St Louis.
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Tell your son to be safe, and best of luck.

I'm sure Seattle's Police pay scale has a lot to do with the cost of living out here, the starting salary here is $69,240, after 18 months it's $77,628.
 
Jcleppe said:
QA1517 said:
St Louis City patrol officers make about 50K. St Louis County makes a little more. A lot of police (at least in this area) carry an AR in their cars (usually trunks) but they are police issued. Even your own personal handgun is against larger department policies.

DS's guard unit went on alert Wednesday and activated and mobilized yesterday. He is currently on rock dodging patrol in St Louis.
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Tell your son to be safe, and best of luck.

I'm sure Seattle's Police pay scale has a lot to do with the cost of living out here, the starting salary here is $69,240, after 18 months it's $77,628.
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We're fairly inexpensive to live in the Midwest. I think the cost of living index in St Louis is about 87 based on 100. Housing is really cheap there compared to most large cities.
Fairly sure Seattle is towards the top end in the country.
 
QA1517 said:
Fairly sure Seattle is towards the top end in the country.
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That's an understatement, The house my son bought in North Carolina for 218K would start at 800K in Seattle. Housing costs here are a disaster for young people looking to buy their first home.....unless of course you work for Amazon or Microsoft, or any of the many Tech companies here. Can't say I'm sorry to hear that Amazon will build their next headquarters with 50K employees making well over 100K average in a different city, let them drive up the housing costs somewhere else.

Rant Over.:)
 
Jcleppe said:
NavyHoops said:
perfect FBI applicant is a forensic accountant who speaks Farsi, Arabic and Spanish.
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Ain't that the truth.

I swear I can't count how many times I've read comments from future cadets asking what branch will give them the best shot at joining the FBI when they complete their service obligation. I agree with Hoops, the FBI application process is long when coming from a non law enforcement career. The acceptance rate is pretty low for those without certain skills. I recently took the FBI's Citizen Academy Program, (Great program if you get the opportunity). Had a chance to talk a lot with the Agent in Charge of the Seattle Office. I asked him about recruitment from the military and he said about the same as NavyHoops, he mentioned that of the three new agents he had that were from the military one spoke Russian, One was from AF Finance, and one was from Army Civil Affairs, all skill sets they were looking for. As far as Infantry officers, he said they were a dime a dozen when it came to applications, not knocking them he said, just that there were quite a few that applied but didn't have any further skill sets that made them stand out. They would take applicants that were currently employed in in various law enforcement jobs before an Infantry officer.

You need an extra 3 years beyond your initial service obligation, if you went to WP or were on a ROTC scholarship, to be eligible for the GI Bill that would pay enough toward grad school.
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FBI, hell, it's no guarantee for a veteran to get ANY position in the federal government after active duty service anymore. This ain't 1980, when 9 out of 10 US Postal Service employees were veterans. Same, I'm sure, with most federal agencies from the 1940s to the early 2000s. Now, with hiring freezes, pay freezes, etc. the idea of federal civilian service after military service, once almost a sure thing if the veteran wasn't an idiot, is pretty hard to get. Government personnel numbers haven't been this low in 50 years & I don't see any substantial hiring in the future.
 
Day-Tripper said:
Now, with hiring freezes, pay freezes, etc. the idea of federal civilian service after military service, once almost a sure thing if the veteran wasn't an idiot, is pretty hard to get.
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You now see a lot of resumes going to private contractors these days.
 
Jcleppe said:
Who in God's name would carry an AK-47 Pistol in their patrol car?
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So, yes, for police officers, it's generally a very bad idea to carry unauthorized weapons on your person, in your patrol car, in a box, or with a fox, etc. For exactly the reasons you are seeing with this case. Liability and, to use the catchy terminology of the day, bad "optics" (not the sighting in kind). Despite the fact that it is really no more or less dangerous than common M-4/AR-15 variants that are in wide use with police, "AK-47" has a very negative connotation in the general public.

So why did he have an AK-47 "pistol" in his car? First, 99.9% odds that it's a semi-automatic AK-style rather than true fully-automatic AK-47. Second, why a "pistol" version? This guy was a combat veteran, and it's my understanding that captured AK-47 "underfolders," a version with an under-folding stock, were very popular guns to be carried in Humvees and other vehicles over in Iraq and Afghanistan because they were significantly more compact than a M-4 (even with the collapsed stock)and could therefore be manipulated more easily from within the close confines of the vehicle in case of an ambush. An AK-47 style pistol is just an under-folder version without the stock and an even shorter barrel, i.e. very compact.

IMO, for whatever reason, this officer believed that his beat was such a "combat zone" that he more needed an unauthorized weapon of this type to save his life in case of an ambush than he had to worry about getting in trouble.
 
In the old days police officers going into Father Panic Village in Bridgeport used to carry a pick axe handle rather than a baton. You take what you need.
 
Jcleppe said:
QA1517 said:
Fairly sure Seattle is towards the top end in the country.
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That's an understatement, The house my son bought in North Carolina for 218K would start at 800K in Seattle. Housing costs here are a disaster for young people looking to buy their first home.....unless of course you work for Amazon or Microsoft, or any of the many Tech companies here. Can't say I'm sorry to hear that Amazon will build their next headquarters with 50K employees making well over 100K average in a different city, let them drive up the housing costs somewhere else.

Rant Over.:)
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Rumor is that Boston is high on the list for those 50K jobs that Amazon is offering. If so, great! While a lot of those those jobs will be to software programmers and whatnot, I'm certain that more will go to forklift drivers and clerks and other non-technical professions. People who might otherwise be working at gas stations with no health insurance, no vacation time, no sick time, no bathroom breaks, etc.

I understand the downside, but recall that "livable" and "cheap" urban areas like Brooklyn were urban hellholes as recently as the 1980s but are now virtual paradises (albeit expensive ones).

Capitalism works.
 
AF6872 said:
In the old days police officers going into Father Panic Village in Bridgeport used to carry a pick axe handle rather than a baton. You take what you need.
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In the "old days" in Boston many cops would carry a "drop gun", i.e. one recovered in previous crime scenes, with scrubbed out serial numbers, to be dropped on the ground of questionable shootings. I've spend many a backyard cookout listening to cop relatives (brother, brother-in-law, etc,) telling stories about such events. All prior to the cell phone camera era.
 
Day-Tripper said:
Rumor is that Boston is high on the list for those 50K jobs that Amazon is offering. If so, great! While a lot of those those jobs will be to software programmers and whatnot, I'm certain that more will go to forklift drivers and clerks and other non-technical professions. People who might otherwise be working at gas stations with no health insurance, no vacation time, no sick time, no bathroom breaks, etc.
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Those forklift drivers and clerks would be a great idea if that were actually the case, we have quite a few of those jobs here, at the distribution centers. What Amazon is looking to build is another executive headquarters, we also have one of those, takes up a large section of the north side of the city. This headquarters has nothing to do with the forklift drivers and clerks, those jobs we would love to have more of, that is of course if they would have all these employees work a full time shift so they could get all these benefits you speak of.

The reason a lot here are not sad to see them spread out their foot print is because the addition of another headquarters would spare us the additional traffic gridlock that's already one of the worst in the country, and even a higher cost of rents and housing surrounding the city.

And don't think that all those new Amazon jobs will come straight from the city they relocate to, not if they follow the mold they have set here. and Seattle is a mecca for tech talent and sill they import a majority of their jobs from around, and outside the country.

Day-Tripper said:
I understand the downside, but recall that "livable" and "cheap" urban areas like Brooklyn were urban hellholes as recently as the 1980s but are now virtual paradises (albeit expensive ones).

Capitalism works.
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I'm a big fan of capitalism, but that big influx of high wage jobs attracting talent from outside the city has an impact greater then just a downside. Seattle's housing and rental market is the fastest growing in the country, and that's nothing to be proud of. Our city has been transformed by these tech companies from a city built on the manufacturing jobs of Boeing and Todd Shipyards, to a tech heavy industry. We have attracted unprecedented city wide growth from all over the country, especially from the tech areas of CA. this influx of money has no doubt been a boon but I could write pages about how this area still struggles. We used to be "livable and cheap" and we were in no way a hellhole, now we are neither. Our city has passed a $15.00 per hour minimum wage, and for people here that is not near enough to even pay rent, not if you want to live within a less then 2 hour commute each way. A nice little 1K sqft 2 bdrm Apt. will run you around 4K per month, if you're lucky.

Our own home was worth less then 300K 5 years ago, we're pushing 1 million now, and we live 25 miles from the city. We are what they call affordable around here and we have a modest 70 year old house. In the city. we'd be at close to 2 million.
 
Day-Tripper said:
In the "old days" in Boston many cops would carry a "drop gun", i.e. one recovered in previous crime scenes, with scrubbed out serial numbers, to be dropped on the ground of questionable shootings. I've spend many a backyard cookout listening to cop relatives (brother, brother-in-law, etc,) telling stories about such events. All prior to the cell phone camera era.
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That's a little disturbing, I guess the Good Old Days weren't always so Good.
 
Jcleppe said:
I'm a big fan of capitalism, but that big influx of high wage jobs attracting talent from outside the city has an impact greater then just a downside. Seattle's housing and rental market is the fastest growing in the country, and that's nothing to be proud of. Our city has been transformed by these tech companies from a city built on the manufacturing jobs of Boeing and Todd Shipyards, to a tech heavy industry. We have attracted unprecedented city wide growth from all over the country, especially from the tech areas of CA. this influx of money has no doubt been a boon but I could write pages about how this area still struggles. We used to be "livable and cheap" and we were in no way a hellhole, now we are neither. Our city has passed a $15.00 per hour minimum wage, and for people here that is not near enough to even pay rent, not if you want to live within a less then 2 hour commute each way. A nice little 1K sqft 2 bdrm Apt. will run you around 4K per month, if you're lucky.
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One would think that at some point economics would make the post-industrial Midwest more of a magnate for high tech and high tech administrative job growth. It is happening, but ever so slowly. I'm sorry to say that many colleges and universities are still not turning out enough of what a modern economy demands, nor are native born American kids attracted to STEM at a young enough age to even be prepared for a post secondary STEM education.
 
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