Originally Posted by
Taker Park
I don't think OP represents the sentiments, personal or otherwise, of his colleagues or chain of command and may not be differentiating with how he performs his job versus how he's been encouraged to do it.
I've seen a few CBP officers get fired over unprofessional behavior over an extended period of time and a few for actual mistreatment of people. Now, the traveler (Global Entry) that spit in the face of an agriculture officer because he was getting a $300 penalty for undeclared pork, he had a pretty bad attitude.
All very true and I am not defending abusive LEOs - all too many of whom bring to the job a bully-like "respect mah authoritay" attitude. But a lot of interactions with LE go bad because pax/civilians have an incorrect understanding of what to expect and how to respond in such interactions. Civilians/pax are almost never taught how to interact with LE. Civilians tend to have the idea that a LEO is supposed to act like a Ritz Carlton concierge and have an indignant "how dare that cop even have a thought that I might be a violator" attitude. Until a cop clears a situation they have no idea who they are interacting with - remember that Tim McVeigh was brought in based on an improperly displayed license plate - and so they are trained to be wary and skeptical of everyone until satisfied otherwise. That approach also significantly helps suss out violators.
One of the best books I ever bought was back in high-school, Eagen's, "A Speeder's Guide to Avoiding Tickets," because it was my first introduction to the reality of LE thinking/approach and I learned how to interact with a LEO.
If more civilians understood how to interact with LE while at the same time knowing their rights (we do a VERY piss-poor job of this) then I believe there would be a lot less bad interactions.