There’s a lot of anger out there at police officers. It comes from every different angle, so you’ll find it on left-wing, right-wing and even moderate online discussions. Lower and working classes often resent the police, while those with money and power look down on them and treat them with contempt. People expect cops to keep them safe and help them when they need it, but they wax indignant when cited for an infraction or arrested for something like smoking a joint.
When I was a kid, I was afraid of the police, probably for good reason. Teens are prone to mischief and therefore are frequently disciplined by cops. I remember once riding around with my high school friends, the car stuffed full of kids, some intoxicated, and seeing a cop turn a corner somewhere behind me. I knew he was coming after us, so I quickly made a right into a dark neighborhood street, pulled over and got out of the car before he could turn and light us up. He knew the trick (avoiding a traffic stop by pulling over and getting out before he could turn on the lights and make a stop), so was pretty ticked off and gave us some rough treatment, yelling at us and making us put our hands on the hood. I was lucky I pulled it, though, because it turned out one of the kids had an open bottle of tequila in the car. I didn’t know about that, but legally speaking it would have been my fault anyway, and I could have lost my license.
The angry cop shone his light in the car, pulled out the tequila, and yelled “what’s this?” I just about crapped my pants, but his attention turned to the culprit, who was so stoned he was barely intelligible. The cop uncorked the bottle and dumped its contents on the ground while giving us a stern look, then pulled a bag of weed out of my stoned acquaintance’s pocket and threw him in the back of the squad car. After looking at our IDs and generally scaring the daylights out of us, he pulled the stoner out of the car and with a mean, serious look he gave us all a warning calculated to make an impression:
“If I ever catch you little shits screwing around again you’ll wish you’d never been born. Now get the hell out of here!”
We left, chastised and resentful. Man were we pissed off at those nasty cops! “What a big, mean bully,” we exclaimed.
In retrospect, though, the guy did us all a favor. He could have been perfectly respectful and polite and courteous and professional — and arrested us. Instead, he gave us the third degree, scared us, and let us go. He did us a favor and taught us a lesson.
We live in a society where expressions of masculinity and the use of force have been delegated almost entirely to police. This is state aggrandizement of power, and it’s incredibly frustrating for a great many people, including schoolteachers, parents, and, surprisingly enough, the police themselves. Do cops really want to have to discipline boys whose fathers are not there to do the job? Do they want to have to deal with kids misbehaving in school because teachers are not allowed to even restrain an out-of-control kid? Do they actually like stepping between drunk lovers who are throwing dishes and food at each other?
I don’t think so, but the law has made these things their job. Most cops want to chase down thieves and muggers, catch bank robbers, and lock up killers. Sure, traffic duty is a given, but all the other stuff that’s been heaped on them makes for a pretty full plate. It also makes people angry at them. But this anger is misplaced.
Who really is responsible for putting police in our living rooms, our classrooms and even our bedrooms? Who puts the cops between fathers and children? Well, if you’ve done your reading it’s pretty clear: special interest groups – largely feminists – and their legal industry allies.
Finally, does anyone really believe that cops have it easier than the rest of us in their own personal lives? Divorce is sky-high for public servants such as police and firefighters, partly because divorcing wives have guaranteed access to benefits and generous support from anyone working a government job. Some police are so thoroughly impoverished by their divorces that they have to sleep at the station and take on a great deal of overtime. Police are routinely accused of domestic violence (here’s a site dedicated to helping women go after cops), made out to be tyrants in court by their wives, and personally trashed and humiliated in the proceedings. A cop I know personally can hardly stand his wife but is terrified by the prospect of divorce.
So rather than dump on the cops who have been thrown in the middle of all this, a far better solution would be simply lighten cops’ load by giving them a new set of priorities, namely catching crooks and keeping order on the street. Just empowering them to arrest women who make false accusations would significantly ease their burdens — police are often specifically ordered not to do so because it would “discourage real victims.” This is garbage; all it does is encourage more false reports. Another important step is removing the entanglements between civil and criminal law that have grown like a climbing weed on the lattice of family law. When people have a financial incentive to get the police involved, some will most certainly do so. Remove that incentive, and the abuse of policing by citizens will definitely decline.
There are many reforms that should be undertaken, but in trying to solve the problems we currently face we have to avoid letting our emotions take over. It’s easy to direct one’s anger toward the most obvious, and that tends to be the flashing lights, uniforms and guns. But that’s exactly what the people directing this lousy policy want. They’d far prefer we fight it out with the cops in the streets to us actually holding the real decision makers accountable and working effectively for change.
