Read it all. Worth every minute. A taste:
"As a fresh cop, you will notice that the standard editorial notion, that cops are heavily armed brutes amid a helpless unarmed populations, isn’t quite accurate. When you are on the sidewalks of a bad neighborhood, where you know you are disliked by all and hated by many, you will become aware of your vulnerability. You have to pass close to people. Any of them could blow your head off from behind, stick an ice pick in your back, or brain you with a piece of rebar.
The second thing to know about the police and guns (though it sounds unrelated) is something you will hear often from your new colleagues: “I’m going home tonight.” This does not mean, “I’m going home instead of to the bar with buddies.” It means, “If some dirtball threatens my life, or credibly seems to be doing so, I will blow his sorry ass away before I’ll let my wife have to explain to the kids why Daddy is never coming home again.”
Ah, but how do you know when your life is in danger? Therein lies the rub. In a good department, you will get shoot-no-shoot training. It will surprise you. You stand in front of a very large screen, your weapon holstered. On the screen (for example) appears in video exactly what you would see responding to an armed-robbery call at a small store. A woman, the proprietor’s wife, frantically accosts you. "He robbed us! He has a gun! He went into the alley.” Gun in hand, you run down the alley, scared and breathing hard. A man with a gun turns the corner, gun in shooting position. You fire. You just killed the proprietor who also was chasing the perp with his own gun.
Back on the real street. A 250-pound guy crazy on PCP charges you with the clear intention of doing you harm. How much harm? He could kill you. It isn’t part of your job description to find out. You don’t have time in three seconds to try pepper-spray (which doesn’t work well on PCP heads anyway) or send for a Taser, or shout, “Halt in the name of the law, oh evil emissary of the forces of chaos!”
SWAT serving no knock warrants at midnight at the wrong address and blowing away the family pets is becoming a very bad habit of police forces nearly everywhere. Cops shooting everybody in sight because they just pull the trigger until they run dry and if innocent bystanders have to suffer death and maiming so the cop can "go home tonight", so be it.
ReplyDeleteNobody should be allowed to get away with what cops routinely get away with without suffering so much as slap on the wrist.
Nobody should get away with the murder rate in Chicago where black men kill black men at a rate higher than military losses worldwide. More black men died at the hands of black men in the time it took you to read this than white cops killed black men all year. Think on that.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with the first anon... about the cops getting too trigger-happy and not paying the price.
ReplyDeleteAin't no ball and chain forcing them to keep their jobs either...don't like it...get out.
ReplyDeleteFred Reed's discussion on the negative view of life LEO work with forgets that others such as medics, firemen and ER workers see pretty much the same nastiness on a daily basis. THESE groups don't respond by shooting dogs, planting drugs on people, lying under oath and shooting indiscriminately at the slightest provocation.....of no provocation at all. NOPE....not buying the BS..
ReplyDelete