PROFILING THE COPS
Growing up in the 1950's as I did, children were presented with images of the smiling policeman - a comforting if not altogether accurate depiction of law enforcement “officers” as human beings that you could rely on to help old ladies and children, as long as the latter were members of white, tax-paying families.
Recent years have yielded some alarming trends in the demeanor and aspect of the typical cop. The cop today is outfitted in full body armour and he struts around in a uniform that is more often than not black, with his bulletproof helmet and visor, his automatic weapon, and his utility belt festooned with gas canisters, tasers, ammo clips and the other armaments of his profession. He looks more like a soldier outfitted for war than a “peace officer.” And apparently, this is the image he has of himself: a warrior doing battle with the entire citizenry.
Routine traffic stops now require the response of two or three police vehicles, their lights flashing in a stroboscopic assault that would trigger an epileptic seizure. Cops travel in packs, like wolves, and you almost never see one alone, walking a beat. Cops prefer to scowl at you from behind mirrored sunglasses that make them look mean and dangerous. They go out of their way to look menacing. Again, the policeman of the 1950's has vanished. The smiling face, the neatly creased and ironed dress slacks, the casual saunter down the street, greeting shopkeepers and kids, the Andy of Mayberry image - gone, gone, gone. Not even the appearance of such a fiction survives. Today’s cop is bad news and he wants you to know it. If he had to say “Good morning, sir,” it would probably cause his teeth to shatter.
Behind these mere cosmetic changes lurks a sinister shift toward institutional psychosis and a lethal and volatile paranoia. Cops regard themselves as embattled defenders of an elite turf; they are a combat-hardened brotherhood of officers, a “thin blue line” separating the environs of their fortresslike headquarters from the “anarchy” that reigns outside. They are quick to take offense and merciless in dishing out cruelties. Of concern even to their superiors is their preoccupation with steroids and body-building, an obsession they have in common with maximum security prisoners. In Connecticut, a man with an IQ of 125 is turned down from joining a police department for scoring “too high” on a standardized test administered to recruits. If cops appear stupid, pumped up on chemicals and violent, it is because they are.
They are fixated on weaponry, killing, and violence. So terrifying is the aspect of the typical American cop that I am almost ready to disbelieve an incident I witnessed about fifteen years ago. In the mid 1990's I actually saw two decent cops. They were, as far as I know, the only two good cops on the planet, but there they were, in the central square of Ponce, Puerto Rico. I relate this story because, as it unfolds, you will see how utterly at variance with stateside cop behavior their conduct actually was.
It was Christmastime, and I was enjoying the improbable spectacle of a children’s chorus singing “Jingle Bells” in a city where the temperature was a balmy 78 degrees at 9:00 in the evening, and where an ice cream parlor across the street dispensed large cones of soft, just-made ice cream in coconut, tamarind and mango flavors.
A drunk sat on a bench nearby, clutching a small paper bag with his bottle in it. For some reason, he started yelling insults at the children. It was all in Spanish, but I could tell from the reaction of other bystanders that what he was saying wasn’t too nice. As if out of nowhere, two cops appeared, striding toward the drunk. At this point I fully expected to see them club him senseless, cuff him and haul him off. That’s probably what you would expect, too, if this incident occurred in your city.
But no. One cop actually knelt down on one knee in front of the seated drunk and began talking to him quietly. The other cop stood there, nodding his head every once in a while. After a minute or two of this, the drunk had visibly quieted, and the standing officer calmly reached down, took the bottle in its bag from the drunk’s hands, and walked over to a nearby trash basket where he emptied it out. Both cops then continued to talk to the drunk quietly, and after about five minutes, they got up and left, leaving the drunk alone on the bench. And that was it. I was aghast. Why couldn’t ALL cops be like this?
Today, you don’t even have to be yelling insults to get yourself tasered or shot by an
American cop. We are seeing images, repeatedly, of cops calmly aiming and blowing the brains out of “suspects” who are cuffed, utterly defenseless, of no possible danger to anyone, and lying face down on the ground. The testosterone-charged insanity of the police extends to high speed chases through city streets, where almost inevitably, an innocent citizen is killed or maimed when the police car, travelling at speeds approaching 100 mph through a residential area, smashes into a bicycle or a baby stroller. A child could tell you that the danger posed by one speeding maniac is half that of two speeding maniacs - not to mention the fact that the speeds continue and escalate precisely because there is a chase involved. There are times when ordinary human prudence would dictate that the safer, saner course of action would be to pull back and desist from engaging in an already deadly situation. But you must never, never expect a cop to act in so rational and sensible a manner, when an opportunity exists for thrills, squealing tires, roaring engines, and possible gunplay at the end, or at least some good club, taser and foot work on the disabled “perp.”
What is astonishing is that the police themselves admit that we are fundamentally correct in our assessment of them. They are a hardened, criminal gang that is virtually indistinguishable from the community of thugs they are tasked with controlling.
John Morrison, a retired San Diego police lieutenant, writes in the January 2009 issue of American Cop about the kind of stuff it takes to become a “law enforcement officer.” (Although it’s a mistake to judge a book by its cover, the cover of this issue of American Cop gives a sampling of what you can expect inside: “TOUGH TOYS FOR SWAT AND PATROL,” “BLADE TECH - HOLSTERS & KNIVES,” KIMBERS COVERT II - THREE GUN BATTERY,” and “HARDIGG STORMCHASE - PROTECTION FOR MISSION CRITICAL EQUIPMENT.” ) So if you’re one of those few chance readers who thinks that anarchists lack any credibility on this subject, or that we exaggerate the brutality and insensitivity of the police, let’s see what Morrison himself says.
“So You Think You Want To Be a Cop? Well, Think Again” is the title of his article. It begins with a rambling tirade on the bitter lot of policemen everywhere, but it is enlightening, not for the imagined injustices it rails against, but for what it quite frankly and unashamedly admits about the psychological make-up of police recruits:
“During my quarter-century on the PD, we hired approximately 10,000 new officers, for a net gain of about 700. What happened to the others? I saw them come and go.”
The first thing we have to ask ourselves here is this: what kind of industry is it that has this kind of attrition? What does it say about the kinds of “qualifications” recruits must meet? What does it say about the skills and intelligence of the people doing the hiring, when well over nine tenths of new employees end up leaving or being fired? What does it say about the nature of the work itself, or about the style of management that must exist, if the overwhelming majority of new employees are driven off in droves? Anyone looking at such a “business” would see red flags coming up all over the place. If this enterprise were listed on the NY Stock Exchange, brokers would be steering their clients away from investing in it altogether. A business run this poorly is a disaster waiting to happen. Not even American banking executives seem to be able to fuck up this badly. Morrison continues:
“Many were ‘dropped’ during their probationary period for minor fumbles, failures or transgressions which wouldn’t even register a blip on the radar of other occupations.”
Of course, he cites no examples. But we are already alert to the fact that we have a rowdy crew of newbies here - recruits who seem to be characterized by an abundance of “fumbles, failures or transgressions.”
“Some were fired and some of those went to jail or prison, often for actions which aren’t even arrest-worthy offenses for civilians. Here’s an example: simple ‘assault’ is a petty misdemeanor for a citizen. ‘Assault under cover of authority’ - by a cop - is a felony punishable by prison sentence.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. In citing assault as a misdemeanor offense, Morrison cleverly forgets to tell us about the thousands of persons charged every year with “assaulting a police officer,” an offense that is punishable by beating, macing, tasering, having one’s face slammed into plate glass windows, kicking, clubbing, shooting, crippling, disfigurement, and often, death. He forgets to tell us that invariably, such an accusation is brought by the smirking officers themselves, and that the alleged malefactor in reality did nothing to warrant the charge other than perhaps exercising his “right” to remain silent. Morrison is well into his whining here, and to hear him tell it, the cops are just getting victimized all over the place - forget the fact that the only successful prosecutions of police are those where there are witnesses to their brutality, or where cameras have captured their excessive use of force on tape for all the world to see. A lone citizen, apprehended in his home or in his car or on a darkened street, doesn’t stand a prayer of a chance of bringing a successful prosecution against five or six armed, uniformed bullies who are all too ready to lie for one another. But let’s let Morrison continue his rant:
“Occasionally, a hapless citizen ‘gets the book thrown at him.’ Frequently, an errant officer gets the whole library dropped on him.”
Oh, please. In what other occupation can you screw up so egregiously that even the newspapers are blaring your name in headlines, and expect only to be put on “administrative leave”, at full pay, until a little body of your own chuckling cronies completes its “internal investigation” and finds you not at fault, in spite of the facts?
Morrison is wound up now - here he continues with his touching elegy to the poor misunderstood policeman:
“Some were killed in line of duty, others became disabled, crippled, crazy, or chronically depressed. Not a small percentage resigned in disgust, either with the public they were sworn to protect, the laughable, lunatic carnival we call ‘the criminal justice system,’ or with their own corrupt, incompetent, vicious and venal leaders - their ‘superior officers.’”
And there you have it. There’s the crowning admission that a) most of these guys have little but contempt for the public, b) little but contempt for the laws they enforce, and c) little to guide them along the paths of righteousness but “corrupt, incompetent, vicious and venal leaders.” I didn’t make this up - these are Morrison’s own words.
You can see where this article if headed. In the pages that follow, Morrison paints a savage picture of the wasteland his beloved cops inhabit - it is filled with “actors from bad B-grade zombie movies” (presumably he’s referring to you and me here), “denizens of the dark,” “street whores” and “adrenaline-juiced human gazelles.” These are the ordinary citizens.
On the other side are the valiant officers. Or maybe not-so-valiant. Morrison complains:
“We draw some strange applicants: ex schoolyard bullies, neo-Nazis, incipient voyeurs, adrenaline junkies, sadists, masochists, closet crusaders, guys trying to compensate for a puny penis . . .”
Huh? Well, what have we been telling you, right here in the pages of the Match for the past forty years, anyway? Sounds like Morrison has a pretty good handle on what makes a good “police officer” after all. He even admits of the foregoing bullies, Nazis, junkies, etc. that they “might enjoy a long and personally rewarding career in law enforcement.” And not forgetting room for advancement, he adds:
“If you’ve got a smooth enough line of bullshit, a chameleon’s talent for blending in, and you’re morally bankrupt, you could vault to the top and beyond, into politics.”
Yep. That’s exactly what he said.
Let’s turn our attention to a recent article by Kristina Davis appearing in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Davis writes about the alarming trend among policemen to use anabolic steroids - the same drugs that will end the career of a baseball player, an Olympic swimmer or a world class bicyclist.
“They need it to win fights with bad guys, to look menacing on the streets or to get that extra edge on the SWAT team. To some police officers, the use of anabolic steroids is all about protecting themselves and the public. But top law enforcement brass around the country are learning that the implications of a police force on steroids are far more frightening, Phoenix police Commander Kim Humphrey said.”
Davis proceeds to describe how police chiefs are becoming alarmed at increasing aggressive behavior, lack of judgment, and violent outbursts among steroid-using cops. Again quoting the same Phoenix police Commander she writes,
“Some officers resigned when they learned they may be tested, while others were investigated for steroid-related incidents, including two domestic violence cases, Humphrey said.”
The issue of domestic violence among cops is one that can hardly fail to escape anyone’s notice. Even prior to the widespread use of steroids, cops in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's were becoming notorious for beating their wives and children. Bear in mind: these are the wonderful, compassionate gentlemen the public pays to protect them from criminal assailants.
Dr. Lawrence Miller is a police psychologist for the West Palm Beach Police Department. And even though this “doctor” is on the payroll of the very people he is writing about, he reveals a great deal when he says,
“At one time, (domestic violence) was law enforcement’s dirty little secret, although it’s not much of a secret anymore.”
He goes on to say that
“. . . it is not known whether police officers have a higher or lower rate of domestic violence than the general public, primarily because potentially higher rates of abuse might be offset by lower levels of reporting by fellow officers. . . .until recently, many departments have maintained a conspiracy of silence around such occurrences, often persuading the complaining spouse that loss of her husband’s job would be potentially devastating to the family, and urging the couple to settle things ‘off the record.’ In other cases, especially where the call is to the home of a senior officer, patrol partner, or member of an elite unit, there may the palpable, if unstated, threat of ostracism, lack of backup, or general opprobrium for cops who rat out other cops, similar to what occurs with other abuse-of-authority cases.”
Touching. Where is the empathy for the civilian victims of the police who, being falsely charged with crimes they never committed, wait months in jail for trial, lose their jobs and families, and are forced to cough up tens of thousands of dollars to pay a lawyer to win an acquittal or dimissal of charges? What further evidence can we possibly provide , other than the very words of police lieutenant Morrison and police psychologist Miller, that the police in this country are a self-selecting group of extremely dangerous psychopaths who are willing to lie and cover for one another?
Miller gives us a clue to the paranoid nature of cop culture when he writes,
“The general training model employed by most police academies is based on principles of adult learning that involve a combination of didactic classroom instruction, behavioral participation, simulated patrol scenarios, and role playing. The emphasis is on developing a range of both physical and psychosocial intervention skills that assume frequent, and often unpleasant, interactions between citizens and police.”
It should therefore be of no surprise to anyone that when you go out of your way to recruit “ex schoolyard bullies, neo-Nazis, incipient voyeurs, adrenaline junkies, sadists, masochists, closet crusaders, guys trying to compensate for a puny penis,” make certain none of them has anything higher than a double digit IQ, allow them to take anabolic steroids and then stand by and do nothing when they bludgeon their own wives into insensibility, after training them to “assume frequent, and often unpleasant, interactions between citizens and police,” you will get the predictable thing.
When you next see a cop swaggering down the street in full combat regalia, like some jarhead in Baghdad, ask yourselves whether these are the kinds of men who properly ought to be charged with enforcing laws and protecting your kids.
After all, if they will beat one of their own children to death, or gun down their own wives, just think what they might do to yours.