With the proviso that it’s not clear that it was really written by a cop, this Medium post, Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop, is worth a read. It sounds pretty believable to me:
To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force:
“I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”
Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity.
When you look at the actions of the officers who killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, or Freddie Gray, remember that they, like me, were trained to recite “I’d rather be judged by 12” as a mantra. Even if Mistakes Were Made™, the city (meaning the taxpayers, meaning you) pays the settlement, not the officer.
Once police training has – through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle – promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you. Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables.
The whole thing is worth reading. ACAB is another catchphrase that sounds overly radical but you might change your mind about that after you read this.
jeffreyw
Fuck Trump
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
A story:
About a billion years ago when I was 20 or 21, I’d managed to get a date with a girl that I had some interest in and had previously had a couple of nice little party encounters with.
My hopes for a lot more of an encounter were pretty high as we hit the town and went to a couple of clubs I knew weren’t picky about IDs. We went to a dance place, and she sadly hit that tipping point for early 20-somethings where for me, all I want to do is leave and forget the whole thing. I knew that when she started loudly demanding a Heineken (a new product for the area at the time). I warned her that it would make her sick, but she wasn’t listening. Knowing the date was over, I bought the thing anyway, she drank it and then we made it to my car.
I shouldn’t have been driving, but it was somewhere around 1981 and about 20 degrees outside.
About a third of the way to her sorority house, she starts making the obligatory groans and announces that she’s gonna yak. I reach over to roll down the window (and actually accomplish it), but she misses the whole thing and proceeds to coat herself, the seat and the dashboard in puke.
Keep in mind that I’m a sympathy puker, so I rolled down every window and proceeded to roar down city streets at 50 to 60 MPH just to blow the smell out – unfortunately, the limit on those streets was 35, so the inevitable contact with law enforcement happened.
He shines the light in, gazes at her and asks if I’d been drinking. There was no point to lying, so I admitted it and explained my reason to speed. He shines the light all over her being passed out in the seated, coated in puke, and then says “get her home, and just keep your speed down”. Thanking my lucky stars, I got her back to her place, got her inside and cleaned up a little, and then went home.
Next day I was talking about what a great guy he was for seeing I was not having a great night and that he gave me a break when I had no business on the road. One friend spoke up “he wasn’t giving you a break – he didn’t want barf all over his cruiser because he’d have to clean it up or ride with the smell”.
In other words, because he was selfish and lazy, he allowed me to continue endangering everyone on the road that night.
Oh, and for those who wonder, I never dated or even talked to that girl ever again. Didn’t want to.
The Moar You Know
Personal anecdote: I got my driver’s license in 1983. My mother, these days a Trump voter (just to give you an idea of her politics then and now, she went full darkside in the late 1970s and never looked back) sat me down for a lecture.
Not “don’t drive drunk”
Not “don’t get caught banging some girl in the back”
Not “don’t drive a hundred miles an hour”
None of that. It was an extremely detailed set of instructions on “what to do if I were pulled over by a cop, so I wouldn’t get shot.” I’m white, just so we’re clear on that. Her dad was a cop, first ATF and then some shithole local PD in Arkansas. Her and her siblings had all gotten the same lecture from my grandfather well before they were able to drive. He knew, and they knew, what the real danger was out there in the big world. I’ll never forget the conclusion: “I can always get you out of jail. I can’t get you out of a coffin.”
This from someone who would have been a life member of the Nazi party were it allowed. I think quite a few people know what the real deal with cops is.
wvng
This essay “rings true.” I wish I had some objective way of assessing how true it actually is, given confirmation bias and all. I have never had a bad personal encounter with police but then I have had very few encounters, they have all been traffic cops, and I admitted “yep, I did it” so there was no friction.
Juice Box
This story about Pen Hallowell was the next thing I read.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/11/civil-war-football-field-weve-been-celebrating-wrong-values
I’ve only been stopped once by a cop, but it was a surreal experience. I don’t know how any person could sustain that level of rage. After ten minutes of red-faced, bulging-vein screaming at me, he finally wrote a fix-it ticket for my license plate frame which was apparently illegal. He could have saved us both a lot of time if he had just told me that calmly up front. I’m as bougie-looking as they come, complete with a “physician’s parking lot” sticker on my car. I replaced the offending frame with a San Diego Opera frame.
The British police had a bad year in 2019. They killed three people, or the equivalent of fifteen in a population the size of the US
Punchy
Pretty sure Ice Cube coined that phrase….
Scotius
I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with that if we actually did the judging by 12. Instead we kept expanding the concept of righteous kills and qualified immunity to the point that Derek Chauvin could reasonably assume he could get away with choking a man to death in broad daylight in front of witnesses.
Mathguy
Thanks for putting out this essay for consumption. It asks and pretty answers a lot of questions I’ve had about the police for years. It’s easy to see in my city that “driving while black” is certainly a crime for them.
Betty Cracker
Wow, powerful essay. I’d bet folding money the writer is an ex-cop too.
@The Moar You Know: My dad is a redneck Trumper who has always counted our small town cops among his friends, and his unbreakable rule for his kids (both girls) was this: “don’t ever do anything to bring the cops to my house.” So yeah, I agree: they know the real deal.
negative 1
@Punchy: He didn’t, it’s an old phrase in society, but yeah it had its moment in rap back in the 90s.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
That the system is corrupt. That police have been trained to resort to violence first. That they have been murdering black people. That much of what they do could be better handled by social workers (with some security, because I know social workers who have been assaulted). Those things I find believeable.
However, I used to work at a rape crisis center. I had to work with police. There were police who got busted for sexually abusing teenage girls, but most were highly motivated to get rapists and child molestors off the streets. What kept some of them on the streets was the failure of DAs to prosecute or juries to convict. Those people have to be locked up, because it is RARE that they don’t reoffend. Counseling changes nothing. Every police officer I have talked with knows this. They live with horrible, sadistic things they have witnessed. I do not believe for one moment that an actual police officer would favor abolishing jails.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: He sounds like an ex-cop who became a DSA member or something like that to me (the capitalism references). The way I read it, he’s not definitively saying jails and cops are unnecessary, just that the current system causes way more harm than good and that we should abolish it and work out the “edge cases” (as I think he called them) afterward. I don’t know that I could endorse that view wholeheartedly right now, but it’s not an unreasonable position, IMO. We definitely need to change shit, and not just around the edges.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Betty Cracker: I know the system needs to change in profound ways. It is a bad and abusive system. But the people who can not be reformed are not edge cases. There are a LOT of them. That can’t be worked out later. It has to be central to the discussion or else reform will go nowhere.
Ronno2018
@Juice Box: Like health care it is disturbing to look at the stats for the UK, Japan, Canada et al and the number of citizens killed by security forces. I know the cops are scared because of the massive numbers of firearms on the streets but the politics of getting that problem resolved is so insane I have no idea how police reform will get us to a better spot. yeah the violence is also due to racism and other reasons but the huge number of guns is a big part.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: That sounds right to me. Thanks!
Juice Box
@Ronno2018: I totally agree about the guns. I also believe that the “war” on drugs nonsense is another huge part of the problem. Recriminalize guns, decriminalize drugs.
MelissaM
@Scotius:
Or Chicago’s Van Dyke did get judged by 12, gulty on 17 counts, and the judge still gave him only 6 1/2 years.
Juice Box
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: This is an important point. My experience with Adult Protective Services and Psychiatric Emergency Teams is that they always have a cop along with them, but the cop doesn’t contribute anything. Let the PET or APS ask for back up as needed, increase the number of social workers, decrease the number of (higher paid!) cops.
MelissaM
I find the essay frightening, simply because I have a niece (and a cousin) “on the job.” She’s 26 and loving it. She’s getting a rep for her DUI arrests, which is positive, but still. She’s a cop. She was aspiring to be a cop in 2014 when Laquon McDonald was killed in Chicago, and later, when the info came out about the 16 shots, she wouldn’t talk about it. I fear for her life, yeah, like I fear for the lives of all my loved ones. I fear more for her soul.
Regarding McDonald’s murder, Showtime released the documentary 16 Shots for free viewing on Sho.com and on youtube. I watched it earlier this week, and of course, it was made before 2020 and these tide-turning protests, so it left some questions for me. But it was worth watching. Hard, but worth it. Anger-inducing. Defund the cops. De-militarize the cops. Eliminate the police unions. Spend that money on mental health care, addiction support and community development. And for gods’ sakes, let’s get universal healthcare for everyone.
J R in WV
And no one, not MisterMix — no one is going to tell me what the Hell ACAB stands for?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
This might also be of general interest. It goes through 16 theories of why crime dropped in the US in the 90s. The evidence for and against each theory is discussed, including the theory that adding more police on the streets reduced crime. My only criticism is that they only considered evidence that leaded gasoline removal, rather than lead abatement strategies more broadly, might have reduced crime. https://www.vox.com/2015/2/13/8032231/crime-drop
Ben Cisco
@J R in WV: Acronym for All Cops Are Bad.
wvng
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Kevin Drum, of course, has been beating the lead/violent crime drum for more than a decade. It makes more sense than pretty much anything else I have seen.
thebewilderness
It was the SCOTUS that gave LEOs force protection as their highest priority in a series of decision in the eighties. The problem with law enforcement in this country is systemic. They don’t screen out abusive authoritarian asshats because they are abusive authoritarian asshats.
LongHairedWeirdo
The bit about “judged by 12 rather than carried by 6” is actually old gun-nut propaganda, and I reckon it made its way from the NRA or other second amendment organizations, to cops.
It’s an interesting thing: one of the ways the gun nuts push back against *any* restrictions on ownership and carry rights, is by trying to make it seem as if giving up your gun for a brief time created real danger, when the vast majority of people will never be in a situation in which they needed a gun to make things turn our correctly.
That seems to change the attitude of a lot of gun folks. Perhaps the most stunning bit came from someone talking happily about an AR-15 style rifle, “… and it might even save your life someday!”
Someone thinking like that is thinking like guns are magical; the vast majority of self defense situations would be helped far more with a handgun or shotgun than a rifle that fires extremely high velocity rounds. And if people see fear of being without them as normal, and see guns as the magical totem that keeps fear away, well, it seems to me, such people would be far more likely to use them.
Jay C
Unfortunately, when it comes to police matters, the discussion usually gets turned to the “few bad apples in the barrel” trope, when the root of the problem is usually that the barrel itself is rotten.
I found this ProPublica article online – warning: a long piece, but worth reading to the end.
TL:DR version: small-town cop unjustly fired and shitlisted for NOT shooting somebody. But RTWT.
Laura Too
@Ben Cisco: From a cop, All Cops Are Bastards. We have that everywhere right now. Going to do graffiti abatement tomorrow so I’m sure I’ll be taking that down.
Subsole
@J R in WV:
All Cops Are Bastards
Or Bad, if you’re in mixed company, I guess.
LeftCoastYankee
16 theories for crime reduction, and not 1 looks at what things like Affirmative Action meant for longer term economic benefits. Anyone going to college in the early 70’s was probably a parent of children and/or young adults in better circumstances in the 90’s.
I don’t have the numbers, but I remember the Clinton folks making a big deal about the Black Employment numbers also being unprecedentedly good in the 90’s.
We could listen to the black community about what would improve their lives or we could go on a hunt for obscure data anomalies that obscure reality. Jesus, what crap.
Subsole
@Jay C:
Freddie Gray was killed by a lieutenant and like three sergeants, if I recall correctly. That is a hell of a lot more than bad apples.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Jay C: There’s one other thing that I’ve heard that is horrible, and should change.
What I’ve heard – and I can’t promise I heard it from a primary source! – if a cop calls for backup when handling a crazy white dude, no one thinks less of him. But calling for backup on a black person tends to have people ask questions like “couldn’t you handle him on your own?”
If that’s true, it’s a symptom of a pretty deep sickness; because the obvious reason to call for backup, in *any* situation where you’re not in immediate danger, is to make sure you can handle the situation *without* having to use high levels of force.
Lumpy
@LongHairedWeirdo: I am certain there is a stigma in going back to the station and having the other guys know that the suspect got away, or even worse, that a suspect got the best of you during a fight and then got away.
smintheus
When I was 12 a small town cop refused to arrest a drunken stranger who’d nearly strangled me, because as the cop explained, he didn’t like my parents. He wasn’t fired.
When I was 22, a drunk city cop ran a stop sign and nearly crushed me on my bike. Then when I wouldn’t take the blame for the accident he caused, he told me he was going to teach me a good lesson and tried to arrest me. He couldn’t hold onto his handcuffs and couldn’t manage to draw his weapon so I just fled for my life. He too wasn’t fired because it would have been a huge risk to report him to this dirty police force.
I have been cynical about the police my entire life as a result of watching them in action. But this essay did not convince me that the author was a cop. Eventually I stopped reading because it seemed to be nothing more than what any observant person could say about police behavior. As an historian, I have learned certain tells that fake historical sources have; one of them is when they tell you nothing you didn’t already know or could surmise – or the only new thing they tell you is a ‘fact’ that would seem to be highly controversial or tendentious (buried in the middle of a banal account). So I’m skeptical of this essay.
Zelma
I live in an upscale resort town. I know there have been property crimes and I know there are drugs. But there hasn’t been a violent crime here in decades. Mostly the police deal with speeding and loud parties. And yet the police are armed to the hilt. I’m on the School Board and we had the local chiefs come in to talk about the school shooting danger. In they walked with side arms and batons and all the other equipment associated with policing. To a meeting of the School Board and parents. It was surreal.
It is also surreal how much money the district has spent “hardening” the school against the extremely unlikely danger of a school shooting. Of course, the real problem is that semi-automatic weapons are widely available. But nobody talks about that. I agree with the poster above that at least one reason police are trigger happy is because there are 300 million guns out there. Every contact becomes fraught.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Lumpy: Yes, but that’s not quite what I meant.
Basically, I heard it said that, a black man with a weapon, or acting strangely, tends to get viewed as a threat to be stopped, while a white man acting in more or less the same fashion is seen as a suspect to apprehend. And the impression I received was, it wasn’t malicious, or even conscious; it wasn’t that they *decided* to be more, or less, aggressive. It was that they perceived a completely different situation, because of skin color.
If that *is* the case, it’s not surprising. That’s the sort of subtle prejudice that is a good analogy to the old saw about “we don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t a fish”. It’s the sort of thing that’s buried deeply enough, and unconsciously enough, that someone else has to catch it, and call it out, because it’s invisible to the person holding it.
(Frankly, I’m sure some fish *could* discover water, since they can surface, and some can even leap out of it, and be encased in air. Like the frog (who will notice when the water gets hot enough, and hop out), it’s the sort of expression that’s far better at building an image, than in being factually correct.)
Cathie from Canada
@J R in WV: All Cops Are Bastards
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@LeftCoastYankee: So basically, your preferred theory wasn’t hi-lighted more clearly (economic issues were discussed), so that means the rest of the data is crap. That is called confirmation bias.