Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://medium.com/OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759

I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.

This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough.

The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.

American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.

It's a long read and every paragraph is worth excerpting. Some of the comments below have excerpts.

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility. nt

[underpants]

2. That was a hell of a read. Rec'd.

I alluded to this above: the vast majority of calls for service I handled were theft reports, burglary reports, domestic arguments that hadn’t escalated into violence, loud parties, (houseless) people loitering, traffic collisions, very minor drug possession, and arguments between neighbors. Mostly the mundane ups and downs of life in the community, with little inherent danger. And, like I mentioned, the vast majority of crimes I responded to (even violent ones) had already happened; my unaccountable license to kill was irrelevant.
What I mainly provided was an “objective” third party with the authority to document property damage, ask people to chill out or disperse, or counsel people not to beat each other up. A trained counselor or conflict resolution specialist would be ten times more effective than someone with a gun strapped to his hip wondering if anyone would try to kill him when he showed up. There are many models for community safety that can be explored if we get away from the idea that the only way to be safe is to have a man with a M4 rifle prowling your neighborhood ready at a moment’s notice to write down your name and birthday after you’ve been robbed and beaten.

[niyad]

3. KNR for visibility

[chia]

4. "... stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years."

But a few hours later, Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her.

If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.

We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years.

[Wednesdays]

17. "...we could arrest them again and again..."

It would probably have been cheaper in the long run to just give them a roof over their heads and three square a day, only without the bars. Certainly a whole lot less hassle.

[Beartracks]

29. Well, where's the money for the private prison industry in that??

Referring to your full post, obviously, not just the subject line.

===========

[Nevilledog]

5. Well worth the read

[handmade34]

6. quite an essay

much to ponder in it... I recognize (in this essay) some people I've known in the past

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. Excellent read

The author speaks about a subject not often discussed.

The entire policing culture is rotten.

This country can do better, but it is remarkable how many people are perfectly happy to leave things as they are.

[SamKnause]

8. Just like I have been saying for years, there are no good cops.

They have earned my disrespect and hate.

[amuse bouche]

9. So shameful

[RT Atlanta]

10. FTP

n/t

[OMGWTF]

11. FTP indeed!

[Karadeniz]

12. W O W !!! Thatsa some speecy spicy article!!Thanks for sharing this!❤

[Blasphemer]

13. Wow... that was amazing.. thanks... nt

[lark]

14. Wow, so we totally got it right when we were calling them pigs in the 70's?

I knew it! Police are not our friends, not even close.

[hedda_foil]

15. I have been blind to this reality for all of my 75 years.

ENOUGH!!.!

[safeinOhio]

16. I learned first hand being married to one.

If you are not a cop, you are a dirt bag until proven otherwise.

[stopdiggin]

23. Yeah. Everybody (and I mean virtually everybody) is a perp.

Extremely cynical .. and ugly .. and always "Us vs Them"
There's no way to look at it other than .. paranoid and extremely dysfunctional.

(I didn't agree with every point made in the article .. but there's no doubt 99% of it was both informed, and on the square.)

[stopdiggin]

18. Thanks. Well worth reading (nt)

[lunatica]

19. Add to this the political culture of fearmongering so prevalent

by politicians just to get elected. Any politician who claims to be a law and order leader, like Trump does, is creating as much division and discontent and fear as they can, first by creating the division and then by capitalizing on the generated fear.

These have traditionally been called wedge issues which have been historical preferences used by the Republican Party. The Angry Black man dealing drugs, the Gay child molester pushing the ‘gay agenda’, the Illegals coming to take your jobs, and the Unions demanding wealth that they don’t deserve from rich people who give them jobs. It’s all tried and true and didn’t just start with Trump. Trump just followed through by going full blown Fascist, while the rest of the Republicans just quietly go back to making themselves richer.

[Oppaloopa]

20. I partially blame the Police Unions. Everone else's union has been made weaker except the that one.

Management even helps the Union in order to prevent law suits that is what the lying and cover ups are all about.

[LiberalLovinLug]

21. Big Kick and Rec!!!!!

This should be read by everyone.

[SeattleVet]

22. Amazing essay.

Just shared it via Facebook, with the caveat that if someone want to make comments about anything that it says, they have to have read the entire thing, since their questions/objections are most likely addressed in at least one section.

[LittleGirl]

24. I didn't expect that

But I’m so glad I took the time to read it.
That’s enough internet for today.

[plimsoll]

25. He omitted one thing.

They are payed professional witnesses.

They'll lie by omission. They'll mislead and misdirect.

They're testimony is given more weight, but in that capacity they are truly paid witnesses.

[ProfessorGAC]

26. Wow!

That's quite the opinion piece.
Thanks for finding it.

[Hekate]

27. They're right. The system we have is rotten to the core & we need to start over.

What we have -- what we've tolerated -- has to be on a completely different model.

What we have makes me ashamed to be an American.

[qwlauren35]

28. Defund the Police - Abolish them altogether.

This is his solution.

So, folks, stop suggesting that the phrase "defund" is not accurate, poor branding, etc. It is exactly what it is supposed to be. Take away their funding. Take away their guns. Take away their rights that they hide behind. Take away their union, that they hide behind. Take away their qualified immunity that they hide behind.

Defund... or abolish.

If that word bothers you, then you didn't read the article.

[misanthrope]

34. The concerns about "branding" are just that

It's about advertising and psychology more than policy.

I wish we could ask the former-cop author of this article what his opinion of the American electorate is and how they would react to something so blatantly stated. I think what's written between the lines in his piece is that Americans are so conditioned, so afraid and reflexive that they would recoil from it.

Status quo mindset, racism and other boogiemen are so ingrained in our culture we almost can't envision the scope of it. It is simple to exploit those factors, to get voters to drift to "law and order" candidates.

I think this issue is so explosive, so potentially dangerous to the left's electoral chances that I admit my paranoia when reading essays like this as if it were a Trojan horse. Not saying I don't recognize the necessity for reform but just that I am very scared for the future of this nation should the worst happen in November.

[Locrian]

30. great article -thanks - nt

[dalton99a]

31. Kick

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

32. Evening kick.

[KentuckyWoman]

33. Edited -- This whole article is really good.

Not only highlighting the problems but also giving up suggestions for reform.

And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender? Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?

[malaise]

35. K & R for truth n/t

[JustGene]

36. Awesome truth

I saw most of this stuff on the "Tramp Trail' in CHI early 90's
I was aware much earlier.
I've known several cops who were decent-til you disagree

[hadEnuf]

37. If you look at all of the problems outlined in this essay it's easy to trace these back

to the last several decades of Conservatism. "Build more prisons", "3 strikes" and the multitude of other slogans, mindsets and attitudes that have help to build a militarized police force against the people of this country.


We need to vote these Right Wing "bastards" out. Every last one of them.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

38. It's beyond electoral/party politics.

Minneapolis has a Democratic mayor, a Democratic city council, is represented in the State House by Democrats and the State Senate by Democrats, is represented in the U.S. Senate by two Democrats and in the U.S. House by Democrats, and has a Democratic governor who has a Democratic majority in the state house.

The roots of oppressive policing lie in the structure of the police itself -- a force that originally chased people escaping slavery, protected property for the merchant class, and put down labor and immigrant uprisings that threatened the status quo. The entire system is broken. Dismantle it and build something new.

[hadEnuf]

43. Yes, there are long standing problems in the police structure

but the abuses and hatred have been on steroids with Conservatism doing the pushing in the last few decades.

[Stuart G]

39. Well worth reading the entire article...Great Post, Thank You...K and R

[malthaussen]

40. "Don't talk to cops."

Excellent advice.

-- Mal

[Kitchari]

41. Definitely worth the read

K&R, and thank you for posting

[Merlot]

42. This:

Armed, indoctrinated (and dare I say, traumatized) cops do not make you safer; community mutual aid networks who can unite other people with the resources they need to stay fed, clothed, and housed make you safer. I really want to hammer this home: every cop in your neighborhood is damaged by their training, emboldened by their immunity, and they have a gun and the ability to take your life with near-impunity. This does not make you safer, even if you’re white.