It is our first amendment right to say that. Many state courts have been upholding that it is our right to flip off the police just because we feel like it, because it is our right of freedom of expression.
Again, it all depends on the state.
No, but it's practically a daily site to see a cop get stuck at a red light, and they will turn their lights and siren on just long enough to give some since of legality to go on through the red light.
Or to speed, I've seen that one a few times. Or they will be off duty and on the cell phone and not wearing a seat belt (On duty, fine. They might be a situation where they will have to jump out of their car). Far too many cops let that little piece of scrap metal called a badge give them a since that they are above the law and can break it.
It's not that they are above the law but are excepted by it. At least in California, police are basically exempt from traffic concerns when in performance of their duties.
I have never met a cop who thought they could willingly break the law. If a cop does something that a civilian can't, it doesn't mean they are breaking the law because there are lots of things they can do that civilians can't (like open carry loaded guns--At least in California).
As far as speeding and turning on lights only for intersections where there are red lights, most departments prioritize calls based on a number of factors.That being said, while a call might be serious, it might not be worth it to officially declare the call an "emergency call" and thus authorize a unit to go somewhere with lights and sirens (on most departments officers cannot drive from point A to point B with their lights and sirens on without authorization given over the radio--there are a number of reasons why this authorization might not be given such as heavy traffic, rain, risk, unknown details, etc--For instance, on our department if a call comes in that shots were heard and people were screaming outside, that by itself isn't enough to warrant light/sirens, but if someone is hit, then it is).
So if there is an important call (a good example is a fight between two people because that is often times not a call that is not given light/sirens authorization, but usually escalates to one if given enough time), but one is not authorized to use lights and sirens completely, then often times the practice is to drive speedily and use the lights/sirens at intersections.
Either way, with or without lights cops don't have to worry about certain traffic violations such as speeding, lane changing, etc as these things are left up to the individual agencies to regulate.
From personal experience, I've never seen a cop go through a red light without somewhere to go. Most of the time cops just drive around looking for stuff. It's their job to drive around. There's absolutely no reason to try to "get somewhere" faster because 70% of the time on patrol is just that, patrolling.
The other 30% is when there's stuff to go to, and how you get there is almost always your own judgment call. Whether you decide to drive the speed limit or over it, use your lights at intersections or not, etc. In fact, good cops won't really even be on surface streets that often because statistically crime doesn't occur on surface streets.
So if you see them driving on a surface street, they are probably going somewhere important.
I'm not saying this isn't abused, I'm saying it's not some sort of regular abuse that goes on and is tolerated. For all you know, it could just be that you live in a high-call area (high call does not mean high-crime. I once worked an area where people loved to call in prank calls, but due to the fact that about 40% of the time the call was serious, we had to treat each call seriously even if we could be relatively sure that the person calling was just prank calling).
Some other common factors are that usually authorization for an emergency call is only given to one or two units. So if you have felony domestic violence (which is a lights/sirens call) during rush hour, then they will probably only authorize one unit to roll with lights/sirens. Well, domestic violence calls are the number one calls on which cops die or get into use of force incidents. So if you're not authorized to go completely with lights and sirens, you'll at least want to drive quickly there so that the one unit who is going there isn't alone.
Sometimes, you can have a bunch of non-emergent, but important calls stacking up. For instance, you could have a call of a person threatening to commit suicide, a rowdy party, a robbery that occurred more than 5 minutes ago, a person not breathing, and a child abuse report all at the same time and yet only the person not breathing is a lights/sirens call. If the calls are constantly coming in quick, then you'll drive faster to all them to try and create time to handle important/emergency calls.
On a final note, you point out that cops work for the people. This is true. However, it doesn't change the fact that they come from the people and thus are no better than the people, are (for now) only required to have a high school diploma and thus consist of a large number of young people, working long hours, working holidays, and all for a pretty crappy paycheck and the potential loss of relationships. They must constantly deal with the worst people in society and hear and see in gruesome detail some of the worst crimes and all of that with very little time between calls to recoup. So while most cops may outwardly appear to be jerks keep in mind that they are still people, you don't know how their day has gone so far, and while this doesn't justify bad behavior, they're still only human and you shouldn't hold them to any higher standard than you do to any other human being.
The best thing for
everyone would be education and an understanding that we're all responsible for upholding society and the law. Law enforcement simply do it for a living. It would probably also help to have greater psychological resources available for cops because I feel that lack of such resources is the cause of most problems.
