I hear you, and I was raised the same way, and it always feels a bit bad for me to give the advice I do, but I have seen enough good people screwed over my speaking to police when they shouldn't have and inadvertently getting themselves into a world of hurt that could have otherwise been avoided.
Most officers are great people, but they also have a job to do, and if they're talking to you they usually have heard another story from someone else and are treating that story as true.
I am perhaps a but overly cynical/jaded based on my experiences as a criminal lawyer.
I still tell my children (and clients) to always be very respectful to police but to politely decline to answer questions/discuss a situation if you are under investigation. In my experience, if police are investigating you, there is no talking your way out of the situation. If you are not a suspect then it is a bit of a different situation.
Or if you've done wrong and have no intention of fighting the charge, then own up to it. The two times I've been pulled over for speeding that's what I did. One time got a warning, other time got a reduced ticket.
Well said. Completely in agreement.
And same here. I’ve been pulled over twice, and both times I just apologized, said I actually didn’t have a good excuse to be driving that fast, and each time I was let off.
I was never driving dangerously. And usually in small town/highway.
I still chuckle…one day I was driving home from a job interview that didn’t go badly, but didn’t go great. It was a two hour drive on the highway. Traffic was light.
I was going about 130km and the limit was 110km. Red car. The town I had just passed was mostly seniors, and nobody else was even going 110km. I stood out. (This was also maybe 12 to 15 years ago)
I saw the red & blue lights flashing behind me. Waaaayyyyyyy behind me. Like 2km behind me or further. So…I pulled over. Turned off my vehicle. Had all of my documents ready for the officer who eventually pulled in behind me, about a minute or two later.
After asking the usual questions, he asked…”Why are you pulled over?” I told him I had seen his lights on way way back and I knew he was coming for me as I was the only one speeding.
He chuckled. We talked. I explained I just wanted to go home and call it a day, wasn’t happy about an interview, etc. But, I WAS speeding and that honestly wasn’t a good excuse. He just said he appreciated the honesty, to slow it down a bit, and drive safe.
And there's the rub...
You are making the false assumption that 'dick measuring' won't get in the way of normal collaboration.
I can't count the number of times when a proposed joint approach to exercises for the training year were immediately discounted by various COs because of their ego issues. Smart Bde Comd's don't even try to go there because the political in-battles aren't worth it.
It was even impossible to coordinate exercises between two rifle companies from the same unit. In any case, because COs & RSMs were rarely seen on exercise in person (have to go the Bde Conference/Mess Dinner don't y'know?) it was easy just to go do our own things anyways without any awkward overwatch or centralized control.
Occasionally we would stumble across another unit, usually Sigs or Log, that was occupying the same exercise area and it was possible to coordinate effectively, but this was a 'once in a blue moon' rarity.
reading this, I continue to realize how lucky I was to be with a smaller unit that had a pretty solid CoC. A very under appreciated CoC.
Our RSM would be at almost every exercise. A very down to earth guy, solid leader. He wouldn’t micromanage or get in the way, but rather just observe the behaviour & competency of the troops. When there was downtime he would either give tips and pointers, or just banter.
If it was a training day in the armoury, on a weekend, he would pop in. Check on things. And leave.
He would do the odd RSM thing, such as randomly jack you up for ‘walking across the f**king parade square!’ But he’s an RSM, I think it was more of a biological function than anything else.
He also had a pretty good sense of humour. Once brave enough, we would taunt him with things like “Hey warrant, can I walk across the parade square yet, or is that still a no-no?”
In which he would chuckle while telling us to go screw ourselves.
We didn’t do many exercises with other units, but that was mostly due to how busy we were with deployments & such.
