September 25, 2007, 11:28 am

As many of my readers know, we run over 200 recreation facilities across the country, from Washington to Florida. This experience of serving nearly a million customers a year has yielded some odd insights. One of the ones I published before is that the far-and-away worst litterers in the country are Southern Californians and LA residents in particular, California-eco-speak notwithstanding.

Another observation we have made is that many times our most difficult customers turn out to be law enforcement officers. I'm not talking about all of them - the vast majority of law enforcement officers are friendly, peaceful campers. But when we have an incident of a customer refusing to follow the rules and wanting privileges no one else gets, like-as-not the customer is a law enforcement officer of some sort. For example, we have had an off duty law-enforcement officer pay for one campsite, and then spread his stuff out over three, and refuse to limit himself to one site or pay for the other two he was using. We have had off-duty law enforcement officers who had their car towed because it was parked for four hours in a tow-away zone, and then had their on-duty friends show up (well out of their jurisdiction) and interrogate our managers and otherwise harass them in retribution. Heck, we have biker gangs come through that are more respectful of authority than certain off-duty law enforcement officers.

This irritating little site (HT: Hit and Run) possibly explains some things for me. The site is apparently run by cops and is aimed at criticizing cops who do not extend other officers "professional courtesy" which apparently is a euphemism for "allow them to break the rules with impunity." Police officers who actually have the temerity to enforce the rules on other police officers are singled out as "dicks." Maybe I understand why some of our police officer customers are not accustomed to having to follow the same rules as everyone else.