The Entitled Ones

It has been my observation of the animal world the most arrogant animal is the cat. Does what it wants, sleep when it wants, will snub you when it wants, will expect to be feed, nurtured and loved, and when its desires and needs are met, they just want to be left alone. Sound like any person you know?

When you read the title, you may have thought it was taken from some thriller or horror movie about superior beings coming to earth to prey on the vulnerabilities of the human race. No. It is just the an old tragic rerun of the same narcissistic mentality.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Growing up, my father taught me that this world, and specifically this country, does not owe me a thing. All that I desired or even needed to survive in life, much less to become successful, I had to work for. Always make sure you give your employer 110% of your efforts. Otherwise you will always be in debt to those who pay you and you will stay at the same level as everyone else who starts in the company. Above all, you’re nothing special. You don’t merit any special privileges for just being you. Rules that apply to all apply to you as well. You are not entitled to anything you don’t earn. Many of you, especially those middle aged, probably had the same upbringing. If you would, share in the comments what similar (or not) values your parents raised you up with, and how it still affects your life and decisions today.

Yet, in this age, we have raised up a generation that feels the world, the federal and state government, and the employer they work for, owes them a living. Rules and polices do not apply to them, and it is not a problem if they break them as long as they don’t get caught. They may say things their prospective employer wants to hear during their employment interview, such as, ‘Yeah, I’ll work 3rd shift” and “No problem, I love washing dishes”, but after a couple of weeks, they start setting their own terms. They will take advantage of companies who are short-handed and will threaten to quit unless their boss complies with their demands.

You think I’m making this up? From two recent companies that I have worked for, I have had fellow employees start slacking off, coming in late, leaving early, have subpar performance in their jobs where I would have to pick up their slack, and week after week get the same paycheck as me. In one behavioral facility I worked at, I had one employee who was always my relief (since the units I worked on housed juvenile residents, I had to stay until relieved). He was almost always late. In one year, he was on time about 4 or 5 times. He had zero consideration for the lack of sleep I had, where he slept in anytime he wanted. Even after I worked a double (16 hours), there were times I wasn’t relieved until 18 hours in and still had to report within six hours to do another double. When I complained to my program manager about this individual never getting written up, he told me that they were so short that if they started writing people up, according to their policy, they would have to begin firing these workers and they couldn’t afford to do that right now. They figured as long as the units were manned, there was no problem, for them, that is. What they didn’t realize, is that those who would always do the right thing wouldn’t put up with that form of inequity and abuse for long, and would eventually leave (as did I), and who would they have left? That type of management philosophy is woefully shortsighted.

In the other facility I worked at, there was a poster hung in one of the manager’s office. Sadly, the meaning was lost on the one who hung it:

Yet, this type of entitlement is not confined to where one works. This privileged mentality permeates all facets and environments of life. In the course of my law enforcement career, I have had the experience to meet quite a few that felt that my attention of them was unwarranted, much less my enforcement. It was a norm with these individuals that would take privileges and turn them into their rights, such as driving. Regardless what you see on YouTube or social median, driving on the highways is not a right, but a privilege. Many crimes, too, have an entitlement component as the motivation.

In Suffolk, VA, (as in most cities) an event occurs occasionally what is called “car hopping”. This was when a crew, usually young people, would, in the middle of the night, walk down both sides of a residential streets, and would check door knobs of cars. They would rarely bust a window. Their philosophy is that if you didn’t lock your vehicle, you must not have wanted or cared for the items inside. So, they would just help themselves to what you bought with your hard-earned money. Some times it was just change in the console. Other times it was your GPS device, a purse or brief case, prescription medication, a lap top computer, and even handguns. I suppose every one that steals, whether it is from a person or a retail establishment has to some degree feelings of entitlement.

Robberies, burglaries, and especially rapes are committed by entitled offenders. They act with no conscience or remorse. They feel if they are stronger and smarter, you don’t deserve to keep that which you have. If they can take it, you are not responsible enough to own it. The Darwinian philosophy “Survival of the Fittest” is their philosophy as well.

Yet it’s not just criminals that have this entitlement characteristic about them. Sometimes it is just regular citizens who feel offended if an officer corrects them with a citation or even a warning.

One such example is something I may have mentioned in another article, but I’m unsure (sometimes my old mind cannot remember and needs a tune up, or another cup of coffee) is about a lady who prided herself as a law abiding citizen. I had just broken roll call at 0700 hours when I began to patrol a shopping center in a retail district in our city. It was a Saturday morning, and all the players that wrecked havok the night before were still in bed, so I had time to ride around until they woke back up around noon. In front of a major chain grocery store, I observed a brand new Lincoln parked in the fire lane. As a matter of fact, not only did the driver disregard the bright yellow lines and letters spelling “Fire Lane No Parking”, she parked her vehicle in front of a verticle sign saying the same thing. I pulled up behind it and noticed there was no occupant inside. I waited about ten minutes to see if someone inside the store would alert the owner that he or she had better move their car. Now, keep in mind the store just opened and the only two vehicles in the lot were hers and mine (employees were required to park in the back). It had been ages since I wrote a parking ticket and I knew I would have to find my parking ticket book in the trunk among all of my equipment. I reluctantly got out and found the ticket book, wiping the dust from the metal clipboard, and walked up to the vehicle. I observed the nice level upholstery and the expensive extras it had. I wrote the ticket and placed it on the windshield. I went back to my cruiser and started writing the name and address of the owner from the information off the license plate on my copy so that the treasurer could send a notice to the owner if the fine doesn’t get paid in a timely manner. And keep in mind, the fine is only $15.00.

While doing so, a lady I would guess would be in her 70’s, parked her vehicle with handicapped plates in the closest handicapped spot to the store. She got out, walked as she leaned up on the vehicle for balance, opened up the back door, got out her walker, shut the door and started across. She walked extremely slow and I got out of my vehicle to make sure a vehicle didn’t come flying in the lot and run her over. She eventually made it and was about to walk through the doors when I saw her back up quickly and step to the side. Out came a lady carrying a large sheet cake and just about knocked that lady over with the box. She walked over to her vehicle and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the ticket on her windshield. She then went to the back door, placed the box on top of her vehicle, opened up the door and placed the box inside her vehicle. She quickly walked to her windshield and took the ticket up and first looked at it, looked at me, then again looked at it and then looked at me. Then, quite briskly, she began to briskly walk toward me with that look that a mother gives her child when their got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. When she got to me standing outside my cruiser, she shoved the ticket at me and indignantly asked, “Did you write me this ticket?” Once again there are now only three vehicles in the lot and mine is the only one with a blue light bar and “Police” written on the side. Believing a dumb question deserves a dumb answer, I impulsively said, “I don’t know. Let me see. Yep. There’s my signature. Yes ma’am. I wrote it.” Thinking I was going to get a complaint for being a smart a$$, mysteriously the sarcasm was lost on her. The rest of the conversation went like this:

Lady–So you WERE the one who wrote this. Tell me why?

Me–(Pointing to the sign on the ground and the vertical sign she was parked in front of) Tell me you didn’t see these as you pulled up.

Lady–I thought only firemen could write those tickets.

Me–No, all of us police officers from the time that parking violations began have been writing fire lane tickets.

Lady–I was only in there for five minutes.

Me–Ma’am, I marked out with your vehicle over half an hour ago.

Lady–That’s because the stupid decorator was still putting the lettering on when I got there.

Me–(Stunned that she was now blaming an employee of the store for her violation) Ma’am, at the end of the day, if you were in the fire lane for five minutes, or five hours, you are in violation of the fire code. It says, “No Parking”. Not “No Parking For More Than Five Minutes”.

Lady–I don’t know why, with all of the robbers, murderers and rapists out here that you would waste your time writing me a ticket. You should be out there catching those bastards.

Me–(What I wanted to say is that while we conduct regular enforcement business, we come in contact with a number of different individuals through things like parking tickets and traffic stops where we discover the individual is wanted and we do get them off the street. Yet, I dared not press my luck in getting a complaint that I was calling her a criminal.) Ma’am, I tell you what. If you can honestly answer a question for me, I will take the ticket back from you and write void on it in front of you.

Lady–Okay. What’s the question?

Me–Do you see the vehicle parked over there in the handicapped parking spot? The little old lady walking with a walker that you almost ran into when you came out the store doors, that is her vehicle.

Lady–There was no little old lady at the doors.

Me–Yes ma’am, there was. You were not paying attention because you were only thinking about getting your cake home. Anyway, ma’am, it took that lady several minutes to get from her vehicle inside because of the slowness of her walk. So the question is, since this old lady did not feel she could park in the fire lane but propery parked over there, what makes you feel entitled to get a closer parking spot than she?

At that time, she turned around in a huff and started walking back to her vehicle. Half way there, she turned around a with a finger pointing at me, and said, “Son, I will have you know that my tax dollars pay your salary!!” And I could not refute that. With her brand new Lincoln, her designer shoes and dress she was wearing, the thousands of dollars worth of jewelry she was wearing, the obvious manicures and hair styling, what she bought with her just that morning could have probably paid for several years of my salary.

Remember I told you that the fine was only $15.00. She paid at least three times that amount for the humongous cake she bought. It is not about the money. It is that I called her out on the absurdity of her feeling of entitlement due to her affluence. I offended her. If she is still alive (that was over ten years ago) she is probably still fuming over the cop that was a jerk and wrote her a parking ticket.

Another example was when I was heading to a domestic at a home in a very affluent neighborhood (3/4 to a million dollar homes, also the same neighborhood that Michael Vick’s mother was living at the time). At the entrance of the neighborhood it opened up to a very wide street that accessed the sections of the neighborhood. Since there was a playground there along with a golf course that bordered both parts of the street and were golf carts would cross, the speed limit was 25mph. As I was headed to the back of the neighborhood, and as I had my radar on, I observed a very fast vehicle approaching me going 50mph in a 25mph zone. I surmised that I better take time after this call to determine if this location was a major problem the police have overlooked in the past.

There was no place to hide on this section of highway, so I pulled over and parked my cruiser in open view. I was just initially attempting to determine if I needed to focus speed enforcement in this neighborhood. It only took about five minutes when a brand new Escalade came screaming down the street at 52mph once again in a 25mph zone. I felt I had no choice but to answer that violation by getting to know the individual through a chat. So I pulled the vehicle over and found the drive to be a white woman in her late 30’s.

Now, usually, I don’t, as a rule, mention the race of the individual that I write about because it is not usually not relevant. However, in this instance, not only is it relevant, but you need to know this in order to fully appreciate the conversation I had with her. This was a young mother of two who were riding in the back in their respective car seats. It was discovered by looking at her license she lived within the neighborhood.

After I acquired her license, registration and proof of insurance, I told her why I stopped her, and that she will be given a citation for her speed. Then she asks accusingly, “Why are you even here?” I must have looked at her with a puzzled look, so she added, ” What I’m trying to ask, why are you even in this neighborhood? We are law abiding citizens in this neighborhood and you pulling me over is nothing but harassment. Why aren’t you over in College Square taking care of all those criminals that live over there?”

College Square is a mostly government subsidized housing development for the poor and disadvantaged. And yes, there are many criminal issues that occur in that neighborhood, especially at night. When I worked the night shift, I spent my fair share of the shift there patroling and executing enforcement. But as I could read between the lines of what she was saying, she was asking me why wasn’t I over there taking care of all the black people that live over there.

I don’t say what I’m about to as patronizing or trying to promote something that is not true. My experience as a police officer had proven to me that most of the people that live in government subsidized neighborhoods are not living there because they want to, but that they cannot afford to live anywhere else. The majority of the population of these development communities are not law breakers as a whole. Many may smoke weed, or work under the table without paying taxes, but when it comes to violent offenses it is only a small precentages that commit those crimes. Most do what they do because they feel like that is the only way to survive.

When I told her that she was still getting the citation, she exclaimed, “But I live here!! I do!! It is so unfair for you to write me a ticket where I live!!” I reminded her that she was traveling at over twice the speed limit and that the ticket would be reckless by speed, and that, yes, she would have to appear before the judge to answer for her egregious offense. That is when she called me a fascist pig. She then told me her intention that “I’ll have your badge!!” just after signing the summons.

Evidently, her defense attorney wouldn’t ask me if she was cooperative for the most part, if he had actually subponaed and watched my body cam footage of the stop, yet I answered, “I’ll let the judge decide after watching the body cam footage I have with me.” I then presented the footage for viewing for the judge the attorney and all present in court, where everything had been recorded from that traffic stop. The judge ended up giving her a suspended jail sentence and probation for a year and the maximum fine he could.

What I truly wanted to say when she asked why I was there, and once again I’m wise enough to know I would be complained on as me calling her a criminal, is that we catch criminals, even in affluent neighborhoods, with enforcement such as traffic stops.

It is important to know that the Oklahoma City bomber that killed and injured innocent folks and children was caught soon after because an observant officer witnessed the vehicle he was driving away that was missing a back plate and pulled the vehicle over. In my career, I have apprehended three fugitives from justice that I can remember off the top of my head by pulling over a vehicle for nothing more that a brake light being out or something as minor. But now there is a push to prevent officers from pulling over for those types of violations anymore. I do know in VA laws were recently passed that will prohibit patrol officers from pulling vehicles over where the inspection or the registration appeared expired until after a certain matter of months, such as 3 or 4. It will make it harder for law enforcement to catch these criminals and take them off the street.

Since this blog is extremely long, and I’ve still got a lot to write, I will continue this in the next blog entitled, “The Entitled Ones–Act Two.” In this article, you will be amazed at what group of people I address who have taken entitlement to a whole new level. You won’t want to miss reading it.

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