I didn't marry a cop, but a year after we married, he became one. It was a shock having grown up in the liberal-child- of- the-'60's-dont' trust-anyone over-30-generation. I didn't like the idea, but I understood it. He was laid off from his job 24 hours before our baby was born. After spending the year taking care of her while I reluctantly went back to work, he decided he needed to find another job. The police department was hiring.
What I never get used to is how badly people treat him when he is on duty. It's true: People hate cops. Sometimes for very good reasons. Sometimes not. In the last twenty years, my husband has looked more like a social worker than a cop.
Last summer he insisted a rape kit be ordered for a college student who "didn't think she was raped." The first unit to respond just took her intoxicated word for it. He stayed with her and her friends in the hospital until she was released to her parents. She had been raped that night.
Two years ago he answered a call for "children left alone" in a seedy motel in the city. When he arrived he found a six year old girl babysitting her four year old and one year old siblings. The little girl asked him if he could help her change the baby's diaper. She had been waiting hours for her mother to return with some lunch. While my husband waited for the social worker to arrive he changed the diaper.
These are the stories that make me ashamed I was ever embarrassed by my husband's profession.
The other day he was called to the park in our city where the protestors are camping out. The call was for an assault with a knife. One protestor against another. He arrived to find himself the target. People took pictures of him, and baited him, saying, "Are you here to beat us up?" He reminded them that they called him. The scene was surreal. A man was bleeding, yet the protestors turned on the cop who showed up to help. My husband asked them to step back, and one of them replied, What are you going to do, shoot us?
My husband the cop. Part of the 99%.
He told me later he talked to them, explaining that cops were actually in solidarity with them. He said he respected what they were doing. But it fell on deaf, ignorant ears.
Had I known that my husband was going to do so much good in his job I might not have been such a snob. I might have put down my tie-dye flag a few years earlier.
There are some really bad police officers. And there are some really bad butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. And doctors and lawyers.
It's sad to me. Sad that they think it's us against them. And they don't have a clue who "us" is.
Same side.
Same 99%.
Same struggle.
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Jacqueline Allain
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Our older movements missed a huge bet by deciding, based on ideology only, that all police were the same.
rated.
Yeah. I don't like it when I get pulled over for something I did wrong. But when I'm in trouble, who are the first people I call? You got it.
Same is true for the Occupiers. Not all are pure in their intentions. And that "element" is as dangerous as those for whom we have adopted the title "terrorist."
I trust the fates that your husband walks beneath the shield of safety and he will rise in notoriety for the good he does.
And got a months probation.
Cops are for the most part, a good bunch of folks. And like you say, there are ne'er do wells in every cross section of America
Rated D
Most of the police are just regular people trying to do their jobs - to help people, keep the streets safer, and interrupt bad situations before they become worse. If they're helping you out, just say thank you.
I have no doubt that your husband is a good police officer. But, he should rail(as should everyone) against the bad apples who ruin the names of those who serve with honesty and integrity. Too often the bad cop is protected and his misdees are covered up by his fellow officers.
It is not like other professions: When a cop is bad or goes bad they have guns and jails at their disposal.
My sense is that we are too trusting of police and courts. Some police officers like John Gregozek hate being in the 99% and act accordingly.
When cops do bad things, we hear about it. The, hah!, 99% of the time they're do good things, we don't hear. It's like the news doesn't report all the cars that got to and fro today, only the accidents, the worse the more coverage.
HUGGGGGGGGG
I think of the scene in Tale Of Two Citites when they stormed The Bastille and the army turned around and joined the protestors.
It's a funny thing. When I was a pot smoking Abbie Hoffman reading punk, the cops were "pigs". Now that I am a 57 year old law abiding citizen, I can still feel that bolt of fright when a police car is behind me....am I holding?!...even though for a long time the answer has been no. Thank goodness I was allowed to grow old enough to experience relief when that blue uniform arrives. I wish the same for the occupiers.
Lezlie
It's a tough job for those who choose to protect and to serve the greater community. They see a side of society most of us aren't privy to. Blessings to those who fight the good fight.
Yes, there are bad lawyers and waiters and engineers and plumbers, etc. The difference is, those people don't carry guns and have the power to deprive you of your freedom or even kill you. Given the extreme power that cops have, it's much easier for a really bad minority to ruin the reputation of the whole profession.
Good for your husband for what he does.
And the services provided by our police qualify as some of the more challenging, dangerous, but necessary services we receive.
Blessings on you both.
Cops are supposed to support and defend the constitution like any other minor or major governmental authority or representative and it sounds like your husband is doing it the way he should. This is a hard thing to do. My uncle Johnny got out of the Highway Patrol in California many years ago, because, in his words, "He couldn't see past the hypocrisy of busting folks for doing what all his fellow officers did in their off duty time."
My advice is and continues to be for the Occupy Action people:
Don't taunt or harrass anyone -- ever.
When the "authority" comes to make an arrest, don't resist. This is supposed to be Peaceable Assembly.
Always inform anyone harrassing, harangueing or arresting you at the movements:
You are one of the People, too. You don't have to do this. Join us.
We really need to have those officers who support what's going on to step up, take a risk and refuse to violate our Constitutionally Guranteed Rights by arresting folks for insisting on their 1st Amendment Right to peaceably assemble and ask/demand redress for grievances from their government.
You are one of the People, too. You don't have to do this. Join us.
-r-
The main difference is that they (and their families) *live* in a pressure cooker. A cop is never off duty even when they are, they're never on vacation even when they are. They're always a cop. I think probably those in the various medical professions and fire departments are the only others who actually live and breathe their livelihood. This does separate them from civilians - *but not from their humanity*.
We too often forget that :(. They have a job to do, and most of them are doing it to the best of their ability. Sometimes we don't like the results. But I shudder to think of this world with it's enormous population and diversity of ideals - and no one standing watch.
Rated for thanks to the 'good guys in blue'.
Bless your husband for what he does to help people in need. And I'm sorry he has to put up with so much abuse in his line of work.
I remember how decently and kindly I was treated by police officers when I had been raped. Right then, I badly needed to feel protected, and they absolutely provided that. The woman detective who interviewed me initially stayed with me through the examination until I was released from the emergency room, and she was just as kind and reassuring as could be.
rated
It's easy to forget there are good cops when you live among aggressive ones who don't seem to care at all for their community, or the youth of the community, just their quota.
I'm glad to hear about your husband's experiences, although it's a shame to hear how bad it's gotten. We used to be glad for the police when I was growing up, and I'm glad for them now, but the taint, and the power, of some bad police officers leaves a strong negative impression that affects even if you don't want it to....
I've already written one blog mentioning that cops are not the enemy...and have written several replies to a blog today that want to portray them as the enemy.
Time for everyone to remember that the 99% includes a whole bunch of people...including most cops.
Your husband going to the park to help a stabbed person and getting harassed is just sad. That said, I don't know what park you speak of or what has gone on between the police and protestors in the recent past. Here in Sacramento on day one of the movement the police lined up around the park where our occupiers are looking armed for bear. I don't blame the individual officers, but that set a tone of aggression that has carried on.
One other thing, why is your default thought that the tie-dye flag is the enemy of the police shield? Can I still be a hippy and not be seen as the enemy of the police?
- thanks for writing this, Joan. I will send it to my friend.
--sinclair louis
"One withstands the invasion of armies; one does not withstand the invasion of ideas."
--victor hugo
occupy party reaches critical mass/seismic effect--now what?
The bad apples ARE spoiling the barrel where I live.
It can be a tough job, but no one is forced to become a cop, much less a violent cop.
There is an entrenched solidarity in any enforcement agency and if the majority of cops are decent people and yet comply with the tradition that they must defend any and all action by their fellows, good and bad, then they must accept the consequences that they are considered accomplices to unnecessary brutalities.
As demonstrated by the use of tear gas today by the police in California against protestors exercising their constitutional rights these are the opening moves in what might be the next stage of nationwide protest over the open and documented corruption of many government officials, local and federal.
If people are killed, the police are merely following orders. Since I lived through WWII that phrase has a very chilling and familiar ring. I really hope this does not occur but the scenario seems inexorable and all the law enforcement people, good and bad, will be a part of it.
I am equally sure there are a few decent and compassionate bankers, but the economy is in total disarray by somebody involved in that operation.
Rated!!!!
(Like I've said in other posts about police officers, I've had more bad experiences with the police and therefore my opinion of them is more on the down side....a few bad apples, as has been stated, spoils the barrels!!!! But I know there's good cops out there, doing their job....like I said, tell your hubby thank you for being a good one!!!!)
I look forward to the day my husband can retire and work at something that will enrich his very kind heart.
I'm with Neil Paul; I think there's a bigger system at play that puts cops in a certain category in our heads at times. Especially during these protests. I can't tell you how much shocking footage I've seen of cops going WAY above and beyond what is needed. Yet I still don't necessarily hold them responsible (somewhat, yes). They are instructed. And those that instructed them are instructed.
But so many have seen the footage. It's hard to deny that kind of proof. It's hard not to have a knee-jerk reaction when a cop is actually trying to help.
The cops have indirectly become henchmen for the 1%. The front line. So that 1% remain invisible and cops are the bad guys yet again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZLyUK0t0vQ
Two wrongs don't make it right. There's nothing wrong with proactively engaging in demonstrations to express our freedoms to speech and assembly. There is something terribly wrong with reactionery rhetoric which results in the same conclusion. Arrests.
Thank you for writing this.
Of course no one is forced to become a cop; I never said that. I was stating a fact (and pretty much underscoring what Joan said): it is a difficult job and a person who undertakes it has to adopt a certain mindset, especially in a big city like Washington, DC. No, police officers aren't dropping dead left and right, but there's always that potential, and going to work every day for a cop is a little different than for the person who punches in at an office or a restaurant or a factory.
Your concerns about police brutality are valid ones and worthy of discussion. But not here.
Cops, despite rescuing kittens from trees, and helping the rape victim noted in your post have a role in class society and that role is to defend the right of big capitalists to own the means of production.
When there is a strike who is it that ushers the scabs into the factory? It is the cops. When the people stand up like OWS has done across the county, who is it that tears down the encampments, maces young girls, shoots Iraq war veterans in the head, and implant themselves as provacatures with the "black block" anarchists? It is the cops.
They are the mercenaries for capitalism and take up arms against the people. It is one thing to enforce traffic laws, it is quite another thing to defend the ownership of the means of production by Wall Streets 0.01%.
Bottom line cops are the thugs who defend the 1% from the majority. That is why they are hated in the Black and Brown community. That is why in Oakland their brutality swelled the OWS movement from a few hundred to tens of thousands.
If cops are sympathetic to the 99% they must arrest their officers and take the lead in arresting the criminals of Wall Street who stole our jobs and destroyed our economy. Will your husband do that? Of course not! So bottom line his consciousness is contradictory. He may sympathize with the 99% but takes orders from the 1%. No sympathy from this quarter!