Don't Get All Badge Happy

Sam and I read the following quote at Police Path.com. “No other occupation offers the rewards and excitement of law enforcement – one of the hottest careers around. In addition to a great salary, benefits and job security, you’ll have the satisfaction of protecting people, arresting criminals, and wearing the badge of honor.”

BALONEY! Apparently that LAPD guy who was just hunted down and killed found out what it was really like to be a police officer? I used to be one too (although I didn’t go ballistic). Let me talk you out of becoming a cop if I can.

First, it’s such a “hot” career because cops are retiring in mass numbers, getting out while they can and before their respective employers cut their retirement benefits. Great salary? Is $4,000 a month really enough money to put your life on the line every day you walk out your front door? And what about your wife and kids?

Protect people? If you are a nice person now, you will cease to become one after a few months on the job and adopt the attitude, as they all do (think Seattle P.D.), that it’s you against the world. You’ll mainly be interested in protecting number one.

Arrest criminals? Sure. But you will deal with so many creeps you will soon believe everyone is a creep. And there is a very fine line between being on the side of the law and on the other side. Many, many cops have crossed over. I used to have the right to break the law to enforce the law. Trouble is I joined many of my brother (and sister) state patrol officers in breaking traffic laws whenever I darned well felt like it. Cops are some of the very worst DUI offenders.

Worst of all your heart will harden against people to the point you would throw your own mother in jail for a minor infraction of the law. You will lose former friends, if you had any, because they won’t trust you and you won’t trust them.

If you think wearing a badge (and a gun) will bring you honor, you are barking up the wrong tree. You want honor, become a teacher or a preacher or a social worker or someone who would really do some good. Only put on a uniform if you are interested in boinking badge bunnies because they will be drawn to you like you are carrying carrots in your back pocket. But if that’s why you want to be a cop, shame on you.

Still, if you are jobless the Washington State Patrol is looking for a few good, uh, persons (I almost faux paud there and said men). We can’t call people men or women in this state anymore. The state Senate voted 41-1 recently to get rid of all references to “fireman” and “policeman” in a state law about public employee pensions and replace them with gender-neutral words: firefighter and police officer. The House probably will approve the new law too.

Ironically, according to an article in Fox News, “A 1983 Washington state law already had required all new statutes to be written in gender-neutral terms, so state officials were tasked with going through state statutes dating back to 1854 to revise the rest but that wasn’t good enough for some people.

“As in past bills on the issue that have tackled sections of the state code, some revisions were as simple as adding "or her" after "his." Others required a little more scrutiny. Phrases like "man's past" changes to "humankind's past" and a "prudent man or woman" is simply a "prudent person."

What do you suppose we’ll have to call a she male now, an it it? That’s a toughie.

But I digress. According to the Seattle Times, the State Patrol is having a difficult time finding enough non-gender persons to fill its ranks, which are rapidly being depleted by retirements. The Legislature has authorized the patrol to hire 54 new trooper cadets in the next two years. But the Patrol reports that it’s a significant challenge to find qualified cadet applicants who can pass the physical fitness test (about one-third fail the test of sit-ups, push-ups and running - even a surprising number of people in their 20s), who can pass the written tests (another third of the candidates fail those), who can pass oral interviews and polygraph scrutiny and then, on top of all that pass a background check.

Unfortunately, what the State Patrol and most police agencies are looking for as “qualified” candidates are people who are part canonized saint, Roy Rogers, Mahatma Gandhi, Superman and the Hulk all rolled into one. You only have to keep an eye on the news to realize that even when agencies hire the supposed Six Million Dollar Man (uh, person) he or she is quite possibly going to eventually go astray.

Three bags of poop on you if you don’t believe it. Get a real job.

Useless Boobs Are Boaring

My stepfather used to say that certain things were as useless as boobs on a boar (except, he didn’t say boobs). Sam and I feel the same way about some cops. There are way too many of them and they are way too aggressive.

Case in point, the U.S. Department of Justice recently handed down a finding that Seattle PD’s enforcement culture was one of routine and widespread use of excessive force and violation of civil rights. Several beatings caught on film and the fatal shooting of woodcarver John T. Williams in August 2010 by Officer Ian Birk led to the Department of Justice finding.

In defense of the cops, a lot of them in our state have been shot lately and that does tend to make you jumpy.  In December of 2009, four uniformed Lakewood officers - three men and one woman - sitting in a coffee shop attempting to catch up on some paperwork were gunned down by a convicted murderer and accused child rapist. And the shooting of cops is not endemic only to Washington State. It also seems to be widespread across the U.S. According to CNN, as of December 28 of this past year, 173 cops were killed in the line of duty - 68 of them by gunfire - an increase of 13% over last year.

That statistic doesn’t even include Ranger Margaret Anderson shot to death on New Year’s Day as she attempted to set up a checkpoint in Mount Rainier National Park to make sure vehicles entering the park carried snow chains.

You can hardly blame the law enforcement community for believing as Fox News reported that, "There's a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on."

"It's not a fluke," Richard Roberts, a spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations,, told MSNBC.com. foxnews.com

But it’s not really a war against cops that’s occurring (we thought there was a war going on in the 60’s and 70’s when I was a cop too). No, it’s really just a war against the heavy-handed use of authority. Sam and I are not psychiatrists, but we firmly believe that the big problem here is that a lot of deep-seated emotions of helpless vulnerability and disenfranchisement have been suppressed too long in certain people, resulting in those people exploding and killing authority figures.

It’s unfortunate that the police usually are society’s first line of defense (or offense) against those people who feel disenfranchised and who question and defy authority - riots, “Occupy” movements, etc. result and some poor cop winds up in someone’s gun sight.

Ironically, the more disenfranchised people express their unhappiness and hostility, the more we pass harsher laws, hand down more punitive sentences and build more unforgiving prisons. By unconscious inference we thus expect our police to act harsher and more punitively.

I’m sure all the cops out there are going to scoff at this, but I sincerely wish that it were possible for our uniformed personnel be more like Andy of Mayberry or British Bobbies. I can’t help thinking we would be a whole lot better off if we reverted to your basic flat foot walking a beat every day, actually getting to know the people on his or her beat and treating them as neighbors and friends.

I know, I know, that probably wouldn’t work on our nation’s freeways - kinda’ hard to patrol them on foot. Trouble is we’re too afraid to try something different in this country because we want to believe justice is best served by our Wild West perception that an eagle eye, a steady hand, a lightning-fast draw ala Marshall Dillon and the NRA protecting our right to possess handguns until death do us part will keep us safe.

Boaring! Three bags of poop on useless boobies.